This is true, but why privilege rationality? Integrity, kindness and other desirable traits scale the same way and are probably just as important.

You should get a Ph.D. in Philosophy if you consider the material studied in philosophy to be an end in itself. Philosophy is a truthseeking discipline, so if you find that inherently rewarding and could imagine doing that for a large part of your life it's a good decision. Don't worry about the wariness of philosophy: I can guarantee you that the criticisms levied here against philosophy have been addressed tenfold in actual philosophy departments, by people with sympathies closer to Luke's than you'd think.

That said, a lot of people go into graduate programs for bad reasons. Here are two I've been tempted by:

1.

Minimizing Status Risk. A lot of people think about risk in terms of financial gain or loss, but few think about risk in terms of status when it's a real concern for many people. Graduating college can be intimidating, especially if you're at a prestigious college, because you're about to be stripped of your hierarchical standing among people your age. If you've attended, say, Harvard for four years, you've spent those four years thinking of yourself on the top of the food chain relative to other college students.

Once you're out of college, this is no longer true, and you're measured by what kind of job you have. It's extremely tempting to avoid this by applying to graduate school, because graduate school allows you to continue the imagined hierarchical standing that you've had for the past few years. Eventually you'll get a Ph.D. and be on top of the intellectual food chain. This has nothing to do with "avoiding the real world", because "the real world" as an employment area is conspicuously centered on office jobs or whatever the majority of people happen to do for money. (I wonder if farmers consider everyone else to have a "fake" job. Probably.)

It's a way of avoiding vulnerability to your status, because working as a clerk or receptionist or barista or server or whatever after college is generally not prestigious and makes you feel like your intellect isn't worth anything. That's an uncomfortable feeling, sure, but make sure you're not eyeing a Ph.D. just to avoid that feeling.

2.

Even if you're not avoiding Status Risk, make sure you're not getting a Ph.D. just to feel like an intellectual hotshot anyway. A lot of people reason about competence in binary ways (expert or non-expert) even though competence obviously exists on a spectrum, so it's tempting to get a title that lends you immediately to the "expert" end of any discussion. That way, you can throw your weight around whenever there's a clash of words.

With philosophy especially, it's enigmatic to a lot of people. There's a mystery of what you're actually learning in an advanced program. So a Ph.D. looks like a "certified smart person" badge to a lot of people, and that's tempting. Make sure you're not getting it for that reason either.

Here's the litmus test. Ask yourself: "would I self-study this material anyway if I had the next three-five years paid for? Would this occupy a large part of my time regardless of what I'm doing?" If so, it's worth it.

The proactive thing to do, naturally, is to try to minimize how many mistakes you make.

To me, there seems to be something kind of off about this sentence. Suppose I'm trying to get better at a game like Starcraft. Starcraft is sufficiently complicated that attaining a basic level of still (by which I mean "macromanagement": being able to ensure that all your resources are being used somehow, without worrying about using them well) takes hours and hours of practice. And during that practice, you will inevitably make mistakes; the only way to avoid making mistakes is by not practicing. Indeed, every mistake teaches you something, so I'm tempted to say that what you want to do is to maximize the number of mistakes you make.

In short, it seems to me that minimizing the number of mistakes you make doesn't serve the purpose of making you more skilled. So what purpose does it serve?

I really liked this post, and I think a lot of people aren't giving you enough credit. I've felt similarly before -- not to the point of suicide, and I think you might want to find someone who you can confide those anxieties with -- but about being angered at someone's dismissal of rationalist methodology. Because ultimately, it's the methodology which makes someone a rationalist, not necessarily a set of beliefs. The categorizing of emotions as in opposition to logic for example is a feature I've been frustrated with for quite some time, because emotions aren't anti-logical so much as they are alogical. (In my personal life, I'm an archetype of someone who gets emotional about logical issues.)

