I’m a bit late to the party, but wanted to comment because I’m sort-of actually doing this. I’m a third year Information Technology major (a jack-of-all-trades computing major, plus some small group communication classes) at Rochester Institute of Technology. I wanted to do a custom minor in rationality, but the liberal arts college doesn’t have custom minors, so I’m taking my “rationality minor” informally.
I won’t be able to take the exact classes on this list because of logistics. Next year, RIT is switching from quarters to semesters, so some of these classes will probably be eliminated or merged with others during that. I also plant to spend one of my three remaining grading periods studying abroad. So this list shows the sort of classes I want to take, but not necessarily the ones I will actually be able to take. (Also, there are no links because the course registration system is behind a password and the non-password version is a pain to navigate.)
Communications:
Persuasion (taking now)
Rhetorical Theory
Interpersonal Communication or Small Group Communication
Psychology:
Behavior Modification
Cognitive Psychology
Judgement and Decision Making
Philosophy:
I actually have just about no idea what philosophy I’ll be taking. I’m hoping I’ll have a better idea what areas to focus on after taking the intro course. I’ll also be asking the advice of a rationalist friend who has taken some philosophy at my university (and so probably knows which classes and professors are worth taking).
At a glance, this is what looks possibly useful:
Theories of Knowledge
Philosophy of the Mind
(formal) Logic
Other things that look useful:
History of Science (I’ve heard that Kuhn is the textbook)
A typical minor at RIT is a list of almost all the mid-level classes from a single department that says to choose any five. A rationality minor would probably have to be “choose any 5, and at least one from each category” to ensure variety.
I haven’t included programming and discrete math on this list because my major requires them, but I’d recommend them to someone else doing this who wasn’t a computing major. In absence of Bayesian statistics classes, a frequentist statistics class should probably be included, but again, it’s already required for my major. (RIT does teach Bayesian statistics, but only as a small topic within other classes, and I’d rather not take even more frequentist statistics. I would take Bayes as a part of a data mining class if I got the chance, though.)
I have heard from people who have been to graduate school that undergraduate degrees are “just for learning how to think”, so I could see a rationality major being useful for students who plan to go on to graduate school, or as a double major, if it becomes an option but lacks scholarships. (I could see a giant minor, or a major only available as a double major, working well.) What exactly it would include would depend on what the typical student already knows, and is already taking for other graduation requirements.
I’m a bit late to the party, but wanted to comment because I’m sort-of actually doing this. I’m a third year Information Technology major (a jack-of-all-trades computing major, plus some small group communication classes) at Rochester Institute of Technology. I wanted to do a custom minor in rationality, but the liberal arts college doesn’t have custom minors, so I’m taking my “rationality minor” informally.
I won’t be able to take the exact classes on this list because of logistics. Next year, RIT is switching from quarters to semesters, so some of these classes will probably be eliminated or merged with others during that. I also plant to spend one of my three remaining grading periods studying abroad. So this list shows the sort of classes I want to take, but not necessarily the ones I will actually be able to take. (Also, there are no links because the course registration system is behind a password and the non-password version is a pain to navigate.)
Communications:
Persuasion (taking now)
Rhetorical Theory
Interpersonal Communication or Small Group Communication
Psychology:
Behavior Modification
Cognitive Psychology
Judgement and Decision Making
Philosophy: I actually have just about no idea what philosophy I’ll be taking. I’m hoping I’ll have a better idea what areas to focus on after taking the intro course. I’ll also be asking the advice of a rationalist friend who has taken some philosophy at my university (and so probably knows which classes and professors are worth taking). At a glance, this is what looks possibly useful:
Theories of Knowledge
Philosophy of the Mind
(formal) Logic
Other things that look useful:
History of Science (I’ve heard that Kuhn is the textbook)
A typical minor at RIT is a list of almost all the mid-level classes from a single department that says to choose any five. A rationality minor would probably have to be “choose any 5, and at least one from each category” to ensure variety.
I haven’t included programming and discrete math on this list because my major requires them, but I’d recommend them to someone else doing this who wasn’t a computing major. In absence of Bayesian statistics classes, a frequentist statistics class should probably be included, but again, it’s already required for my major. (RIT does teach Bayesian statistics, but only as a small topic within other classes, and I’d rather not take even more frequentist statistics. I would take Bayes as a part of a data mining class if I got the chance, though.)
I have heard from people who have been to graduate school that undergraduate degrees are “just for learning how to think”, so I could see a rationality major being useful for students who plan to go on to graduate school, or as a double major, if it becomes an option but lacks scholarships. (I could see a giant minor, or a major only available as a double major, working well.) What exactly it would include would depend on what the typical student already knows, and is already taking for other graduation requirements.
(edited for formatting)