While developing a rationality metric is obviously crucial, I have this nagging suspicion that what it may take is simply a bunch of committed wanna-be rationalists to just get together and, well, experiment and teach and argue, etc with each other in person regularly, try to foster explicit social rules that support rather than inhibit rationality, and so on.
From there, at least use a fuzzy this “seems” to work/not work type metric, even if it’s rather subjective and imprecise, as a STARTING POINT, until one can more precisely do that, until one gets a better sense of exactly what to look for, explicitly.
But, my main point is my suspicion that “do it, even if you’re not entirely sure yet what you’re doing, just do it anyways and try to figure it out on the fly” may actually be what it takes to get started. If nothing else, it’ll produce some nice case study in failure that at least one can look at and say “okay, let’s actually try to work out what we did wrong here”
EDIT: hrm… maybe I ought reconsider my position. Will leave this up, at least for now, but with the added note that now I’m starting to suspect myself of basically just trying to “solve the problem without having to, well, actually solve the problem”
Before you consider taking this down, you might want to read Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” and “Knowledge and Decisions”. Some (Many) problems cannot be “solved” but must be continually “worked on”. I suspect most “self-improvement” programs are of this type. (Sowell doesn’t address this, his discussion and examples are all from economic and social problems, but I think they’re applicable.)
I’ve been predicted! This almost exactly describes what I’ve been up to recently… (Will make a post for it later. Still far too rough to show off. Anyone encountering this comment in 2016 or later should see a link in my profile. Otherwise, message me.)
Edit: Still very rough, and I ended up going in a slightly different direction than I’d hoped. Strange looking at how much my thoughts of it changed in a mere two months. Here it is
While developing a rationality metric is obviously crucial, I have this nagging suspicion that what it may take is simply a bunch of committed wanna-be rationalists to just get together and, well, experiment and teach and argue, etc with each other in person regularly, try to foster explicit social rules that support rather than inhibit rationality, and so on.
From there, at least use a fuzzy this “seems” to work/not work type metric, even if it’s rather subjective and imprecise, as a STARTING POINT, until one can more precisely do that, until one gets a better sense of exactly what to look for, explicitly.
But, my main point is my suspicion that “do it, even if you’re not entirely sure yet what you’re doing, just do it anyways and try to figure it out on the fly” may actually be what it takes to get started. If nothing else, it’ll produce some nice case study in failure that at least one can look at and say “okay, let’s actually try to work out what we did wrong here”
EDIT: hrm… maybe I ought reconsider my position. Will leave this up, at least for now, but with the added note that now I’m starting to suspect myself of basically just trying to “solve the problem without having to, well, actually solve the problem”
Before you consider taking this down, you might want to read Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” and “Knowledge and Decisions”. Some (Many) problems cannot be “solved” but must be continually “worked on”. I suspect most “self-improvement” programs are of this type. (Sowell doesn’t address this, his discussion and examples are all from economic and social problems, but I think they’re applicable.)
I’ve been predicted! This almost exactly describes what I’ve been up to recently… (Will make a post for it later. Still far too rough to show off. Anyone encountering this comment in 2016 or later should see a link in my profile. Otherwise, message me.)
Edit: Still very rough, and I ended up going in a slightly different direction than I’d hoped. Strange looking at how much my thoughts of it changed in a mere two months. Here it is