The original approach was rather erratic about finding high value choices, and was weak at identifying the root causes of the biggest mistakes.
So participants would become more rational about flossing regularly, but rarely noticed that they weren’t accomplishing much when they argued at length with people who were wrong on the internet. The latter often required asking embarrassing questions their motives, and sometimes realizing that they were less virtuous than assumed. People will, by default, tend to keep their attention away from questions like that.
The original approach reflected trends in academia to prioritize attention on behaviors that were most provably irrational, rather than on what caused the most harm. Part of the reason that CFAR hasn’t documented their successes well is they’ve prioritized hard-to-measure changes.
The original approach was rather erratic about finding high value choices, and was weak at identifying the root causes of the biggest mistakes.
So participants would become more rational about flossing regularly, but rarely noticed that they weren’t accomplishing much when they argued at length with people who were wrong on the internet. The latter often required asking embarrassing questions their motives, and sometimes realizing that they were less virtuous than assumed. People will, by default, tend to keep their attention away from questions like that.
The original approach reflected trends in academia to prioritize attention on behaviors that were most provably irrational, rather than on what caused the most harm. Part of the reason that CFAR hasn’t documented their successes well is they’ve prioritized hard-to-measure changes.