What I suspect was going on is that you felt that this person was being dismissive of the methodology and that the person did not believe reason to be an arbiter of disagreements. This reads to me like saying "I'm not truth-seeking, and I think my gut perception of reality is more important than the truth" -- a reading that sounds to me both arrogant and immoral. I've ran across people like this too, and every time I feel like someone is de-prioritizing the truth over their kneejerk reaction, it's extremely insulting. Perhaps that's what you felt?

Isn't anxiety the primary problem? The obvious solution to make less mistakes is to gather data and figure stuff out, but you're not asking about that. You're not afraid of making mistakes. You're afraid of people (including yourself) discovering your alleged incompetence. The obvious solution to that is to fix the anxiety problem. Yes, it might be hard and/or require external help, but you said it yourself :

the anxiety has been catastrophic

What about the iceberg iceberg, when noticing your first iceberg you realize there was a metric ton of icebergs under the iceberg.

Or a recursive iceberg, where you realize there's a whole nautical mile worth of rabbit hole left to go down?

I don't think "Not sending in your $200 rebate" and "not writing in an article to Overcomingbias" are the same phenomena at all.

It's not that people who are now writing all these LW posts felt like it was too much of a hassle to send an email to Overcomingbias; it's that deliberately and unusually sticking your neck out to contribute has a different social connotation than simply participating in the expected community behavior.

Contributing to Overcomingbias is like getting on stage: walking up to the stage is a socially loaded act in and of itself. "Hey, everyone, I'm going to stand out here and say something." Lesswrong, since the entire site is built around community posting, practically invites you to post as you please. There's nothing out of the ordinary about it. How could there be? The tools to do so are right there, embedded into the infrastructure of the site. It must be expected for me to do that!

Luke, I was curious: where does informal logic fit into this? It is the principal method of reasoning tested on the LSAT's logical reasoning section, and I would say the most practical form of reasoning one can engage in, since most everyday arguments will utilize informal logic in one way or another. Honing it is valuable, and the LSAT percentiles would suggest that not nearly as many people are as good at it as they should be.

I think it's a task Luke isn't up to. To single-handedly reform teaching like that you would have to be a renowned philosopher or educationalist, a Dewey or Erasmus, not a twenty-something blogger. His understanding of philosophy is barely up to undergraduate level. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Not if LessWrong values truthseeking activities more than the general population, or considers lying/truth-fabrication a greater sin than the general population does, or if LessWrong attracts less sociopaths than the general population. If over 1000 fitness enthusiasts take a test about weight, the statistics re: obesity are not going to reflect the general population's. Considering the CRT scores of LessWrong and the nature of this website to admire introspection and truthseeking activities, I doubt that LW would be reflective of the general population in this way.

That is why I used the wording "statistically speaking" - it is understood to mean that I am working from statistics that were generated on the overall population as opposed to the specific population in question. You are completely ignoring my point which is that you have chosen a position which is going to be more or less impossible to defend. That position was:

I don't think anyone on Less Wrong has lied about their IQ.

It's considered very rude to completely ignore someone's argument and nit pick at their wording. That is what you just did.

Lies are more than untrue statements; at least, in the context of self-reports,

Now it's like you're trying to make up a new definition of the word lying so you can continue to think your ridiculous assessment that:

To lie about your IQ would mean you'd have to know to some degree what your real IQ is

By the common definition of the word "lie" producing a number when you do not know the number definitely does qualify as a lie. You're not fooling me by trying to make a new definition of the word "lie" in this context. This behavior just looks ridiculous to me.

Mensa doesn't need to be a professional IQ testing center for their normings to be accurate, however.

But they do need to provide a professional IQ testing service if they want their norms to mean something. The iqtest.dk might turn out to be a better indicator of visual-spatial ability than IQ, or it might discriminate against autistics, which LW might have an unusually large number of (seeing as how there are a lot of CS people here).

However, it's inaccurate to say that because someone puts their number in the box from IQTest.dk that they're "equally flawed" to the other intelligence questions.

Here you go twisting my wording. I specifically said:

In that way, they're equally flawed to the other intelligence questions...

The only reason I'm responding to you is because I am hoping you will see that you need to do more work on your rationality. Please consider getting some rationality training or something.