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Notes -
I can't find the original Scott-post, but I found an old comment of mine that linked directly to this on his old website, which was presumably there because of a post he made.
My priors on this sort of thing are similar to my priors on weight loss studies - that there is a Hlynka-sized hole in the discourse. It's a multi-agent environment; other agents get to make choices, and there is no way for you to impose your idealized study protocol onto their entire life and choice set. If you can selection effect your way to people who will take agency and apply focused determination to solving the little problems along the way, it actually won't be that hard to find solutions to those problems, and a variety of "methods" will probably work about equally well (though individual circumstances may result in differing folks somewhat preferring differing methods), but if not, than basically nothing other than raw physical/biological force will cut it.
Yes I agree with this. Well. I think that different people have different problems as well. "people who will take agency and apply focused determination to solving the little problems along the way" are going to be your best category, getting them to help from the inside is essential to making progress. I agree with that. But there will also be people who aren't in that category who can be moved to that category with just the right strategy, one conditioned on them. But not any of the many wrong ones. There will also be people who are lost causes. Such as the permanently brain damaged and the exceptionally obstinate.
Though... even the latter may be transmutable. The minds of the mentally ill are often like Cobble's Knot. A giant tangle of issues that layer on top of one another, that you need to find one loose end of to even get started.
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