I wait at a bus stop. A car passes by at high speed, and a woman that was standing too close to the road has just the time to jump clear of a shower of slush. Note to self: be aware of this danger, never stand too close, as there is no benefit but potential for ruining your clothing. Next time I notice myself standing too close to puddle/slush on the road, I move away and reinforce the heuristic.
A person from my department at work admonishes me for breaking the standard procedure for connecting to the Internet, which resulted in me being able to work that evening while causing no harm. I attempt to reason with the man, relying on my usual analytic ability to clearly explain the situation to everyone's satisfaction. Since the argument matches the template some of my psychological adaptations recognize as confrontational, emotions start to interfere with my normal cognition, and as a result I'm unable to think carefully and my argument is much less persuasive than expected. Note to self: when expected to enter a situation that can evoke strong emotions, plan what to do and what to say in advance, before emotions start interfering with ability to think, rehearse the plan in your mind, and only then allow the exposure. Next time I notice that I started to argue with emotions rising up, I cut myself short and regroup. Later, I reflect on the signs that could allow me to notice the situation approaching in advance (such as an unusual social interaction, something I wouldn't already have the heuristic associated with), and rehearse the response of recognizing the situation when exposed to appropriate cues.
I slip on an iced street, but recover without falling. I look around, and realize that a low fence that goes along the road has sharp spikes on its top, and the adjoining building a sharp stone border, so that unlucky fall on either would have me injured. There is potential for harm in falling close to them, and no benefit in choosing to walk close to them as opposed to giving enough room to fall clear. So I adopt a heuristic of not walking close to dangerous structures on slippery surface, or going much slower where necessary. Next time I notice that I'm unnecessarily close to a dangerous structure while there's room to walk clear of it with no additional inconvenience, I correct my trajectory, thus reinforcing the heuristic.
Note to self: when expected to enter a situation that can evoke strong emotions, plan what to do and what to say in advance, before emotions start interfering with ability to think, rehearse the plan in your mind, and only then allow the exposure. Next time I notice that I started to argue with emotions rising up, I cut myself short and regroup.
Addition a year later: I'm currently doing a study group with a friend based on a book called 'Crucial Conversations', which is entirely about being more effective at communicating in emotion-laden situations. Highly recommended.
As Tom slips on the ice puddle, his arm automatically pulls back to slap the ground. He’s been taking Jiu-Jitsu for only a month, but, already, he’s practiced falling hundreds of times. Tom’s training keeps him from getting hurt.
By contrast, Sandra is in her second year of university mathematics. She got an “A” in calculus and in several more advanced courses, and she can easily recite that “derivatives” are “rates of change”. But when she goes on her afternoon walk and stares at the local businesses, she doesn’t see derivatives.
For many of us, rationality is more like Sandra’s calculus than Tom’s martial arts. You may think “overconfidence” when you hear an explicit probability (“It’s 99% likely I’ll make it to Boston on Tuesday”). But when no probability is mentioned -- or, worse, when you act on a belief without noticing that belief at all -- your training has little impact.
Learn error patterns ahead of time
If you want to notice errors while you’re making them, think ahead of time about what your errors might look like. List the circumstances in which to watch out and the alternative action to try then.
Here's an example of what your lists might look like. A bunch of visiting fellows generated this list at one of our rationality trainings last summer; I’m including their list here (with some edits) because I found the specific suggestions useful, and because you may be able to use it as a model for your own lists.
Action ideas, for three related biases:
A. How does it help to know about overconfidence[1]? What can you do differently, once you know your impressions are unreliable?
Action ideas:
B. How does it help to know about the conjunction fallacy? What can you do differently, once you know specific stories are less likely than we generally expect?
Action ideas:
C. How does it help to know about confabulation? (I.e., how does it help to know that you are often mistaken about your motives, and that situational factors affect you far more than most people expect?)
Action ideas:
Do try this at home.
Many of the above examples are not well-tested. So don’t rely on them. But do try them. And, when you do, tell us about it; add your data to the common LW store.
Also, practice this sort of example-generation for any rationality content that you hope to master. Now that you know about Bayes’ theorem, outside view prediction methods, confirmation bias, or any of the others -- what can you do differently at work? in your relationship? while cooking dinner tonight?
The more specific your brainstorm is, the easier it will be to actually try things.
[1] By “overconfidence”, I mean the well-documented bias whereby people think they know more than they do -- I do not mean the bias of over-estimating one’s own abilities.
[2] “Empirical tests” here can include your own direct observations, friends’ anecdotes, published controlled studies, and anything else in the world that should look different, if [received wisdom / your own impression] is true. Many folks just throw up their hands or take a vote when they see folks that disagree with one another; but sorting out the evidence is a learnable skill. It’s worth doing this for medical treatments, job search strategy, driving safety, learning methods, and ... anything else that has much impact on your life.
[3] For example, prefer “I’ll go to college X, where there are many smart people and connections” to “I’ll go to college Y, which is renowned for bioinformatics in particular, since bioinformatics is my lifelong destiny and will let me work for Craig Venter”.
[4] The Church-Turing thesis may not sound like a conjunction. But for it to hold, physics needs to be as we expect along many different dimensions, which is a conjunction, and is the sort of possibility we tend to overestimate. Similarly, there are many different events that could interrupt your planned career, and we tend to overestimate the chances that all of these events, at once, will not occur.
[5] But it isn’t silly to try to make your future actions more (useful/moral/whatever). Even if most actions occur by habit, you can, little by little, change your habits, and increase your self-awareness and your deliberative self-control.
[6] Or: “What would I believe about someone else, if they acted as I’ve been acting?”
Edited to add: Do please comment with your own attempts to turn LW rationality content into the kinds of specifics one can easily act on.