One thing that I’ve found interesting is that rationality doesn’t seem to make people happier by cleaning up their beliefs, so much as it does by inspiring more self-confidence.
Some quick ideas:
I find that rationality is much more attractive when you emphasize its ability to help you do things that you care about, rather than its ability to shoot down other ideas.
Rationality has greatly increased the rate at which my life changes, and made me a lot more comfortable in areas I wasn’t before.
This is true. What I get out of LessWrong is little bits and pieces that mean I do things very slightly better and do very slightly less useless things, and these increments feel like they’re adding up. I don’t have numbers to point at to show improvement, but my life hasn’t disimproved and feels much lower-friction, so that’s a win already.
Nice article.
One thing that I’ve found interesting is that rationality doesn’t seem to make people happier by cleaning up their beliefs, so much as it does by inspiring more self-confidence.
Some quick ideas:
I find that rationality is much more attractive when you emphasize its ability to help you do things that you care about, rather than its ability to shoot down other ideas.
Rationality has greatly increased the rate at which my life changes, and made me a lot more comfortable in areas I wasn’t before.
*Not sure if this is true.
This is true. What I get out of LessWrong is little bits and pieces that mean I do things very slightly better and do very slightly less useless things, and these increments feel like they’re adding up. I don’t have numbers to point at to show improvement, but my life hasn’t disimproved and feels much lower-friction, so that’s a win already.