Give people a long list of tasks, a short time interval, and then reward them based on the number of tasks solved. Repeat until they internalize the lesson that solving a problem quickly is good, spending lots of time on a problem is bad, so if something seems complicated they should ignore it and move on to the next task.
Ah, in a parallel universe without David Gerard the obvious next step would be to create a WikiProject Rationality. In this universe, this probably wouldn't end well? Coordination outside Wikipedia is also at risk of accusation of brigading or something.
Crazy idea: What if an important part of psychotherapy is synchronization between the brain hemispheres?
(I am not an expert, so maybe the following is wrong.)
Basically, the human brain is divided into two parts, connected by a link. This is what our animal ancestors already had, and then we got huge frontal lobes on top of that. I imagine that the link between the hemispheres is already quite busy synchronizing things that are older from the evolutionary perspective and probably more important for survival; not much extra capacity to synchronize the frontal lobes.
However, when you talk... each hemisphere has an access to an ear, so maybe this gives them an extra channel to communicate? Plus, some schools of psychotherapy also do things like "try to locate the emotion in your body", which is maybe about creating more communication channels for listening to the less verbal hemisphere?
Experiment: Would the psychotherapy be less efficient if you covered one of your ears?
Julian Jaynes assumes that people in the past were crazy beyond our imagination. I wonder if it could be the other way round. Consider that fact that in more primitive societies, inferential distances are shorter. Well, that includes inferential distances between your two hemispheres! Easier to keep them in sync. Also, in the past, people talked more. Listening to yourself talking to other people is a way for your hemispheres to synchronize.
Talking to others, talking to yourself, talking to gods... perhaps it is not a coincidence that different cultures have a concept of a prayer -- talking to a god who is supposed to already know it anyway, and yet it is important for you to actually say it out loud, even if no other people are listening. Saying something out loud is almost magical.
Sincerity seems to be an important component of both psychotherapy and prayer. If you keep a persona, your hemispheres can only synchronize about the persona. If you can talk about anything, your hemispheres can synchronize about that, too.
Keeping a diary -- a similar thing; each hemisphere controls an eye. I am not sure here; maybe one of the hemispheres is more specialized on reading. Listening is an older skill, should work better for this purpose.
It would be great if you could get paid for doing the right thing.
And the first and third lies (lies? that's assuming the conclusion) seem to be about assuming that this actually is possible -- therefore, if you are not getting paid for doing the right thing, if you are not working full-time at doing the right thing, then you are not trying hard enough to do the right thing.
As I understood it, your objection was that computation is an abstraction/compression of the real thing, which is not the same as the real thing. (Is that correct?)
First, let's check how important is the "compression" part. Imagine that someone would emulate your brain and body without compression -- in a huge computer the size of the Moon, faithfully, particle by particle, including whatever quantum effects are necessary (for the sake of thought experiment, let's assume that it is possible). Would such simulation be you in some sense?
If we get that out of the way, I think that the part about compression was addressed. Lossy compression loses some information, but the argument was that consciousness is implemented in a robust way, and can survive some noise. Too much noise would ruin it. On the other hand, individual neurons die every day, so it seems like a quantitative question: it's not whether the simulation would be you, but how much would the simulation be you. Maybe simulating 50% of the neurons could still be 99% you, although this is just a speculation.
I think there is something real that the concept of "luxury beliefs" points at, but I agree that the usual explanation is confusing for various reasons you mention in this article.
So what exactly is it about? Let's look at "sexual promiscuity, drug experimentation or abolishing the police", because they seem to me like the prototypical examples of the concept.
The first two seem like instances of "it is okay to do dangerous things (if you have a good safety net)". The last one seems like an instance of "let's abolish public X (if you don't need so much X, or you are already paying for private X)". In both cases, there is a recommendation to do something, without mentioning that there is a reason why doing so is relatively safe for you but could be dangerous for others, in a way that is connected with social status (the behavior is relatively safe for high-status people and dangerous for the low-status ones).
By being cavalier about the danger, you signal that you are not among the lower-status people for whom following the advice is dangerous. The people for whom the behavior is dangerous are either smart enough to realize it, but they won't publicly contradict you, because that would mean drawing attention to their lower status; or are stupid and will follow your advice and will get hurt (which is what makes it a costly signal).
Imagine the beliefs stated in a way that "checks your privilege" instead:
These are factual statements that people can agree with whether the conditions apply to them or don't. Therefore, agreeing with these statements does not signal whether the conditions apply to you.
It is the version without the disclaimers that signals that the conditions apply to you in a deniable way. (You can pretend to sincerely believe that promiscuity and drug experiments and abolishing the police are actually safe for everyone. Just like the fish that doesn't see the water, you don't see the wealth you are swimming in.)
I was trying to think about another example. In some way "it is a great idea to take a huge debt to get to an elite university" seems related, but it is a weaker example, because it talks about money explicitly. A better example would be something that costs a lot of money to do safely, but the money is not mentioned, and the statement is made like it is perfectly safe for everyone and only a stupid person would disagree. Maybe "quit your boring job and follow your passion"? Eh, still too obviously connected to money. A better example would be something like telling everyone to go study philosophy at a prestigious university because it is great for your mind and soul (while carefully avoiding any hint at how expensive that would be, and how it might impact your later job search). The problem is that this advice is time-limited; it would be a good "luxury belief" for a high-school student.
Haha, that's absolutely correct! But without the job I wouldn't get paid. So I guess the standard deal is getting paid in return for a set of things, and I dream about getting paid for a subset.
I mean, in theory, the employer should care about getting the work done, being there to fix the bugs and provide support, being available in case something else happens, and maybe a few more things... but spending most of my time in an open space is just unnecessary suffering for an introverted person, and a financial expense for the employer, so... haha, nope. For some reason it is important to be surrounded by other people, even when I happen to be the only person on my project (or the only team member not from India).
Seems to me that this is one of those messages that managers try to tell each other, but it often gets distorted in the game of "telephone".
The part about "money isn't everything, other things can be just as important, perhaps even more" is well understood. The part that is missing is that the "other things" should be something the employee actually cares about (and that it can be different things for different people)... as opposed to a standard set of "benefits" that someone in the HR department decided are cool (and cheap) but many employees see them as mostly worthless.
Examples of benefits I don't care about: various discounts for services that I mostly don't need (and which taken all together make less than 1% of my salary, so why are we even wasting time discussing this?)
Examples of benefits I care about (but maybe other people don't): autonomy, work from home, not working in open space
This explains one thing I have recently noticed about myself. I am a software developer, and I dislike being the only developer on a project. I assumed that my aversion was something about effectiveness. But now I realize that "talking to other developers about code" is an important extra payment that I learned to expect in my job.
Seems to me that birth control is a part of the story, but modern lifestyle is another. People spend more time away from home; at home we do homework with kids, watch TV, scroll social networks on smartphones. It's not just reduction of unprotected sex, but also reduction of sex in general.
I wouldn't be surprised if people had more kids during COVID, simply because they spent more time with their partners.