This is a linkpost for http://hardcorezen.info/so-you-want-to-be-a-dharma-teacher/7843
Sounds familiar
Among the failure modes of martial arts dojos, I suspect, is that a sufficiently dedicated martial arts student, will dream of...
...becoming a teacher and having their own martial arts dojo someday.
I do not learn rationality from "rationalists". I learn it from quants, from entrepreneurs, from artists, from physicists, from hackers like Tim Ferris and from political activists like Socrates.
This rather puts into question the coherence of the whole concept of "rationalist", doesn't it? After all, we learn physics from physicists, chemistry from chemists, computer science from computer scientists, and despite the perils of aspiring to be one, dharma teachers are really very useful. I think "rationality" is almost unique in that you shouldn't try to learn from most of those aspiring to teach it.
I learn mathematics from physicists (physics involves a lot of math), physics from chemists (chemistry involves a lot of physics) and physics from computer scientists (Kerbal Space Program).
[Y]ou shouldn't try to learn [rationality] from most of those aspiring to teach it.
The principle applies to philosophy and religion too.
I feel like linking to CommonCog would have been useful. The guy has written some really great stuff on this topic, as well as ways to identify people to learn from and how.
When I first started getting into Zen there was a brief period when I thought I wanted to be a dharma teacher. I remember telling my first teacher, Tim, I wanted to be a dharma teacher and he just gave me a look. It’s hard to describe that look, but I remember how it felt. And how that look felt is why I dropped the whole idea of becoming a dharma teacher.
―Brad Warner
The same could be said for Rationality. You should not aspire to teach Rationality. There are two types of teaching:
Why? Because personal experience trumps pedagogical skill.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride the slight of what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heath and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.”
―Citizenship in a Republic by Theodore Roosevelt
I do not learn rationality from "rationalists". I learn it from quants, from entrepreneurs, from artists, from physicists, from hackers like Tim Ferris and from political activists like Socrates.