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1Anna Eplin
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8Anna Eplin
Has anyone yet created a free app that would be like Duolingo but for rationality, to teach skills such as logical reasoning, recognizing & adjusting for cognitive biases, and looking for hypothesis falsification tests instead of confirmation? If not, can you smart tech people here please make one?!
The biggest problem is not one of technology, but that we don't really know how to train people "recognizing & adjusting for cognitive biases" in a way that actually translates into making better real life decisions.
I don't know that it's actually targeting the stuff you specifically say here (because I think a lot of this isn't actually the most useful version of rationality), but, I (and @Screwtape) am working on a rationality training site. I would compare it more to the older version of brilliant.org or codewars than duolingo.
Can you say a bit more about what you'd have wanted out of such an app?
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1I look forward to your site!
To answer your question: similarly to how HPMOR presents rationality skills in a learning format (fiction) that is accessible to a general audience, I would love for there to be an app that, like Duolingo, teaches skills and concepts in small, guided practice sessions with little rewards for completion.
For context: I’m not in Silicon Valley surrounded by people who are already really smart and interested in rational thinking. I’m in the middle of West Virginia, surrounded by right-wing tribalism and fundamentalist evangelicalism, out of which I have clawed my way. We need all the easy, accessible help we can get with learning rationality. (HPMOR has changed my life!)
1A question I have been asking since before starting work with Raemon on this, which is only more relevant now:
What rationality skill(s) do you think is most important? Put another way, if we could snap our fingers and teach some rationality skill as broadly as literacy currently gets taught, what skill should we pick?
(I don't think this is Raemon's angle on the project but it is kind of mine.)
The easiest rationality skill that you currently fail at is probably the most important one for you now.
So if you are someone like me, the basic rationality checklist will feel pretty condescending. Something like:
- Have you even noticed that you have a problem, or is it just a vague bad feeling that you are trying to ignore most of the time?
- Have you spent at least five minutes by the clock trying to describe the problem and come up with some possible solutions?
- Did you write down the results, or are you going to rediscover the same "original insights" every few months?
- Did you make a specific falsifiable action plan with a specific deadline, or is it just a vague non-committal verbal declaration to "try doing better the next time"?
- Did you notice that the deadline has passed and/or the plan failed, and are you going to do something about it?
- Okay, the same plan has failed three times in a row, and that's probably not a coincidence, but evidence of the plan being unrealistic. Are you going to reflect on that failure and revise the plan, or will you keep doing the same thing over and over again (perhaps with increasing time intervals, so that you can conveniently forget about the entire thing at some moment in the future)?
- Have you tried asking a friend for help? Or even asking an LLM for advice?
- Maybe you shouldn't be trying to do so many things at the same time, but focus on one or two most important ones. Otherwise you will use temporary improvements in the less important topics as an excuse to procrastinate on the more important ones. (You can still write down the less important ones and return to them later.)
- Yes, it is hard. Which is not the same as impossible. If it was easy, you would probably be doing that already (and complaining about something else being hard).
Maybe one of Logan Strohl's Fucking Goddamn Basics of Rationalist Discourse? Actually the whole thing is short enough to repost here in its entirety to save the trouble of clicking through:
- Don't say false shit omg this one's so basic what are you even doing. And to be perfectly fucking clear "false shit" includes exaggeration for dramatic effect. Exaggeration is just another way for shit to be false.
- You do NOT (necessarily) know what you fucking saw. What you saw and what you thought about it are two different things. Keep them the fuck straight.
- Performative overconfidence can go suck a bag of dicks. Tell us how sure you are, and don't pretend to know shit you don't.
- If you're going to talk unfalsifiable twaddle out of your ass, at least fucking warn us first.
- Try to find the actual factual goddamn truth together with whatever assholes you're talking to. Be a Chad scout, not a Virgin soldier.
- One hypothesis is not e-fucking-nough. You need at least two, AT LEAST, or you'll just end up rehearsing the same dumb shit the whole time instead of actually thinking.
- One great way to fuck shit up fast is to conflate the antecedent, the consequent, and the implication. DO NOT.
- Don't be all like "nuh-UH, nuh-UH, you SAID!" Just let people correct themselves. Fuck.
- That motte-and-bailey bullshit does not fly here.
- Whatever the fuck else you do, for fucksake do not fucking ignore these guidelines when talking about the insides of other people's heads, unless you mainly wanna light some fucking trash fires, in which case GTFO.
I suppose this is why the comparison with Duolingo came to mind: teaching rationality is akin to teaching a whole language. We need lots of aspects of it, not just one.
Also (now I’m just introducing another thing here), ideally it would be in a style that is as friendly and non-threatening as possible—again, like Duolingo’s vibe—though obviously it couldn’t be as entirely neutral as learning a language. To be effective, it would need to leave learners feeling supported rather than shamed.
Again I think of HPMOR as a great example of all of this: it covers lots of different rationality skills and has a reader-friendly vibe.
The app’s hook might be something like “Learn to think like a scientist” or “level up your decision making skills” or “hack your own brain.” (lol, idk)
But to answer your question, if I had to pick one rationality skill that seemed most important to me personally, the one that comes to mind seems like a meta-rationality skill, which working on lots of other various rationality skills would also serve: building the habit—through training/practice—of noticing, questioning, and testing one’s beliefs.
I think quantified intuitions is a reasonable, although incomplete version of what you describe. It specifically focuses on scope insensitivity rather than a traditional rationalist curriculum.
I would lightly argue scope insensitivity (and calibration!) are both traditional rationalist topics. Incomplete, yes, but I think they're both well served by quantified intuitions and they'd be part of my ideal rationalist training program.
1Inspired by you guys (LessWrong), I'm trying out a thing: a free forum website called Kindness Village, which is intended to be a safe space for people to connect and support each other. This feels like a Thing I Can Do (among other things I'm already doing) in response to my ongoing feelings of dismay about current events. I want to make a place where people can not only make authentic connections and be supported--bypassing chitchat and social media blather--but also where, theoretically, people from both sides of the political spectrum can connect in a bridge-building, tribe-expanding way.
I have no tech skills to speak of, but I did my best as of now (I just made it). Would anyone here like to come join in and lend your intelligent voice to this project? I haven't announced it on my various channels yet; you're first because you inspired me! The URL is kindnessvillage.org (not .com because that one was taken).
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