A little while ago, I read these posts about how pouring really cold water in people's left ear solves an extreme form of rationalizing in patients with Anosognosia and might(?) make people better calibrated in general. Last month, I asked whether anyone had checked that, because it seemed like something that would be rather important if true. I got no response, which tells me that even if someone has, it's not common knowledge.
I decided to write up this rough experimental method (copy-pasted below) and made this google form to record my results. Originally I was going to be the only participant, but figured I might as well put it out there in case others wanted to help. I'd really appreciate any additional data points people want to add.
After enough data to determine whether it's likely that there's actually a positive effect, I'll publish it in a followup post.
Yep, there could be those, this isn't designed to fully narrow down any effects. If the data ends up strongly implying an effect, then more precise experiments are worth doing. If it doesn't, then any effort to deal with those are wasted motion that just slows us down and likely decreases sample size.
I think so? It's an established medical procedure, and some people were obviously able to get ethical approval for it, otherwise it wouldn't be in those papers. It does feel very uncomfortable for a little while after, and doing it multiple times could have more of an impact than the once in the papers. If you're concerned about that, avoid doing it multiple times.
Personally, I'm willing to take the risk of potential hearing problems in my left ear for a little while because I expect that to be fixable, and rationality interventions now could potentially add up to a serious impact on our future trajectory.
Using this credence calibration game, answer as many questions as you can in 10 minutes. Note the total score, total questions, and average score, then delete the save file.