LessWrong as place for scientifically literate advice

post by Metus · 2011-08-19T14:05:10.617Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 9 comments

Contents

  Benefiting from rationality
  Beginnings
  Possible Topics
  A provisional solution
  A more sustainable solution
None
9 comments

Disclaimer and abstract: English is not my native language, so please notify me if you see grammatical or stylistic mistakes. This posting is mainly an account of my thoughts. It is highly informal and contains almost no advice but asks for it. I am relatively new to LessWrong and rationality but hope that I can contribute something useful. Here I suggest to give and gather advice to and from readers of LessWrong, sketch possible topics and list a few examples of such advice existing. Also, I present a provisional solution to gather this advice and a more sustainable solution. Sadly, I can not offer advice on the topics mentioned below as I am merely an interested amateur.

 

Benefiting from rationality

LessWrong is full of smart people who 'believe' in rationality. But you have to benefit from something to make it worth believing it, you have to make beliefs pay rent. This applies especially to rationality. But rationality benefits us heavily through the scientific method and thus the giant body of work scientists have produced throughout the centuries. Too much was written to be reviewed by a single individual so it seems rational to sum up the results with notes on confidence and consequences. It would be scientifically literate advice as opposed to anecdotical help. Such an effort, especially if it is made systematically would help draw attention to LessWrong and rationality.

Beginnings

Some scattered efforts are already made here on LessWrong on producing such advice as hinted at in the above paragraph. Look for example at lukeprog's articles on happiness. How they draw heavily from scientific articles and give concrete, simple to understand advices is how an article for rational advice should look like. In "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids" Bryan Caplan also draws heavily from scientific literature to prove that given today's parent's efforts, the majority of children's life outcomes are determined by environmental or genetic factors. He then concludes that today's adults perceive the cost of children as higher than it is and thus should have more kids.

Possible Topics

The topics people need advice on are mostly the same throughout the ages: Happiness, love, health money. But seeing as it is a recurring theme on LessWrong, advice can be given on cryonics, akrasia and social behavior in broader sense. Many more topics are possible of course and the above list is an outline for willing authors.

A provisional solution

LessWrong, obviously, has a discussion section and a tree based commenting system. This can, at least temporarily, be used for the purposes named in this posting. If you can provide advice, please head your comment with "[Advice]". If you have a request or an idea for advice, please head your comment  "[Request]". If you just want to comment on this article, just comment as usual. I think the voting system should automatically seperate useful from useless advice and requests. For clearer view, start for each topic a new comment, so that health advice on diet does not unnecessarily get mixed up with advice on exercise.

Of course it is useful too to link to existing advice.

A more sustainable solution

As I seem to notice, there is demand for such advice. It should be possible to create a sub-category of "discussion" to post exactly that advice and have it nicely seperated from the other discussions.

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