The first time I explicitly saw myself as someone who cared more about rationality than the people around me was on the playground, in third grade. Like other kids my age, I was fond of playing kickball at recess. We often had arguments over whether a baserunner had been successfully tagged out.
The odd thing was that, even though most people in the group didn’t like watching arguing for more than a minute or so (you could tell because people started yelling things like “Shut up” and “Just play” with big scowls on their faces), nobody could resist the temptation to take sides in the argument long enough to end the argument. Yes, people thought that it didn’t much matter whether Eddie was out at second, but they also couldn’t help but point out that Eddie was obviously safe/out, inevitably prompting a renewed outburst of cries that Eddie was obviously out/safe. Sometimes we argued about whose fault it was that we were arguing so much instead of playing.
I never took sides. At some level, I already cared more about my goal (having fun playing kickball) than I did about tribal politics.
The kickball thing quietly but powerfully framed the way I looked at friendships, dating, school, and pretty much everything else in my little world—I knew that people could do flabbergastingly pointless things, over and over again, even though there were worthwhile things to be doing.
Various classes were useful eye-openers for me -- 10th grade European history put me in touch with the idea that irrationality had consequences on the global stage, and not just on the playground; freshman college statistics showed me how little of what passes for institutional “science” is actually based on sound empiricism AND sound logic.
It is only within the last year or so that I started identifying primarily as a rationalist. I used to have other prominent identities, but various acts of stupidity have slowly been stripping them away. Four years ago, a respected scholar of modern Jewish ecclesiastical law confidently explained to me that the basis of Jewish law was itself—he apparently believes, without doubt or regret, that although the system has no external justification whatsoever, Jewish law should still dictate one’s morals, habits, priorities, and attitudes. Matching his actions to his philosophy, he managed to delay the advance of gay rights in the Jewish community by about 15 years, and he similarly retards progressive thinking about end-of-life care. Although I really enjoy participating in a wide variety of Jewish activities, I find it hard to share a religion with people like him, and I believe that all religions are well-stocked with similar characters—after meeting him, I tend to be more concerened with whether people take a rational approach to religion than with whether they have any theological beliefs in common with me.
More recently, a junior at Harvard College attempted to explain to me that the world was only 6,000 years old, and that fossils were planted in the ground by Satan to tempt us. I attempted to explain what carbon-dating was, but had to stop for 20 minutes to teach the kid about the difference between the concept of an element and the concept of an isotope. He brought his evangelist friend over, another Harvard student, because they both thought this “isotope” thing was kind of a cool new idea. So I don’t have much faith in higher education these days either...I think it’s more important to learn how to assess probabilities, correct biases, and evaluate claims than it is to get a “good education,” whatever a vague term like that is supposed to mean.
The first time I explicitly saw myself as someone who cared more about rationality than the people around me was on the playground, in third grade. Like other kids my age, I was fond of playing kickball at recess. We often had arguments over whether a baserunner had been successfully tagged out.
The odd thing was that, even though most people in the group didn’t like watching arguing for more than a minute or so (you could tell because people started yelling things like “Shut up” and “Just play” with big scowls on their faces), nobody could resist the temptation to take sides in the argument long enough to end the argument. Yes, people thought that it didn’t much matter whether Eddie was out at second, but they also couldn’t help but point out that Eddie was obviously safe/out, inevitably prompting a renewed outburst of cries that Eddie was obviously out/safe. Sometimes we argued about whose fault it was that we were arguing so much instead of playing.
I never took sides. At some level, I already cared more about my goal (having fun playing kickball) than I did about tribal politics.
The kickball thing quietly but powerfully framed the way I looked at friendships, dating, school, and pretty much everything else in my little world—I knew that people could do flabbergastingly pointless things, over and over again, even though there were worthwhile things to be doing.
Various classes were useful eye-openers for me -- 10th grade European history put me in touch with the idea that irrationality had consequences on the global stage, and not just on the playground; freshman college statistics showed me how little of what passes for institutional “science” is actually based on sound empiricism AND sound logic.
It is only within the last year or so that I started identifying primarily as a rationalist. I used to have other prominent identities, but various acts of stupidity have slowly been stripping them away. Four years ago, a respected scholar of modern Jewish ecclesiastical law confidently explained to me that the basis of Jewish law was itself—he apparently believes, without doubt or regret, that although the system has no external justification whatsoever, Jewish law should still dictate one’s morals, habits, priorities, and attitudes. Matching his actions to his philosophy, he managed to delay the advance of gay rights in the Jewish community by about 15 years, and he similarly retards progressive thinking about end-of-life care. Although I really enjoy participating in a wide variety of Jewish activities, I find it hard to share a religion with people like him, and I believe that all religions are well-stocked with similar characters—after meeting him, I tend to be more concerened with whether people take a rational approach to religion than with whether they have any theological beliefs in common with me.
More recently, a junior at Harvard College attempted to explain to me that the world was only 6,000 years old, and that fossils were planted in the ground by Satan to tempt us. I attempted to explain what carbon-dating was, but had to stop for 20 minutes to teach the kid about the difference between the concept of an element and the concept of an isotope. He brought his evangelist friend over, another Harvard student, because they both thought this “isotope” thing was kind of a cool new idea. So I don’t have much faith in higher education these days either...I think it’s more important to learn how to assess probabilities, correct biases, and evaluate claims than it is to get a “good education,” whatever a vague term like that is supposed to mean.