3. Significance

The world is full of correlations, and so it is very easy to come up with

SPRs; what’s difficult is coming up with useful SPRs. For example, the

Mayo Clinic has records for thousands of subjects who have taken the

MMPI (Meehl 1990, 207). It turns out that there are significant correlations

between subjects’ gender and answers on 507 (out of 550) of the

items. Some of these items include ‘‘I think Lincoln was greater than

Extracting Epistemic Lessons from Ameliorative Psychology 57

Washington,’’ and ‘‘I sometimes tease animals.’’ We don’t know by what

unholy mixture of causes gender is related to attitudes toward Lincoln, but

the correlations are very small—they are significant because of the enormous

statistical power purchased by the large sample size. Were you to

predict respondent sex on the basis of one of these answers, you might get

it right 51% of the time. Such an SPR would be useless for at least three

reasons. First, it would be a feeble SPR—a two-choice randomizer would

perform almost as well without devoting any resources whatever to the

problem. Second, even if the Lincoln-gender correlation were larger, we

seldom find ourselves in a position in which we know a person’s attitude

toward Lincoln and have to predict their gender on that basis. And third,

even if we did find ourselves in a situation in which we could use the

Lincoln Rule, it is not likely to be especially relevant to our lives. The

problem of predicting gender from attitudes toward dead Presidents is just

not likely to be a significant problem for most reasoners.

The world is full of correlations that are practically useless for most

people most of the time. The number of SPRs that are actually prescribed

by Ameliorative Psychology is a tiny fraction of the SPRs that could in

principle be suggested. A distinctive mark of SPRs recommended by

Ameliorative Psychology is that they tackle significant problems. There are

SPRs for passing judgments about matters like medical and psychiatric

diagnoses, proneness to violence, academic success, and bankruptcy. Some

strategies are concerned with less momentous matters, such as the outcomes

of football games. But by and large, Ameliorative Psychologists tend

to focus attention on significant kinds of reasoning problems. In this way,

a commitment to seek out significant truths is apparent in Ameliorative

Psychology.

The world is full of correlations, and so it is very easy to come up with

SPRs; what’s difficult is coming up with useful SPRs. For example, the

Mayo Clinic has records for thousands of subjects who have taken the

MMPI (Meehl 1990, 207). It turns out that there are significant correlations

between subjects’ gender and answers on 507 (out of 550) of the

items. Some of these items include ‘‘I think Lincoln was greater than

Extracting Epistemic Lessons from Ameliorative Psychology 57

Washington,’’ and ‘‘I sometimes tease animals.’’ We don’t know by what

unholy mixture of causes gender is related to attitudes toward Lincoln, but

the correlations are very small—they are significant because of the enormous

statistical power purchased by the large sample size. Were you to

predict respondent sex on the basis of one of these answers, you might get

it right 51% of the time. Such an SPR would be useless for at least three

reasons. First, it would be a feeble SPR—a two-choice randomizer would

perform almost as well without devoting any resources whatever to the

problem. Second, even if the Lincoln-gender correlation were larger, we

seldom find ourselves in a position in which we know a person’s attitude

toward Lincoln and have to predict their gender on that basis. And third,

even if we did find ourselves in a situation in which we could use the

Lincoln Rule, it is not likely to be especially relevant to our lives. The

problem of predicting gender from attitudes toward dead Presidents is just

not likely to be a significant problem for most reasoners.

The world is full of correlations that are practically useless for most

people most of the time. The number of SPRs that are actually prescribed

by Ameliorative Psychology is a tiny fraction of the SPRs that could in

principle be suggested. A distinctive mark of SPRs recommended by

Ameliorative Psychology is that they tackle significant problems. There are

SPRs for passing judgments about matters like medical and psychiatric

diagnoses, proneness to violence, academic success, and bankruptcy. Some

strategies are concerned with less momentous matters, such as the outcomes

of football games. But by and large, Ameliorative Psychologists tend

to focus attention on significant kinds of reasoning problems. In this way,

a commitment to seek out significant truths is apparent in Ameliorative

Psychology.