Julia Galef, co-founder of CFAR, discusses the dual-process theory of cognition and clarifies common misconceptions about rational decision-making.
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Galef: Top charities can save 100 times more lives per dollar donated
“They're literally, like, orders of magnitude difference in the effectiveness of different charities trying to do the same thing. So just by kind of stepping back from your automatic emotional reactions and asking yourself, okay, what does the evidence show? Yo…”
Insight
Galef: Overcoming Cognitive Biases Requires Practice on Real-Life Problems, Not Labs
“I would expect that to change ingrained habits of thought and behavior, you need more longer term practice on real life issues, not on toy problems, you know, in a lab.”
Insight
Galef: Purely rational arguments are likely insufficient to combat manufactured doubt
“Yeah, no, I really, I think it's really hard. And I think I'm not confident that there is a good way to do it while, while adhering, you know, perfectly to the standards of, you know, just using the best arguments and evidence. I think you probably have to als…”
Insight
Galef: Practical decision-making requires ruling out bad choices rather than seeking perfection
“In practice, it's not helpful to think about there being one very best choice that you can know for certain, but you can, you know, With some careful reasoning and using some good heuristics or rules of thumb, you can sort of rule out some obviously bad choice…”
Insight
Galef: Appreciating art satisfies human goals often overlooked in rationality
“But in terms of appreciating art I'd say for many people, maybe for most people, for some form of art, that's very important for their goals. And the kinds of goals I'm thinking of Are indeed the kinds of goals that people usually don't think of when I say the…”
Insight
Galef: Changing your mind requires gut-level acceptance of your own blind spots
“To change your own mind, I mean, the first step I would say is just believing that that's a desirable thing to do, which many or most people don't really either would explicitly say is a bad thing to do, because changing your mind makes you kind of wishy-washy…”