“Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff.”

In 2016, it seemed to me that the rationality community tended to miss some cluster of skills that pattern matched to “things Hufflepuffs are good at”—comradery, reliability, trustworthiness, willingness to do physical work, willingness to stick with things for a long time, etc.

It seemed like we not only weren’t very good at this on average, but that something actively filters this sort of person away. So I wanted to paint a vision of what it meant to be a rationalist hufflepuff, who embodied the virtues in the original sequences while also being the sort of person able to be deeply reliable.

As of 2018, I’ve refactored this vision a bit, but I think it still contains a lot of useful insights. Everything I thought then I still think now, but rather than the solution being a “and therefore, Project Hufflepuff”, the solution is “and therefore, Public Archipelago”. (Where my island in the archipelago will expect people to be leveling up at conscientiousness and trustworthiness, as well as truthseeking and agency)