Practical Examples To Be More Rational in Your Day-to-Day Life
Hypothetical Scenario A: You’re a junior veterinarian and a sheep has come to your practice, diseased. The senior vet authoritatively proclaims that the sheep has Disease A. You’re unsure, though- you think it might, in fact be Disease B. You’re new to the practice and don’t want to offend the senior partner so you don’t make any qualms about his proclamation. The sheep is given medicine to treat Disease A, but slowly starts to respond badly to the treatment. Not soon later, it’s dead. A few days after its death, it’s confirmed that the sheep did in fact die from Disease B, as you thought.
Hypothetical Scenario B: You’re a junior veterinarian and a sheep comes to your practice, diseased. The senior vet at your practice authoritatively proclaims that the sheep has Disease A. You’re unsure- you think it might, in fact be Disease B. You’re new to the practice but make your thoughts known to the senior vet, nonetheless. The sheep is given medicine to treat Disease A, but slowly starts to respond badly to the treatment. The senior vet quickly realises that you might be right. They reverse their treatment for Disease A and start to treat the sheep for Disease B. The sheep is now in a bit of discomfort, but makes a full recovery. You’re praised by the senior vet for making your beliefs known and for being right about the disease.
In the hypothetical scenario above, a cow’s life has been saved not through superior surgery or epidemiological skills, but just through updating beliefs as more information comes to light. This has not cost the practice or veterinarian much time or money to save this extra life, just merely a change in thought process. But, are there any better ways that the vets could have come to the same decision? E.g., should they not have tried to disconfirm the junior vet’s query first (thereby saving the cost of medicine for treating the wrong disease)?
I imagine there are lots of practical ways that people could use such skills that rationalists and EAs promote in their day-to-day lives, but don’t, because they’re too close to notice them (Scout Mindset in the case above).
I’ve thought about collating these into one single database that people could use but am unsure what the best way of doing it would be. Below is a spreadsheet, which hopefully people could add information from their field of work (or others if they think they could contribute), so that this can grow, and many more hypothetical sheep can be saved…
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