In this episode, Danylo speaks with Duncan Sabien about rationality. They discuss the “rationality community,” challenges to spreading and popularizing rationality, problems in psychology-related publicity, psychological obstacles to being rational, the value of emotions, the importance of jargon for learning and discourse, learning in progressive stages, creativity in rational discourse, real-world impacts of rational discourse, social regulation of reasoning standards, and more.

Duncan has written several books and essays discussing various elements of human rationality, and he’s presented lectures on rationality with organizations like Effective Altruism and the Center for Applied Rationality.

Duncan's personal bio: Duncan Sabien is a writer, teacher, and maker of things. He loves parkour, LEGOs, and Magic: the Gathering, and is easily manipulated by people quoting Ender’s Game.  He's currently working with an org trying to figure out how to create provably safe artificial intelligence and writing a pair of books on the side.

This conversation was originally recorded in July 2021.

Sources/works mentioned:
LessWrong (rationality forum/community)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (book by Eliezer Yudkowsky)
In Defense of Punch Bug (essay by Duncan Sabien)
Center for Applied Rationality
Machine Intelligence Research Institute
Duncan's website
Rationality: From AI to Zombies (book by Eliezer Yudkowsky)

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Theme song by Somnambulist Quintet (Darren Johnson)