I think the vast majority of people (even within communities that have rationality and critical inquiry as central parts of their identity) have never done one.
I think most people in such communities have done the low-time-commitment sort of minimal-trust investigations, such as:
Checking attribution. A simple, low-time-commitment sort of minimal-trust investigation: when person A criticizes person B for saying X, I sometimes find the place where person B supposedly said X and read thoroughly, trying to determine whether they’ve been fairly characterized. This doesn’t require having a view on who’s right—only whether person B seems to have meant what person A says they did. Similarly, when someone summarizes a link or quotes a headline, I often follow a trail of links for a while, reading carefully to decide whether the link summary gives an accurate impression.
I do this sort of “checking attribution” minimal-trust investigation frequently and expect many others within the EA and rationality community do too.
I also sometimes dig a big deeper, e.g. when someone makes a claim about a study rather than a claim about what someone said. (E.g. I remember investigating some claims a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast made about the effects of plant agriculture on animal deaths.)
But in general, I think you are right that it’s quite rare for people to do the high-time-commitment versions of minimal trust investigations.
I can’t think of any examples of times that I’ve put in the enormous amount of work required to do more than a partial high-time-commitment minimal-trust investigation. I ~always stop after a handful of hours (or sometimes a bit longer) because of some combination of (a) it not seeming worth my time (e.g. because I have no training in evaluating studies and so it’s very time consuming for me to do so) and (b) laziness.
Yeah I was surprised by that claim too. Here are justtwo of my comments on incidentally side-conversations of a single blog post, on unrelated topics (Warning: the main topic of that blog post is heavy+full of drama, and may not be worth people reading).
I think most people in such communities have done the low-time-commitment sort of minimal-trust investigations, such as:
I do this sort of “checking attribution” minimal-trust investigation frequently and expect many others within the EA and rationality community do too.
I also sometimes dig a big deeper, e.g. when someone makes a claim about a study rather than a claim about what someone said. (E.g. I remember investigating some claims a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast made about the effects of plant agriculture on animal deaths.)
But in general, I think you are right that it’s quite rare for people to do the high-time-commitment versions of minimal trust investigations.
I can’t think of any examples of times that I’ve put in the enormous amount of work required to do more than a partial high-time-commitment minimal-trust investigation. I ~always stop after a handful of hours (or sometimes a bit longer) because of some combination of (a) it not seeming worth my time (e.g. because I have no training in evaluating studies and so it’s very time consuming for me to do so) and (b) laziness.
Yeah I was surprised by that claim too. Here are just two of my comments on incidentally side-conversations of a single blog post, on unrelated topics (Warning: the main topic of that blog post is heavy+full of drama, and may not be worth people reading).