Rationality: Common Interest of Many Causes

In a nutshell, it might be cool to make a website and organization that promotes data collections and debate.

Rationalism requires access to high quality empirical evidence. Holding your hypotheses up to constantly changing data is a major theme of this site.

We can only rationally discuss our hypotheses and beliefs when we have something to test and the quality of datasets floating around on the internet is often low or inaccessible.

A good rationalist project might be to highlight resources for empirical evidence, run "data debates" where experts attack and defend each others datasets; a wiki for best-practices in data collection, or a wiki for navigating popular issues through good datasets (try as a nonexpert to find what studies on taxation and inequality are best and you can end up running in circles).

I think you would want to tailor this kind of project toward non experts, giving people (especially journalists) a good starting place for finding meaningful, well-collected data that can form a good jump point for rational analysis.

A project like this also leaves the door open to many interpretations and many goals, so it isn't necessarily cutting down on the number of voices out there.

I would also be interested in cataloging failed attempts. More and more I have been trying to look at survivorship biases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) behind all my beliefs.

Are there any good examples of projects like this in existence? Maybe we can leverage the community here to throw our weight behind one.

Thanks, Eliezer!

As one of your supporters, I have been sometimes concerned that you are doing blog posts instead of working out the Friendly AI theory. Much more concerned than I show. I do try to hold it down to an occasional straight question, and hold myself back from telling you what to do. The hypothesis that I know better than you is at least -50dB.

This post is yet another glimpse into the Grand Strategy behind the strategy, and helps me dispel the fear from my less-than-rational mind.

I find it unsettling that " ... after years of bogging down I threw up my hands and explicitly recursed on the job of creating rationalists."

You learned that, “The human brain can't grasp large stakes and people are not anything remotely like expected utility maximizers, and we are generally altruistic akrasics.” Evolution didn’t deliver rationality any more than it delivered arithmetic. They have to be taught and executed as procedures. They aren’t natural. And I wonder if they can be impressed into System 1 through practice, to become semi-automatic. Right now, my rational side isn’t being successful at getting me to put in 8-hour work days to save humanity.

You learned that, "Dollars come out of different mental accounts, cost different amounts of willpower (the true limiting resource) under different circumstances ... " That makes some of MY screwy behavior start to make sense! It's much more explanatory than, "I'm cheap!" or lazy, or insensitive, or rebellious, or contrary. That looks to me like a major, practical breakthrough. I will take that to my coach and my therapist, we will use it if we can.

I don't think my psychologist ever said it. I doubt it is taught in undergraduate Psychology classes. Am I just out of touch ? Has this principle been put into school curricula? That you had to learn it the hard way, that it isn't just common knowledge about people, " ... paints a disturbing picture."

You’ve done it again. In a little over one thousand words, you have given me a conceptual tool that makes the world (and myself) more intelligible and perhaps a little more manageable. Perhaps even a LOT more manageable. We shall see, in real practice.

I would appreciate any links to information on the mental accounts and amounts of willpower.

Thank you, Eliezer.

--RickJS

Since Less Wrong doesn't have trackbacks, I'll note that I responded to this post here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/missing-alliances.html

I've noticed that even Enlightenment projects such as atheism can get dragged down by the low sanity waterline and kept spinning in small and useless circles by the dearth of rationalists and the lack of skill among any rationalist novices present (I include myself as such).

I am very much on board with any project to raise it.

Well, to be honest, I like dogs, and when one is in front of me, I care about it. I don't think it's particularly important to rescue stray dogs (at least, not when compared to people), but I might join such a project because I thought I might have fun doing it.

A stylistic note: you have a parenthetical note defining "altruistic akrasic", but not with the first mention of the term. If you feel it needs explanation, it needs explanation when you first mention it.

Something about these last couple of posts has been bothering me and I think it is this: you have a misperception regarding the comparative advantages of the group you have assembled. It seems that we are youngish and neither terribly wealthy nor well-connected, but we possess a certain quality of strength or at least the desire to obtain it. Sure, if you convinced us all to donate lots of money to project X that might do some good. But it seems likely that this group can achieve some far greater good by proceeding in a less obvious way. I can only speculate upon what that larger good might be.

Hrm... May be worthwhile compiling a list of not just causes, but organizations/groups/communities (online or otherwise) that explicitly care about rationalists (or, for a starting point, at least claim to) so that we can begin to actually try to set such a mutual-rationality-project up.

Any comments on why drug legalization is to be considered good except the many historical failures of prohibiting alcohol and tobacco and libertarian speaking of addicts' rights (which, for anyone who does believe "people are to be forcibly protected from themselves" to at least some degree, is a non-argument)?

"If you and they don't agree on everything - especially priorities - you have to be willing to agree to shut up about the disagreement."

Right. Just like anti-theists should shut up about their anti-theism for the benefit of theistic evolutionists.

That was sarcasm, if you couldn't tell.

Sounds like it might be worth a go.

The reason everyone tries to shape a very specific message to fit existing biases rather than challenging the biases directly is that no-one wants to stick their necks out. For example, there are a whole load of charities that would benefit if scope insensitivity were reduced, but for any of them to fight it would be perceived by scope insensitivity sufferers as talking about people's lives in the cold language of cost-effectiveness.

The effective altruism movement and the 80000 hours project in particular seem to be stellar implementations of this line of thinking.

Also seconding the doubts about the refrain from saving puppies - at the very least, extending compassion to other clusters in mindspace not too far from our own seems necessary from a consistent standpoint. It may not be the -most- cost-effective, but no reason to just call it a personal interest.

"But of course, not all the rationalists I create will be interested in my own project - and that's fine. You can't capture all the value you create, and you shouldn't try."

Eliezer you are not creating a posse of rationalists. This is a delusion of grandeur.

Your continual quoting of yourself (a useful technique at OB) is also gaining the grandeur of delusion.

"If someone has a project to help stray puppies get warm homes, then it's probably best to regard them as trying to exploit bugs in human psychology for their personal gain, rather than a worthy sub-task of the great common Neo-Enlightenment project of human progress."

I do not regard the extension of compassion to all living things as a bug. Surely moral progress is making the circle of inclusion ever bigger.