point out that most adults can't actually do algebra or calculus, and that these skills are almost never used even by professionals who CAN do them, such as engineers, on a regular basis.

This is true, but this information outside of proper context could hurt them, so it should be emphasised that this is not a Fully General Counterargument against learning anything. It is okay to not learn something if you are learning something better instead. (Insert specific examples of things that are better, and things that might seem cool but are not actually better.)

Also, for the "teacher's password" subjects, your options are not only "learn everything" and "ignore completely". For example, you can just put all the teachers' passwords in Anki, remember as much as Anki makes you, and ignore the rest... this would probably still allow you to get decent score and take relatively little time. (And you get some meta-skills by doing this.) This could be useful to avoid some conflicts with your teachers or parents, if they hate the idea of you strategically ignoring a subject.

concerned about having hundreds of hours of their lives wasted following instructions from an unambitious middle aged authority figure

Again, tell them they shouldn't replace these mediocre authority figures by something worse, e.g. conspiracy websites. And if you tell them to listen to smart and successful people, you might be preparing them to fall for the next MLM scam.

Okay, but how to fix all this? There is no probably no way to jump across the whole inferential distance in one lesson. So maybe there should be some long-term support system where students trying to become more rational could go to ask more questions. Maybe just... give them your e-mail and tell them to feel free to ask anything (after they spent 5 minutes thinking about the problem).

The points made seem very vague and trivially true. For example: "Consider homeschooling and online school. Depending on your situation, these may be superior alternatives to regular high school for you." Yes, of course, for the "right situation" homeschooling is good. Kind of like how you shouldn't drink "too much" water or breath "too much" oxygen.

Try giving specific examples of the way the system is bad for them. For example, point out that most adults can't actually do algebra or calculus, and that these skills are almost never used even by professionals who CAN do them, such as engineers, on a regular basis.

However it is pretty easy to get students to admit that at least some of the classes they take are a waste of time. You could try getting them more concerned about having hundreds of hours of their lives wasted following instructions from an unambitious middle aged authority figure. Do we really want children learning from or respecting people who chose one of the easiest careers possible and conceded to be lower-middle class for the rest of their lives? Pfft. Although this point will probably receive a lot of pushback because "education" is a sacred cow and teachers should be worshipped because a few of them claim to have a "passion for teaching".

Instead of focusing on why high school is bad though, maybe you could get more mileage out of telling teenagers what they SHOULD be doing with their time. Most kids don't work out or eat properly because their parents don't have those values. Maybe since teenagers should practice being less biased, because certainly they don't get any sort of pressure to be rational. Suggesting that they get in the habit of googling the expert consensus on issues before they make up their mind COUGH politics COUGH is a step in the right direction.

Or maybe direct them to radical cultural outlets like RSDNation so they can get some perspective on the monogamous suburban middle class life they're planning on living.

Once you figure out what you want to do, high school and college just become tools that are very easy to optimize for your goals. But most high school kids are just going through the motions, passively expect to get <some job>, passively expect to marry <some person>, have kids when they're 27-30, etc. This is how a lot of people wind up unhappy. If I could tell a teenager anything, it would be for them to become 10,000x more strategic and independent.

... of course convincing someone to ACTUALLY become these things is very difficult.

Do you really choose your music based on the average opinion of "experts"?

Yes, except that I am the only expert on what music I like.

Anyone with an IQ above 110 can get any degree they want.

Are we talking about degrees here. I am pretty sure Ive been talking about top level articles. Or can anyone with an IQ above 110 publish one of those?

Why would the best research win out?

No winning out here. The research will be closer to the truth than a random answer because the accuracy of the theories gets compared to reality buy doing experiments for example. Or because not every single person is completely biased and blind to the results that they get.

And no, they technically don't even show danger. All they do is show correlations. Would you also conclude that wearing XXL t-shirts makes you fat?

Hey, that's why they are correlations. I am not stopping you from believing that being predisposed to diabetes and cancer or whatever makes you more likely to eat red meat for example.

As I said in the other thread, I am not participating in this conversation any more.

This is exactly my point. Studies on many many subjects may not contain information more useful than coin flip, let alone an educated guess.

Wow. This is a pretty far-fetched claim..

You have to have a theory about why a "respected" study is likely to be correct. I've already provided theories explaining why they're likely to be incorrect a large portion of the time.

My theory is that respected papers are done in a method more resembling the scientific method than coin flip on average and thus they get more accurate results than a coin flip. There, happy?

I believe in science too. But "science" and "science articles" are different things. But you didn't answer my question

I did answer your question - the answer was yes.

I really want to drive home that almost no one thinks it's a good idea to trust "majority expert opinion" in all sorts of areas.

Except, you know, the majority.

