Thread by @QiaochuYuan

i've written a lot of stuff implicitly and explicitly critical of (bay area) rationality and the (bay area) rationalists on here so to balance that out karmically here's a thread of stuff about rationality and the rationalists that i appreciate

1. my first rationality workshop taught me that it's possible for me to think about and solve my problems. idk if this sounds really basic or what but it was a totally new idea to me at the time (fresh out of college) and an important foundation for everything else later

2. rationality and the more serious rationalists have a deep respect for Truth that i've always really appreciated. that's maybe one of the things that drew me to them the most, even if we probably disagree in a lot of ways about what "Truth" means and how to search for it

3. the rationality workshops were a place where people were constantly performing psychological experiments, in the sense of coming up with ideas for rationality techniques and trying them on themselves and others. i admire and try to emulate this spirit of empiricism

4. we did a lot of singalongs at rationality workshops. obviously this isn't specific to rationality but whatever it was one of my favorite parts anyway. fucking love singalongs

5. related to the respect for Truth is an ethos of "nothing is off-topic, we will talk about literally anything and attempt to look at it together and come out knowing more than when we came in" and that was always something i really valued too

6. the rationalists have a lot of respect for unusual preferences and there's a lot of social permission to have and voice them. i don't think this is all upside but it's a compassionate idea and it really improves some people's lives

7. also related to the respect for Truth is a sort of all-pervading curiosity. like "hey yeah, what *is* that thing all about anyway? how does that really work?"

an overall acknowledgment that 1) stuff is mysterious and 2) one can hope to understand it a bit better anyway