Rational Creatives #001
Hello fellow human,
Hope you’re doing fantastic!
This is my first newsletter ever written, which means I’m officially losing my newsletter virginity. Big deal, right?
On this first issue for Rational Creatives I’m gonna cover:
My rediscovery of the LessWrong community
The most resourceful thread I found this week on Twitter
“It’s more like gardening than architecture”
Art vs. Science
Questions I’ve been pondering
Let’s dive right into it 🤿
Rediscovering the LessWrong community
A few months ago I was digging the web as I usually do and found the LessWrong site for the first time. For some reason, I didn’t find it that interesting or remarkable then. I guess I didn’t dig deep enough. Maybe it was bad timing. Who knows.
This morning I was reading a blog post and noticed that the author referenced someone from the LessWrong community. This time, though, I dug deeper and was able to see how cool the site actually is. It was like an epiphany.
If you go to their About page (which I think I didn’t do that first time I visited the site), you’ll find a very powerful and compelling mission statement:
We are a community dedicated to improving our reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. More generally, we work to develop and practice the art of human rationality.[1]
To that end, LessWrong is a place to 1) develop and train rationality, and 2) apply one’s rationality to real-world problems.
LessWrong serves these purposes with itslibrary of rationality writings,community discussion forum,open questions research platform, andcommunity page for in-person events.
After reading that I felt like I had found a potential tribe for myself. A community of truth-seeking and open-minded people. Something very close to what Tim Urban calls an “Idea Lab”. Needless to say, I already signed up and I’m eager to start learning in public with and from the other members of the community. I’ll be sharing updates on how this all goes!
Most resourceful Twitter thread of the week
Yesterday I came across this Patricia’s Twitter thread listing 29 fascinating online communities and long-form publications that can help you cultivate deeper thinking and learning:
4 items that caught my attention:
The Pudding: A digital publication that explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays.
More To That: Illustrated blog posts that explain in a clear, digestible and memorable way what Lawrence Yeo, the author, has learned about the human condition.
The Stoa: A digital space, run by Peter Limberg, for people to get together, philosophize and talk about the things that matter most. (They host a lot of interesting and wide-ranging online events).
Five Books: They interview experts and ask them to give 5 book recommendations and explain them. So far they’ve done more than 1000 interviews and got more than 5000 book recommendations on their site.
I found The Pudding and More To That particularly interesting because they both combine text with attractive or fun visuals, which is a very underrated type of content IMO.
LessWrong and Farnam Street (one my favorite blogs) are also on the list. You should definitely check it out!
“It’s more like gardening than architecture”.
Yesterday I read this tweet
And couldn’t help but ask Phil how he goes about finding those “accounts that help you think differently”. He shared a couple of good strategies I think are useful; but it all reminded me of a question I’ve been pondering for a while, which I shared with him
His answer was insightful
However, I still have trouble trying to convert his elegant metaphor into something more concrete and actionable.
Since having a diverse information diet is key for both good decision-making and for creativity, I’m really interested in figuring this out. I’ll probably follow up this question.
Art vs. Science
Earlier this week I was doing some research on what I call The Dichotomy between Rationality and Creativity and found this fascinating artwork with an even more fascinating meaning.
“Newton” by British poet and painter William Blake (Finished in 1795).
In this work Blake portrays a young and muscular Isaac Newton, rather than the older figure of popular imagination. He is crouched naked on a rock covered with algae, apparently at the bottom of the sea. His attention is focused on a diagram which he draws with a compass. Blake was critical of Newton’s reductive, scientific approach and so shows him merely following the rules of his compass, blind to the colourful rocks behind him.
I might be suffering from confirmation bias here, but IMO this piece shows that this dichotomy I talk about has existed for centuries.
Ironically, Blake, who was so critical of early scientists and their “reductive” approach, has a famous quote that aligns very well with the scientific method and that I like a lot:
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
Questions I’ve been pondering
Before I wrap up, I want to share some questions I’ve been pondering lately after my initial readings for this project:
Why people are more interested in changing other people's minds than changing their own?
How can I create value for others while being authentic and true to myself?
How creative can computers be? What can we learn from that?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback, so please reach out to me on Twitter.
Until next time,
Daniel