I need to start off by saying that I strongly encourage those who can to achieve fluency with the techniques of rationality. They’re often very useful, and not knowing them is often crippling.
Having said that, if reason is the only tool in your toolkit you’re not likely to get far. Empathy, charisma, confidence, psychology, and physical attractiveness are often even more useful. You are surrounded by seven billion apes who are smart enough to invent nuclear weapons and stupid enough to use them; they are by far the most important part of your environment and Donald Trump is better at manipulating them than Eliezer Yudkowski.
Beyond that there are the insights of meta-rationality. If you think of rationality in terms of optimization, meta-rationality is the art of choosing what to optimize. If rationalism is like climbing stairs, meta-rationality is deciding which staircases are worth climbing (there’s a lot more to it than that.).
What I’m trying to say is- don’t be so proud of your rationalism. It’s only a part of what you need.
I need to start off by saying that I strongly encourage those who can to achieve fluency with the techniques of rationality. They’re often very useful, and not knowing them is often crippling.
Having said that, if reason is the only tool in your toolkit you’re not likely to get far. Empathy, charisma, confidence, psychology, and physical attractiveness are often even more useful. You are surrounded by seven billion apes who are smart enough to invent nuclear weapons and stupid enough to use them; they are by far the most important part of your environment and Donald Trump is better at manipulating them than Eliezer Yudkowski.
Beyond that there are the insights of meta-rationality. If you think of rationality in terms of optimization, meta-rationality is the art of choosing what to optimize. If rationalism is like climbing stairs, meta-rationality is deciding which staircases are worth climbing (there’s a lot more to it than that.).
What I’m trying to say is- don’t be so proud of your rationalism. It’s only a part of what you need.