First of all, a blog-wide disclaimer: I don’t mean to imply that anything I write on this blog hasn’t been written about before. In fact, most posts will be yet another post about a well-covered topic. I’m doing this for two main reasons:
- I want to get better at verbalizing my thoughts.
- I want to improve my writing skills.
- I want to provide another perspective, among the existing pile of perspectives on a particular topic, in hopes that mine clicks with someone where the other perspectives did not.
The name of this blog was inspired by Screwtape’s post on LessWrong, which stuck with me through the years after I read it.
…if I want to learn multivariate calculus or basic game theory there will be at least a dozen different ways of learning it, from a video with pictures to a terse few pages of a textbook to some goofy edutainment videogame. This is a good thing, and I wish rationality was more like this. Think of your favourite technique: how many different formats can it be found in? Alternately, think of your favourite format for learning something: how many techniques and concepts can be found in it?
For every concept we want more people to understand, we should want it explained in more ways. If we want everyone to be a little more rational, then we need to put concepts into mediums that everyone can understand.
While Screwtape specifically name-drops rationality as the subject, I see no reason why this approach isn’t helpful and good across all fields.
A Thousand Roads 