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ChristianKl comments on What math is essential to the art of rationality? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (62)
If you get diagnosed with an illness and are given the sensitivity and specificity of the test, being able to calculate your risk is valuable and many doctors get this wrong.
The trouble is that knowing the formula and being able to use it in daily life are two different things. On one of the LW censuses a significant portion got a question intended to test knowledge of Bayes rule wrong.
So other than learning the formula, how do you suggest that we learn to apply it, other than actually applying over and over, until one stops getting problems wrong? It seems that it's just a function of practice.
I don't have a good answer to that question.
There are studies of mental biases that suggest that a lot of people who can manage to apply the formula to textbook problem fails to apply it when you give them a political scenario. Most people fail to think clearly and motivated reasoning if the question becomes meaningful for them.
As far as I understand CFAR tries to teach bayes theorem in a way that people will actually use it. I however neither know their exact curriculum nor know the success rate of their approach.
How often have you received this info in practice? How often have you done the calculations?