To my memory, I’ve been following along with this idea since before this blog, or Overcoming Bias, existed. I can’t really say that it’s done me all that much good.
I think that the majority of what helps is having a physical community of people you genuinely care about and who care about you (not necessarily in the real world, although that helps). I think any given community I joined might have helped me, but I think that joining a community based on rationality in particular gave me the perspective to make a significant change to my goals.
Specifically, it has to do with how much of my money will go towards charity and what kinds of charities it goes to. This doesn’t benefit me directly, but it reassures me that I really am the kind of person I want to be. Rationality enabled me to think critically about how much money is necessary for personal happiness and what kinds of good things I can be accomplishing with the rest of it, which in turn gives me real confidence that I am doing the right thing.
That may not be motivating to most people, but it was valuable to me.
To my memory, I’ve been following along with this idea since before this blog, or Overcoming Bias, existed. I can’t really say that it’s done me all that much good.
I think that the majority of what helps is having a physical community of people you genuinely care about and who care about you (not necessarily in the real world, although that helps). I think any given community I joined might have helped me, but I think that joining a community based on rationality in particular gave me the perspective to make a significant change to my goals.
Specifically, it has to do with how much of my money will go towards charity and what kinds of charities it goes to. This doesn’t benefit me directly, but it reassures me that I really am the kind of person I want to be. Rationality enabled me to think critically about how much money is necessary for personal happiness and what kinds of good things I can be accomplishing with the rest of it, which in turn gives me real confidence that I am doing the right thing.
That may not be motivating to most people, but it was valuable to me.