Perhaps a question like “At what age did you first encounter or begin to develop Rationality?”
I currently think it’s very likely the thought patterns that make one a useful programmer are in place sometime in grade school. Given the overlap between rationalists and programmers, I’m curious if something similar is going on. I managed to run a small test by handing HP:MoR to a bunch of kids in one of the local library programs and the ones who were already growing into a geeky/intellectual cluster took to it pretty well.
If we want to do outreach, knowing whether we’re convincing people with different kinds of minds to think rationally or just finding people who already sort of think like this sounds useful. Knowing the age at which say, HP:MoR or the sequences could be understood means we have more data whether introducing college students, high school students, or grade school students to them is going to be interesting or boring to them. I don’t think we can necessarily get that answer from just asking what age people started developing this mindset, nor do I think their answers will be without error bars since we may be talking about childhood memories. Also, I’m genuinely curious- are the stories of developing this strain of thought in the single digit ages weird exceptions or the typical origin story of a rationalist?
Apologies if that kind of question has already been explored.
“At what age did you first encounter or begin to develop Rationality?”
Huh, this is a difficult one, because I had some nebulous ideas in this direction already in childhood, but only a few decades later I read the Sequences and realized that this is a crystallized version of what was already in my mind. Not sure whether it’s proper to credit the younger me for “Rationality” or not.
Right, which is why how the question is phrased is tricky. I wouldn’t expect someone to devise something as distilled and deliberate as the Sequences independently or to use the title “Rationality” for what they’re doing, for example. Like you though, reading the Sequences for the first time felt less like entirely new things and more like finding clearer expressions and vocabulary for a style of thought that was already in my head. It’s how common that experience is that I would find interesting- how many people were in this sort of intellectual cluster before encountering the Sequences? Do they usually teach a new kind of approach, or do they upgrade a style of thought that existed beforehand?
I know I’m not phrasing this question well enough for the survey at present. If what I’m getting at makes sense and is interesting, assistance rephrasing it would be appreciated.
Sorry, no obviously good ideas how to rephrase the question. Perhaps:
“At what age did you first encounter or begin to develop parts of what you currently recognize as Rationality?”
For me, it was mostly a vague feeling, something like—of course without these specific words—“There is a territory… and most people seem not to give a fuck about it, escaping to their fantasies instead (religion, positive thinking, quantum mumbo jumbo, political mindkilling, etc.). The only difference seems to be that some people are proudly and publicly irrational since the very beginning, while others are rational in the near mode of everyday life and only switch to the irrational mode at some later point, suggesting that it is a higher form of thinking (e.g. they first study physics seriously, learn the equations, get a degree… and then they read a book about quantum mumbo jumbo and fall in love with it, continuing to do the equations in their everyday job, but thinking the mumbo jumbo is the higher level of insight). I too understand the temptations of this atractor, I just can’t make myself believe that the reality will go away when I close my eyes (and there were moments when I desperately tried this, just to fit in the human society, but it didn’t work).” And for a large part of my life, I suspected I might be alone with this condition, which was quite weird.
I don’t think there’s one main rationality mindset.
I for example believed in the awful concepts of natural talents the whole time I was in high school. It was the mindset that my teachers and parents had, so I didn’t know any better. I think if my teachers would have had the opposite belief, I would also have gotten that mindset at an early age.
When it comes to caring about understanding reality, I think I always did.
When it comes to “it’s not enough to have smart arguments, it’s more important to be right” I can’t say when I picked that up. I don’t think I had it at an early age but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible to learn it earlier.
Perhaps a question like “At what age did you first encounter or begin to develop Rationality?”
I currently think it’s very likely the thought patterns that make one a useful programmer are in place sometime in grade school. Given the overlap between rationalists and programmers, I’m curious if something similar is going on. I managed to run a small test by handing HP:MoR to a bunch of kids in one of the local library programs and the ones who were already growing into a geeky/intellectual cluster took to it pretty well.
If we want to do outreach, knowing whether we’re convincing people with different kinds of minds to think rationally or just finding people who already sort of think like this sounds useful. Knowing the age at which say, HP:MoR or the sequences could be understood means we have more data whether introducing college students, high school students, or grade school students to them is going to be interesting or boring to them. I don’t think we can necessarily get that answer from just asking what age people started developing this mindset, nor do I think their answers will be without error bars since we may be talking about childhood memories. Also, I’m genuinely curious- are the stories of developing this strain of thought in the single digit ages weird exceptions or the typical origin story of a rationalist?
Apologies if that kind of question has already been explored.
Huh, this is a difficult one, because I had some nebulous ideas in this direction already in childhood, but only a few decades later I read the Sequences and realized that this is a crystallized version of what was already in my mind. Not sure whether it’s proper to credit the younger me for “Rationality” or not.
Right, which is why how the question is phrased is tricky. I wouldn’t expect someone to devise something as distilled and deliberate as the Sequences independently or to use the title “Rationality” for what they’re doing, for example. Like you though, reading the Sequences for the first time felt less like entirely new things and more like finding clearer expressions and vocabulary for a style of thought that was already in my head. It’s how common that experience is that I would find interesting- how many people were in this sort of intellectual cluster before encountering the Sequences? Do they usually teach a new kind of approach, or do they upgrade a style of thought that existed beforehand?
I know I’m not phrasing this question well enough for the survey at present. If what I’m getting at makes sense and is interesting, assistance rephrasing it would be appreciated.
Sorry, no obviously good ideas how to rephrase the question. Perhaps:
For me, it was mostly a vague feeling, something like—of course without these specific words—“There is a territory… and most people seem not to give a fuck about it, escaping to their fantasies instead (religion, positive thinking, quantum mumbo jumbo, political mindkilling, etc.). The only difference seems to be that some people are proudly and publicly irrational since the very beginning, while others are rational in the near mode of everyday life and only switch to the irrational mode at some later point, suggesting that it is a higher form of thinking (e.g. they first study physics seriously, learn the equations, get a degree… and then they read a book about quantum mumbo jumbo and fall in love with it, continuing to do the equations in their everyday job, but thinking the mumbo jumbo is the higher level of insight). I too understand the temptations of this atractor, I just can’t make myself believe that the reality will go away when I close my eyes (and there were moments when I desperately tried this, just to fit in the human society, but it didn’t work).” And for a large part of my life, I suspected I might be alone with this condition, which was quite weird.
I don’t think there’s one main rationality mindset.
I for example believed in the awful concepts of natural talents the whole time I was in high school. It was the mindset that my teachers and parents had, so I didn’t know any better. I think if my teachers would have had the opposite belief, I would also have gotten that mindset at an early age.
When it comes to caring about understanding reality, I think I always did.
When it comes to “it’s not enough to have smart arguments, it’s more important to be right” I can’t say when I picked that up. I don’t think I had it at an early age but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible to learn it earlier.