I’m in an interdisciplinary honors program at the moment and love it. It’s not specifically anything to do with rationality, but I am using the system to level up as fast as I can. My own thoughts:
This shouldn’t be the only program the students are in. I’m in an interdisciplinary honors program AND I’m studying chemistry. Hopefully, this program would train rationalists to actually go into a field of their choosing and make a substantial difference, so they really do need to also be studying the field they intend to go into.
Students should have at least one class per semester in a small group setting exclusively with other students in the program. The professors of these classes should be the best faculty that can be rounded up. These classes would probably be focused on applications of rationality, taking the knowledge that students have learned in their other classes and learning to actually use it on problems. Additionally, classes like this would help the students in the program develop closer ties to each other.
Students should get at least an introduction to biology, chemistry, and physics. They certainly don’t need to become experts in all of those fields, or even in one of them, but they should at least have some basic foundational knowledge in all of the major sciences. They should also have a psych course about heuristics and biases.
They should study math, at least up to statistics/probability theory. This will presumably include an education in calculus and algebra.
They should take at least one class on computer programming, ideally in a language that’s very useful (I don’t have a whole lot of experience in programming, but from what I know, I would recommend Python. I’m open to suggestions though from people who know more than me)
The program I’m in has a required class for all freshmen, one semester, that teaches classical logic, Bayes theorem, Game Theory, and Decision theory. Our professor was a standard causal decision theorist, so I disagreed with some of the things he taught, but generally it was a good class, and I think something analogous would be a good class for the students in this program.
Students should take courses on some, but probably not all, of these topics: evolutionary biology, economics, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, etc. Set this up as a “take of classes from the following list” in the course catalog.
“The program I’m in has a required class for all freshmen, one semester, that teaches classical logic, Bayes theorem, Game Theory, and Decision theory.”
Really? Cool. May I ask which university and professor, or would that Bruce Wayne your Batman too much?
I’m sure that if someone really wanted to figure out who I was, it would be pretty easy. So, if you want to figure out what it is, I’ll make you do two google searches (I just tried it, it’s easy). The two things you will need to know is that the professor’s name is Joshua Dever (I don’t think he’s teaching the course now, because it isn’t on his website), and that the program that I am in is an interdisciplinary honors program.
If anyone reading this is a high school student looking at colleges, I highly recommend that you consider this program
I’m in an interdisciplinary honors program at the moment and love it. It’s not specifically anything to do with rationality, but I am using the system to level up as fast as I can. My own thoughts:
This shouldn’t be the only program the students are in. I’m in an interdisciplinary honors program AND I’m studying chemistry. Hopefully, this program would train rationalists to actually go into a field of their choosing and make a substantial difference, so they really do need to also be studying the field they intend to go into.
Students should have at least one class per semester in a small group setting exclusively with other students in the program. The professors of these classes should be the best faculty that can be rounded up. These classes would probably be focused on applications of rationality, taking the knowledge that students have learned in their other classes and learning to actually use it on problems. Additionally, classes like this would help the students in the program develop closer ties to each other.
Students should get at least an introduction to biology, chemistry, and physics. They certainly don’t need to become experts in all of those fields, or even in one of them, but they should at least have some basic foundational knowledge in all of the major sciences. They should also have a psych course about heuristics and biases.
They should study math, at least up to statistics/probability theory. This will presumably include an education in calculus and algebra.
They should take at least one class on computer programming, ideally in a language that’s very useful (I don’t have a whole lot of experience in programming, but from what I know, I would recommend Python. I’m open to suggestions though from people who know more than me)
The program I’m in has a required class for all freshmen, one semester, that teaches classical logic, Bayes theorem, Game Theory, and Decision theory. Our professor was a standard causal decision theorist, so I disagreed with some of the things he taught, but generally it was a good class, and I think something analogous would be a good class for the students in this program.
Students should take courses on some, but probably not all, of these topics: evolutionary biology, economics, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, etc. Set this up as a “take of classes from the following list” in the course catalog.
“The program I’m in has a required class for all freshmen, one semester, that teaches classical logic, Bayes theorem, Game Theory, and Decision theory.”
Really? Cool. May I ask which university and professor, or would that Bruce Wayne your Batman too much?
I’m sure that if someone really wanted to figure out who I was, it would be pretty easy. So, if you want to figure out what it is, I’ll make you do two google searches (I just tried it, it’s easy). The two things you will need to know is that the professor’s name is Joshua Dever (I don’t think he’s teaching the course now, because it isn’t on his website), and that the program that I am in is an interdisciplinary honors program.
If anyone reading this is a high school student looking at colleges, I highly recommend that you consider this program