try to develop social practices for helping each other be good rationalists, to identify each other’s successes and flaws at being good rationalists, to improve the dojo, to admit your own mistakes, uncertainties, and limitations, and so on.
pick a relevant topic and have a conversation about it. The topic could be:
a public issue where there’s disagreement
a personal problem that one of you has where applying rationality could be helpful
a subject matter (like dating, eating, investing, charity, or working productively) where lots of people could benefit from applying rationality
a relevant article that you all have read—either a LW post, or a published psychology article, or HPMOR, or one of the many things linked from LW
A different person could be in charge of each meeting—they might pick out an article and tell everyone to read it before that meeting.
One question is whether you want to focus your attention broadly on lots of skills & topics or narrowly on mastering a small number of skills or topics.
You could also approach one topic from many angles. For instance, with happiness you could first read some articles on the psychology of happiness (or a book like Jon Haidt’s). Then have a meeting where you talk about happiness in your own lives: what makes you happy or unhappy, things you try to do to be happier, ways you might be irrational about pursuing your own happiness, changes you could make. Then each come up with a plan for improving your own happiness, and discuss & refine those plans so you’re ready to carry them out. Then each try out those plans, and occasionally check in on how they’re going and do group problem solving if they run into snags or you’re ready to move on to a further plan.
Some ideas:
try to develop social practices for helping each other be good rationalists, to identify each other’s successes and flaws at being good rationalists, to improve the dojo, to admit your own mistakes, uncertainties, and limitations, and so on.
pick a relevant topic and have a conversation about it. The topic could be:
a public issue where there’s disagreement
a personal problem that one of you has where applying rationality could be helpful
a subject matter (like dating, eating, investing, charity, or working productively) where lots of people could benefit from applying rationality
a relevant article that you all have read—either a LW post, or a published psychology article, or HPMOR, or one of the many things linked from LW
A different person could be in charge of each meeting—they might pick out an article and tell everyone to read it before that meeting.
One question is whether you want to focus your attention broadly on lots of skills & topics or narrowly on mastering a small number of skills or topics.
You could also approach one topic from many angles. For instance, with happiness you could first read some articles on the psychology of happiness (or a book like Jon Haidt’s). Then have a meeting where you talk about happiness in your own lives: what makes you happy or unhappy, things you try to do to be happier, ways you might be irrational about pursuing your own happiness, changes you could make. Then each come up with a plan for improving your own happiness, and discuss & refine those plans so you’re ready to carry them out. Then each try out those plans, and occasionally check in on how they’re going and do group problem solving if they run into snags or you’re ready to move on to a further plan.