i've written a lot of stuff implicitly and explicitly critical of (bay area) rationality and the (bay area) rationalists on here so to balance that out karmically here's a thread of stuff about rationality and the rationalists that i appreciate
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1. my first rationality workshop taught me that it's possible for me to think about and solve my problems. idk if this sounds really basic or what but it was a totally new idea to me at the time (fresh out of college) and an important foundation for everything else later
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2. rationality and the more serious rationalists have a deep respect for Truth that i've always really appreciated. that's maybe one of the things that drew me to them the most, even if we probably disagree in a lot of ways about what "Truth" means and how to search for it
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3. the rationality workshops were a place where people were constantly performing psychological experiments, in the sense of coming up with ideas for rationality techniques and trying them on themselves and others. i admire and try to emulate this spirit of empiricism
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4. we did a lot of singalongs at rationality workshops. obviously this isn't specific to rationality but whatever it was one of my favorite parts anyway. fucking love singalongs
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5. related to the respect for Truth is an ethos of "nothing is off-topic, we will talk about literally anything and attempt to look at it together and come out knowing more than when we came in" and that was always something i really valued too
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6. the rationalists have a lot of respect for unusual preferences and there's a lot of social permission to have and voice them. i don't think this is all upside but it's a compassionate idea and it really improves some people's lives
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7. also related to the respect for Truth is a sort of all-pervading curiosity. like "hey yeah, what *is* that thing all about anyway? how does that really work?"
an overall acknowledgment that 1) stuff is mysterious and 2) one can hope to understand it a bit better anyway
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