It would be very cool if many rationalists (and people in general) knew sign language. I would also like to know sign language.
Problem is wanting to know and wanting to learn are two different things, and learning is a language is quite a big project (especially sign language, I expect).
For me the two other things stopping me from doing that is that I have no one to speak sign language with, so I won’t actually have any use for it. And also since I live in Israel I need to choose between Israeli sign language and ASL.
Coordinating around learning a new language seems like a pretty hard coordination problem (though much less difficult than some other problem, so perhaps medium difficulty). Could be a useful case for an assurance contract.
Honestly I found ASL easier to learn than, say, the limited Spanish I tried to learn in high school. Maybe because it doesn’t conflict with the current way you communicate. Just from watching the ASL 1 − 4 lectures I linked to, I was surprisingly able to manage once dropped in a one-on-one conversation with a deaf person.
It would definitely be good to learn with a buddy. My wife hasn’t explicitly learned it yet, but she’s picked up some from me. Israel is a tough choice, I’m not sure what the learning resources are like for it.
It would be very cool if many rationalists (and people in general) knew sign language. I would also like to know sign language.
Problem is wanting to know and wanting to learn are two different things, and learning is a language is quite a big project (especially sign language, I expect).
For me the two other things stopping me from doing that is that I have no one to speak sign language with, so I won’t actually have any use for it. And also since I live in Israel I need to choose between Israeli sign language and ASL.
Coordinating around learning a new language seems like a pretty hard coordination problem (though much less difficult than some other problem, so perhaps medium difficulty). Could be a useful case for an assurance contract.
Honestly I found ASL easier to learn than, say, the limited Spanish I tried to learn in high school. Maybe because it doesn’t conflict with the current way you communicate. Just from watching the ASL 1 − 4 lectures I linked to, I was surprisingly able to manage once dropped in a one-on-one conversation with a deaf person.
It would definitely be good to learn with a buddy. My wife hasn’t explicitly learned it yet, but she’s picked up some from me. Israel is a tough choice, I’m not sure what the learning resources are like for it.
You should put this in your main post—it greatly increased my interest in actually trying to learn.
Thanks for the feedback!