Hello Less Wrong community!
My path to rationality has been somewhat unconventional. I was a teacher, firefighter, and military officer in Brazil, where each “oops!” in teaching and learning led me to search for deeper answers.
Neuroscience was my first stop, but it wasn’t enough. The search led me to probabilities and information systems, and eventually I discovered Less Wrong. I devoured “Rationality from A to Z” and other brilliant texts from the community that changed my perspective.
However, being older now, advanced mathematics and formal probabilities remain challenging. Instead of letting this stop me, I decided to explore a different way: writing texts that combine humor with rationality insights, making these concepts more accessible and stimulating.
I’ve been working on an experiment: dialogues exploring the tension between systematic thinking and intuitive wisdom, using humor as a bridge between both worlds. The format follows two characters:
X: representing systematic, data-driven thinking
Y: embodying millennia of accumulated intuitive knowledge
Before developing this further, I’d love to know: would this kind of approach be interesting or valuable to the community? I have a sample dialogue ready to share if there’s interest.
I appreciate any thoughts or feedback you might have!
Whether or not it would be beneficial to particular people who are already here, more ways of expressing ideas are always valuable to someone. Different people respond to different presentations, and more variety can attract more people to try to improve their thinking who wouldn’t otherwise be here on LW or be receptive to the ideas as customarily presented here.
And well written dialogs have a whole lot of tradition behind them for this kind of thing. Douglas Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher Bach” is a well known book popularizing several aspects of formal mathematics and computer science, which alternates chapters with comedic dialogues as interludes whose structure and content mirror the chapters’ content. Then of course there’s Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.” Although his choice of characters is a bit less tactful, historically speaking, Simplicio does introduce some humor for a discerning reader. And while not comedic, Plato’s dialogues do a great job conveying what could otherwise be extremely dry ideas.
I would certainly love to read something like this, even as someone who likes the more formal treatments given here. (And yes, this is an offer to read a sample and provide feedback if you want it).
I’m interested.
(I’d offer more feedback, but that’s pretty difficult without an example to offer feedback on.)