This is some of my older writing about rationality that I wanted to share. Objectivist and Critical Rationalist Epistemology discusses similarities and differences between Karl Popper and Ayn Rand. They agree more than most people realize. Conflict, Criticism, Learning, Reason discusses rationality and fallibility. Reasoning from Problems not Assumptions discusses

I’ve written a lot about how to rationally resolve conflicts between ideas. It’s one of the most important issues in philosophy. We have lots of ideas, and they disagree/conflict/contradict with each other, so what should we do about that? How do we evaluate the ideas and

Karl Popper’s philosophy, Critical Rationalism (CR), rejects positive arguments (arguments in favor of ideas). It rejects trying to figure out how much support, evidence or justification an idea has. And it rejects induction, which is a type of positive argument. CR says we learn by conjectures and refutations (which

My best articles about emotions are Emotions and Bounded and Unbounded Emotions. I explain that emotions are ideas which are possible to change, and I talk about how to change your emotions. You already know many reasons to care about improving your emotions or being more aware of them. A

These are some of my best articles, from 2020 or earlier, related to rational discussion. Claiming You Objectively Won A Debate discusses the minimum standard to make a rational claim that a debate is finished and that a conclusion should be accepted. People rarely even try to do this, but

My morality dialog discusses that many different moral goals (such as maximizing squirrels or minimizing carrots, in the whole universe, over all of time), when taken seriously, converge on the same intermediate goals, actions and values (like control over reality, error correction, science, rationality, intellectual honesty, free speech, free markets

Overreach is about considering and managing your rate of making errors compared with your rate of correcting errors. If your error rate exceeds your error correction rate, then you’re doing stuff that’s too hard for you. That is inefficient at best, and it often leads to failure. That’

Mastery is when you’re very good at something. You know all about it. That generally means you can do it quickly, easily, with low attention and with few errors. Time, effort, and attention are resources. Masters do things more efficiently and make few mistakes. They use up fewer resources

Tree diagrams are an intellectual tool for organizing ideas. My main article explaining them is Discussion Trees. I also made a tree about making idea trees and wrote Tracking Discussions. Organizing ideas is important to Paths Forward. Potential critics need to be able to understand what your claims are and

In Think and Philosophy: What For?, I introduce philosophy in small parts (slides or short webpages with a continue button) instead of as a big article. Both emphasize fallibility: we will inevitably make mistakes, so we need philosophical thinking (including criticism) to help us find and fix mistakes.

I wrote a Philosophy Outline with three sections: reason, morality and liberalism. Then I had two assistants find links, primarily to my writing, that explain the ideas in the outline. You can use it to help learn about my philosophy. Review the outline to see topics and then click links

Paths Forward is an original Critical Fallibilism idea about approaching discussion and ideas rationally. That way, if you’re mistaken, and another person knows the mistake and is willing to tell you, there is a good way (path) for your error to be corrected (which moves your ideas forward to

Liberalism: Reason, Peace and Property is one of my favorite articles. I wrote over 20 separate draft articles about liberalism, then took my best ideas and explanatory approaches and used them for the final article. I wrote the most drafts about the harmony of men’s interests, which was the

I particularly value my article on Lying. I find people are often confused about how to judge what is or isn’t a lie, and about how to avoid lying. So I wrote an article to explain it. Lying is a routine part of social interaction. Many lies are motivated

Tutoring MaxI helped Max learn philosophy by incrementally building up his skills. Most of it is relevant to everyone. One of my focuses was explaining practice activities that could be used to make progress alone, outside of tutoring sessions. I was paid for this tutoring. Some of the topics are

These are my favorite videos from my curi YouTube channel.

My Fallible Ideas essays explain philosophy ideas. Themes include reason, knowledge creation, parenting, relationships and tradition. My Fallible Ideas for Life collection focuses more on using my philosophy to offer practical advice for living your life.