Don't be dense. You know exactly what I mean. A vegetarian goes to grad school and does research on nutrition. What do you think is going to happen?

He is biased. So is the guy that went into grad school with anti-vegetarian views. If those guys are not changing their opinion based on the evidence then the chance is smaller (not nil though) that their papers will be highly cited.

Citations above where you commented.

You call studies that find correlations between things fear mongering? Oh my.

You can also just punch "red meat" into google scholar and it's all about how you can die from it.

Oh my. Okay, first of all you can die of pretty much anything and pretty much anything has some dangers. Or at least that's what does fear mongering scientists claim. The studies show you some numbers to guide you in how much danger X (in this case red meat) poses to specific individuals. Do you have any specific reason to think that those studies are fabricated and that in fact red meat has none of the effects that they claim?

Furthermore, if I tell you that drinking a large amount of water can kill you and do a study to prove it then am I a fear mongering scientist?

Seems accurate.

My argument really boils down to 2 things. Researchers being systematically biased (ex: red meat), and researchers having a very low probability of actually knowing the right answer but publishing something that fits some narrow set of data (ex: "advanced" simulation). To be sure, I've used research to make a lot of informed decisions over my lifetime, but it's always been straightforward, pretty much unanimous, and with lots of testimonials from online groups to give it statistical mass.

I acknowledged that there are problems, nothing is perfect. But I don't know what you want from me. To convince you that science as a whole works!? Or that information in studies is more accurate than made-up information?

All I am advocating is to look for 'respected' studies and look at them. If you don't think that looking at studies 'approved' by the field gives you more accurate information than not doing it I can't really do much.

Would you adopt this heuristic in any other scenario where the "right answer" isn't obvious? Music, books, diet, politics, etc? Even when you restrict your sampling pool to "experts only", the results are still pretty bad.

Yes, I believe in science no matter what scenario I am in. You don't need to blindly trust it or anything, I put different weights on different claims etc. but I would still take into account information from recent, well-cited meta-analyses or whatever I can get my hands on.

These people are self-selecting to do research. It's not like you're picking a random disinterested intelligent person and asking them to study the problem. No one becomes a nutritionist because they have no opinion on food.

So I should worry that researchers are interested in the topic that they are researching. What douchbags, eh?

The overwhelming trend is fear mongering coming out of epidemiological studies.

Okay. Citation? And remember we are not talking about 'most studies' or anything. The studies that we are talking about are well cited, by known researchers if possible and systematic reviews if possible.

Yes, there is A LOT of garbage. This is why I am recommending using heuristics such as numbers of citations - to maximize the accuracy of the information. And, yes, peer review is not perfect but compare journals/fields that rely on peer-review to those that do not...

Furthermore, Systematic Reviews have a pretty good track record as far as I know and this is why I recommend them.

So, if there is any controversy on the issue, remain agnostic

This post is not so much about academically controversial issues but even in those cases if you don't have any reasons not to, then siding with the majority will bring you to the truth more often than the alternative.

Don't become one of these "reserch sez..." people who just regurgitate abstracts. You'll wind up worried about the dangers of red meat, getting too much sunlight, doing 45 minutes of cardio every day, etc.

This is the type of thing that you see if you do a normal google search instead of a scholarly search. I have not checked but I bet that the most cited recent review articles on those issues can provide you with some pretty good information.

As a test case, I tried applying this technique to the Dangers of Red Meat, which is apparently a risk factor for colorectal cancer. The abstracts of the first few papers claimed that it is a risk factor with the following qualifications:

• if you have the wrong genotype (224 citations)

• if the meat is well-done (178 citations)

• if you have the wrong genotype, the meat is well done, and you smoke (161 citations)

• only for one subtype of colorectal cancer (128 citations)

• only for a different subtype not overlapping with the previous one (96 citations)

• for all subtypes uniformly (100 citations)

• no correlation at all (78 citations)

As someone who actually does academic research and has spent countless hours reading the fine details of "prestigious" publications, 90% of the material out there is total garbage, and it is difficult to know if a paper is garbage just by reading the abstract. Peer review doesn't help either because review boards are lazy and will never double check any of your actual footwork. They will never read your code, rerun the algorithms you claim you used, etc. A simple glitch can change the sign of your answer, but you typically stop looking for glitches in your 10,000 lines of code once the answer "looks right".

So, if there is any controversy on the issue, remain agnostic. Like a 90/10 split in academia is totally reasonable once you factor in the intellectual biases/laziness/incompetence of researchers and publishers. All an article tells you is that somewhere out there, someone with an IQ >= 110 has an opinion they are publishing to further their career. I don't place very much weight on that.

Don't become one of these "reserch sez..." people who just regurgitate abstracts. You'll wind up worried about the dangers of red meat, getting too much sunlight, doing 45 minutes of cardio every day, etc.