Metaphors are cheap. With a little effort you can take any arbitrary hobby, from abstract math to whittling little wooden bear statues, and come up with plausible rationality lessons to be learned from it. Some of them will even generalize to most practitioners of the art. And that’s fine as far as it goes; you certainly shouldn’t reject any insights that fall into your lap, and on the communicative side of things there’s always a need for compelling examples with a personal flavor.
But outside of a few tasks that’re tightly and explicitly bound to specific rationality skills (poker comes to mind), I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend a lot of time debating which hobbies are better at inculcating good habits of thought, let alone recommending rationalist (sic) ones to people. There’s an information gap and a lot of potential confirmation bias there, and that’s usually a recipe for unproductive debate. At most it might be a good idea to write a few survey posts regarding the applications of common hobbies—and while the OP might pass muster under that light if you turn your head and squint, I think it’s probably better viewed as a case study.
At most it might be a good idea to write a few survey posts regarding the applications of common hobbies—and while the OP might pass muster under that light if you turn your head and squint, I think it’s probably better viewed as a case study.
I wanted to respond to this, but I’m not actually sure what you meant. Can you clarify a bit?
Metaphors are cheap. With a little effort you can take any arbitrary hobby, from abstract math to whittling little wooden bear statues, and come up with plausible rationality lessons to be learned from it. Some of them will even generalize to most practitioners of the art. And that’s fine as far as it goes; you certainly shouldn’t reject any insights that fall into your lap, and on the communicative side of things there’s always a need for compelling examples with a personal flavor.
But outside of a few tasks that’re tightly and explicitly bound to specific rationality skills (poker comes to mind), I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend a lot of time debating which hobbies are better at inculcating good habits of thought, let alone recommending rationalist (sic) ones to people. There’s an information gap and a lot of potential confirmation bias there, and that’s usually a recipe for unproductive debate. At most it might be a good idea to write a few survey posts regarding the applications of common hobbies—and while the OP might pass muster under that light if you turn your head and squint, I think it’s probably better viewed as a case study.
I wanted to respond to this, but I’m not actually sure what you meant. Can you clarify a bit?