A fun index of the concepts from The Sequences in the form of several litanies. These litanies are neither a guide nor an introduction to The Way of Rationality because rationality is an art not a series of precipes. Rather, these litanies serve as a tool; for meditating on, for connecting ideas; or for preparing for The Ritual Of Changing One’s Mind. For some this may be a useful exercise, for others not. If they help you, Enjoy!

Litanies Of The Way

Litany On Litanies

Litany Against Bias

Litany For Communication

Litany Against Politics

Litany For Inquiry

Litany For Letting Go

Litany For Belief

Litany Against The Dark

Litany For Seeing

Litany For Curiosity

Litany For Minds

Litany On Litanies

I will use these litanies to grow stronger

And when they are no longer useful I will not mourn

For although an apprentice must first imitate The Way that is known

A master must discover The Way that is to come

Litany Against Bias

When I learn about a bias
I will not use it as a Fully General Counterargument

And when I teach others of bias

I will first do no harm

When new evidence comes in

I will feel the burden of every detail

When I’m considering my plans

I will view them from the outside
 

When I want to be an effective altruist

I will not purchase satisfaction

When the world is chaotic
I will act lawfully 

When there exist justifications beyond those given

I will reject the genetic heuristic

When I am presented with a false dilemma

I will look for a Third Alternative

And when I wish to overcome bias
I will know it is a worthy goal

Litany For Communication

When I feel I am misunderstood
I will be aware that my intent might not be transparent

When I need to communicate something complex

I will lay out an inferential pathway
 

When making propositions
I will not use Fake Justifications

When I am attacking propositions 
I will give my True Rejection

Litany Against Politics

Politics is the Mind-Killer

When observing a debate
I will not treat arguments like soldiers

When I am dealing with a non-binary question
I will relinquish my scales and take up a notebook

When the problem is not just black and white

I will distinguish shades of grey
When I see someone kicking a vending machine

I will not hypothesize that they are a mutant

Litany For Inquiry

When I ponder
I will let the meaning choose my words

When I’m forming a hypothesis

I will look into the dark 

When I question
I will Hug the Query

When I attack my beliefs
I will attack them at their real weak points

When I have a comfortable conclusion but evidence is easy to come by
I will continue searching
When my conclusion is uncomfortable but evidence is hard to come by
I will beware motivated continuation

When using Occam's Razor 
I will be wary of the Fake Simplicity of English
When I hear an argument for the first time 
I will beware of filtered evidence

When I assess options
I will avoid using good/bad as a heuristic

When I have a Great Idea
I will Resist the Happy Death Spiral

Litany For Letting Go

When I could hedge a failure by only admitting  a small local error 
I will instead say Oops

And I will not cling to the error

For every cloud does not have a silver lining

When I feel myslelf forgetting contradictory thought

I will notice and Singlethink

When I am evaluating a scary consequence

 I will visualise it (leave a line of retreat)

It is not a true crisis of faith unless things must go either way.^[1]

Litany For Belief

By Democratic Law everyone is entitled to their own beliefs

As a matter of Nature’s law, you are not entitled to accuracy.

My beliefs will flow from anticipated experience
And they will not be measured by what they can explain, but what they prohibit.

I will draw my strength from my ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality

For those who are equally good at explaining any outcome have strayed from The Way^[2]

I

I will not anticipate experiences that can’t be verified

And I will not pretend to be wise
I will not wear beliefs or use scientific language as group identification

And I will not profess and cheer or send signals to cheer for my tribe

I will not give fake explanations that don’t constrain anticipation

And I will not confuse the teachers password with an explanation that controls anticipation
I will be wary of statements that are actually stop signs for thought

And I will not give Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions

I will not let the fact that someone else knows an explanation stop my curiosity

I will ensure my knowledge flows from within me

I will not boast of my modesty
Instead, I will take action in anticipation of my errors

II

I will not recognise Absolute Authority

I will accept that 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities
Since probabilities approaching 1 or 0 require infinite certainty

And assigning a probability 1 to a proposition is an irreversible act

The larger the space of possibilities,
The more unlikely the hypothesis, 
The more confident I wish to be
The more evidence I need

I cannot doublethink

And I will not Believe in Self-Deception

My beliefs are not necessarily my endorements

And I shall feel on a gut level when my map does not correspond to the territory

III

Every expectation of evidence is weighed against the expectation of counter evidence

If I am very confident of my theory, evidence matching my belief only increases it slightly

But the unexpected failure of my prediction must deal my confidence a huge blow.

The mere expectation of encountering evidence will not shift my prior beliefs^[3]

But my beliefs need not be perfectly defended
For a theory that is supported 95% of the time will see counterevidence the other 5%
So I will update myself incrementally:
If anti support comes in once I will not panic.

But if it comes again, and again, and again
And new support is slow to trickle in,
I will let my certainty drift down, and down, and downward still

And when I realise from where the winds of evidence blow against me

My belief will be relinquished^[4] 

Litany Against The Dark

I recognise The Great Web of Causality

The entanglement of truth and contagion of lias

I will not let lias contaminate the web
For it leads to the Dark Side of Epistemology

I will not let a single argument stand off an army of contradictions
And I will not start with the bottom line

I will feel the Force: the flow from evidence to belief
And I will make sure it isn’t flowing backwards

Litany For Seeing

“She was blocked because she was trying to repeat, in her writing, things she had already heard … She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself … without primary regard for what had been said before. The narrowing … destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing.”^[5]

I recognise the influence of anchoring

The contamination of thoughts
The need for active disbelief

The fact that I do not change my mind as often as I think

And the power of Cached Thoughts

I will not blind myself by generalizing from fictional evidence

I will Hold Off On Proposing Solutions
I will practise the art of Original Seeing

And I will enact the Virtue of Narrowness

For what is true of one apple may not be true of another

And more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world^[6]

Litany For Curiosity

The First Virtue is curiosity

But it is not a solemn duty

Curiosity does not prejudice between my desired or fears

 I will let my curiosity blaze from the sparks of uncertainty  

My curiosity seeks to annihilate itself
I hold no curiosity that does not want an answer

But upon solving the glorious mystery, it will no longer be mysterious.

And my curiosity will be satisfied

Litany For Minds

I am a mind

A lawful mind of pattern and routine

Carved from the victories and defeats of adaptation-executers

To achieve the goals of an Alien Blind Idiot God

But I am Godshatter

But I can understand my reasoning

And I will use my understanding

To locate useful patterns;

To achieve my goals.

1. ^{^}

    Thor Shenkel

2. ^{^}

    Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)

3. ^{^}

    Conservation of Expected Evidence

4. ^{^}

    Update Yourself Incrementally

5. ^{^}

    Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

6. ^{^}

    The Virtue of Narrowness