i need to become stronger. fine, so then what am i doing here writing a blog?
simply put, i don't feel like it's enough to just become stronger myself. i've been spending the last 15 years getting stronger, and yet during all that time i've also been looking for ways to help others along their own journeys. most of my previous attempts failed: no one read my blogs or took my advice. and, in hindsight, they were right not to. i wasn't ready. i wasn't yet good enough to help anyone besides myself, and i'm likely still not able to help people reliably.
what's changed now, though, is the realization that rationality needs a thousand self-help books. mind space is wide and deep, words are fuzzy, and it's neigh impossible to find words that will work the same way on everyone. talking with eli and reading his writing were what worked for me in addition to lots of other reading and thinking. in the last couple years, scott's blog has introduced rationality to a new audience who likely wouldn't have found the sequences. cfar is teaching classes in rationality, and yet others are blogging within the context of rationality, exploring new aspects of the art.
what i hope to accomplish here is some combination of spreading rationality to those who might have otherwise missed it, building on the art of rationality, and perhaps ultimately making myself a better rationalist by forcing my thoughts into concrete, shareable, comprehensible form.
i initially was going to write a literal self-help book. i even wrote some of it, and the text of it will appear here, reworked, over the coming months. but books have long, slow feedback cycles and i want to share ideas with you sooner rather than later and keep improving on them through repeated exploration. maybe one day there will be enough posts on this blog that it could be turned into a book, but for now i'll focus on a nearer target: writing blog posts about rationality.
what i hope is that i'll reach some of the folks for whom my words will resonate. they, too, will take up the art and find they are better for it.
our direction, broadly stated, is to cover these topics:
- mapping and modeling the world (mapmaking)
- protecting the things you value (wayfinding)
- understanding yourself and other humans (directing)
- discovering what you really value (exploring)
- changing the world (guiding)
we'll primarily focus on the first four, because i'm still figuring out the basics of the last one myself, but make no mistake: we are here to change the world and make it a better place.