# For-Profit Rationality Training

As I've been reading through various articles and their comments on Less Wrong, I've noticed a theme that has appeared repeatedly: a frustration that we are not seeing more practical benefits from studying rationality. For example, Eliezer writes in [A Sense that More Is Possible](/lw/2c/a_sense_that_more_is_possible/),

> Why aren't "rationalists" surrounded by a visible aura of formidability? Why aren't they found at the top level of every elite selected on any basis that has anything to do with thought? Why do most "rationalists" just seem like ordinary people...

Yvain writes in [Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great](/lw/9p/rationality_its_not_that_great/),

> ...I've gotten countless clarity-of-mind benefits from Overcoming Bias' x-rationality, but practical benefits? Aside from some peripheral disciplines, I can't think of any.

patrissimo wrote in a [comment](/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/2l5h) on another article,

> Sorry, folks, but compared to the self-help/self-development community, Less Wrong is currently UTTERLY LOSING at self-improvement and life optimization.

These writers have also offered some suggestions for improving the situation. Eliezer [writes](/lw/2c/a_sense_that_more_is_possible/),

> Of this \[question\] there are several answers; but one of them, surely, is that they have received less systematic training of rationality in a less systematic context than a first-dan black belt gets in hitting people.

patrissimo [describes](/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/) what he thinks an effective rationality practice would look like.

> 1.  It is a group of people who gather in person to train specific skills.
> 2.  While there are some theoreticians of the art, most people participate by learning it and doing it, not theorizing about it.
> 3.  Thus the main focus is on local practice groups, along with the global coordination to maximize their effectiveness (marketing, branding, integration of knowledge, common infrastructure). As a result, _it is driven by the needs of the learners_ \[emphasis added\].
> 4.  You have to sweat, but the result is you get stronger.
> 5.  You improve by learning from those better than you, competing with those at your level, and teaching those below you.
> 6.  It is run by a professional, or at least _someone getting paid_ \[emphasis added\] for their hobby. The practicants receive personal benefit from their practice, in particular from the value-added of the coach, enough to pay for talented coaches.

Dan Nuffer and I have decided that it's time to stop talking and start doing. We are in the very early stages of creating a business to help people improve their lives by training them in instrumental rationality. We've done some preliminary market research to get an idea of where the opportunities might lie. In fact, this venture got started when, on a whim, I ran a poll on [ask500people.com](http://ask500people.com) asking,

> Would you pay $75 for an interactive online course teaching effective decision-making skills?

I got 299 responses in total. These are the numbers that responded with "likely" or "very likely":

*   23.4% (62) overall.
*   49% (49 of 100) of the respondents from India.
*   10.6% (21 of 199) of the respondents _not_ from India.
*   9.0% (8 of 89) of the respondents from the U.S.

These numbers were much higher than I expected, especially the numbers from India, which still puzzle me. Googling around a bit, though, I found an instructor-led online decision-making course for $130, and a one-day decision-making workshop offered in the UK for £200 (over $350)... and the Google keyword tool returns a large number of search terms (800) related to "decision-making", many of them with a high number of monthly searches.

So it appears that there may be a market for training in effective decision-making -- something that could be the first step towards a more comprehensive training program in instrumental rationality. Some obvious market segments to consider are business decision makers, small business owners, and intelligent people of an analytical bent (e.g., the kind of people who find Less Wrong interesting). An important subset of this last group are INTJ personality types; I don't know if there is an effective way to find and market to specific Meyers-Briggs personality types, but I'm looking into it.

"Life coaching" is a proven business, and its growing popularity suggests the potential for a "decision coaching" service; in fact, helping people with big decisions is one of the things a life coach does. One life coach of 12 years described a typical client as age 35 to 55, who is "at a crossroads, must make a decision and is sick of choosing out of safety and fear." Life coaches working with individuals typically charge around $100 to $300 per hour. As far as I can tell, training in decision analysis / instrumental rationality is not commonly found among life coaches. Surely we can do better.

Can we do effective training online? patrissimo thinks that gathering in person is [necessary](/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/), but I'm not so sure. His evidence is that "all the people who have replied to me so far saying they get useful rationality practice out of the LW community said the growth came through attending local meetups." To me this is weak evidence -- it seems to say more about the effectiveness of local meetups vs. just reading about rationality. In any event, it's worth testing whether online training can work, since

*   not everyone can go to meetups,
*   it should be easier to scale up, and
*   not to put too fine a point on it, but online training is probably more profitable.

To conclude, one of the things an entrepreneur needs to do is "get out of the building" and talk to members of the target market. We're interested in hearing what you think. What ideas do you think would be most effective in training for instrumental rationality, and why? What would you personally want from a rationality training program? What kinds of products / services related to rationality training would you be interesting in buying?