Rationality Education and Dating (with Jacob Falkovich)

1. Cultivate Emotional Safety to Be Wrong

Prioritize creating emotional safety around being wrong; cultivate a deep, internal acceptance that it’s okay to make mistakes before attempting to identify and correct cognitive biases. This emotional foundation is crucial for genuine learning and intellectual growth.

2. Embrace “Power to Be Wrong”

Develop a strong, internal sense of self-knowledge and conviction about your core abilities and values. This certainty gives you the “power to be wrong,” accelerating learning and growth by reducing fear of scrutiny and error.

3. Seek “Reverse Incentives” Community

Surround yourself with a community that provides “reverse incentives,” rewarding you for admitting errors and updating your beliefs, rather than punishing you for being wrong. This social support is crucial for intellectual honesty and continuous improvement.

4. Analyze Topics on Multiple Levels

When engaging with complex or politically charged topics, analyze them on multiple levels: the factual claims, the values being implicitly or explicitly promoted, and the speaker’s own biases and interests. This multi-layered approach helps form a more accurate picture.

5. Ask “Meta Questions” for Understanding

Ask “meta questions” (e.g., “Why does everyone like X?” instead of “Does X work?”) to understand underlying human needs, motivations, and social dynamics. This approach can provide significant learning beyond surface-level beliefs.

6. Progress Beyond System Rejection

Progress beyond simply rejecting flawed systems or ideologies (Level 2) to understanding and extracting value from them (Level 3) without becoming a “true believer.” This allows for a more nuanced and effective engagement with the world.

7. Cultivate Multiple Ideologies as Lenses

Cultivate the ability to see through social bubbles and adopt multiple ideologies as temporary lenses, putting them down when no longer useful, to embrace diverse perspectives for solving complex problems.

8. Don’t Wait for Social Permission

Don’t wait for social permission or consensus to act on data-driven insights, especially in critical situations, as relying on social cues can lead to delayed or ineffective responses.

9. Apply Explicit Reason Selectively

Develop explicit reasoning skills but learn to apply them selectively and with social awareness to avoid alienating others, recognizing that social thinking is often the default mode for most people.

10. Strive for Consistent Risk Assessment

Strive for consistency in risk assessment across different domains, considering total acceptable risk rather than disparate, socially influenced risk tolerances, to make more rational decisions.

11. Avoid Low-Probability Social Fears

Avoid letting low-probability social fears (like being “canceled” on social media) prevent you from pursuing valuable opportunities for expression and connection.

12. Frame Thinking Tools by Goals

Frame rationality education and thinking tools around people’s existing explicit goals and problems they are already trying to solve, rather than abstract concepts, to increase engagement and perceived utility.

13. Deliver Contextual Bias Education

Deliver education on cognitive biases contextually, at the moment a decision is being made, and customize it to the specific biases likely affecting that decision, rather than relying on general modules.

14. Seek “Sideways Rope Pulling” Opportunities

Identify “pulling the rope sideways” opportunities by finding subtopics within broader issues where social consensus or partisan alignment is absent, but a genuine desire for good outcomes exists, allowing for more effective action.

15. Cultivate Trust Over Perceived Intelligence

Cultivate an attitude where being perceived as “smart” is less important, as this can increase trust and facilitate more open conversations with people holding unconventional beliefs, rather than creating distance.

16. Publicly Acknowledge Valid Criticism

When receiving valid criticism, publicly acknowledge it and integrate it into your work (e.g., editing a post) to foster a virtuous cycle of improvement and positive community interaction.

17. Prioritize Social Media Follower Quality

Prioritize the quality and relevance of your social media followers over mere quantity, as the composition of your audience significantly impacts the quality of interactions and feedback you receive.

18. Curate Social Media Audience

Curate your social media audience by occasionally posting content that challenges the political tribalism of new followers, encouraging those who only follow for political reasons to unfollow.

19. Use Social Media for Idea Extraction

Use platforms like Twitter as a mental exercise to extract the core of an idea and explain it incredibly concisely, fostering clarity and precision in thought, despite the platform’s limitations.

20. Leverage Social Media for Connections

Leverage social media to form friendships and intellectual connections based on shared ideas and writing, bypassing traditional filters like social circles or physical appearance.

21. Utilize Social Media as Knowledge Network

Utilize social media platforms (like Twitter) as a powerful search engine and knowledge network to get rapid, specific answers to obscure or technical questions from experts.

22. Manage Social Media Addiction

Be mindful of the addictive qualities of social media platforms like Twitter and actively manage your usage to prevent excessive checking and its negative impacts.

23. Approach Dating Positively

Approach dating with a positive mindset, viewing it as a fun and worthwhile endeavor, rather than a difficult ordeal with uncertain returns, to increase engagement and potential for success.

24. Apply Rationality to Modern Dating

Recognize that modern dating, especially with apps, requires more than intuition; apply rational thought and learn strategies to navigate the expanded dating pool effectively, as traditional social structures no longer provide sufficient guidance.

25. Value Romantic Relationships’ Upsides

Remember and value the inherent upsides of romantic relationships, including enjoyment, sex, and love, rather than solely focusing on potential risks or difficulties.

26. Understand Dating App Incentives

Understand that dating apps are optimized for engagement and profit, not necessarily for facilitating successful, long-term relationships. Adjust your expectations and strategies accordingly to avoid dissatisfaction and negative psychological effects.

27. Consider Societal Benefits of Family

Recognize the societal benefits of marriage and child-rearing for economic stability, social order, and future development, and consider their importance beyond individual preferences.

28. Shift to Human-Centric Prosperity

Shift perspective from resource scarcity to the value of human ideas and productive people, especially those with good education, as the primary drivers of global well-being and innovation.

29. Contribute to Global Prosperity

Consider the long-term economic and societal benefits of having children, particularly in rich countries with good education, as a contribution to global prosperity and innovation.

30. Integrate Diverse Wisdom into Rationality

Broaden the scope of rationality to integrate and explore topics like art, spirituality, and physical well-being, learning from diverse forms of wisdom to enrich the rationalist perspective.

31. Promote Rationalist Successes

Promote the rationalist community’s observable successes (e.g., predicting crypto trends, COVID-19 insights) to generate curiosity and attract new members to rationality, rather than relying solely on abstract arguments.

32. Enhance Rationality’s Appeal

Enhance the appeal and comfort of rationality by improving its aesthetics and teaching those within the community how to gain influence, rather than just focusing on pure logical arguments.

33. Avoid Alienating Utilitarian Arguments

If you are a utilitarian, avoid discussing extreme or counter-intuitive implications of utilitarianism that alienate others, to make the philosophy more palatable and increase its acceptance.

34. Seek Communities Tolerant of “Weird Ideas”

Seek communities that tolerate and even encourage “weird ideas” and unconventional expression, as this openness fosters connection and a sense of belonging beyond specific beliefs or social norms.

35. Avoid Starting Rationality with Biases

Avoid starting rationality education with basic cognitive biases for most people, as their thinking is often deeply enmeshed in social realities, and such education can be subverted to political ends or found unuseful.