Rationality Freiburg

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About

(Updated: February 22, 2024)

This site is meant as a meeting place for like-minded people in and around Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany to debate, question, laugh, walk, drink coffee, improve, help and inspire each other. Anyone is welcome!

If you enjoy reading LessWrong, SSC/ACX, WaitButWhy or simply can’t help but question, come to one of our meetups!

Venn diagram: Rationality Freiburg is at the intersection of ‘Debating\nSociety’, ‘Philosophy Roundtable’ and ‘Self-Help\nGroup’

Goals and core values

  • Strive for a group culture where everyone feels welcome, comfortable and safe
  • Have fun and enjoy each other’s company
  • Facilitate respectful discussions even on controversial topics
  • Improve our understanding of the world (epistemic rationality)
  • Learn and try out techniques and tools to improve our lives and reach our personal goals (instrumental rationality)

‘Rationality Freiburg’ group deep in discussion in the park

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

What is Rationality?

The desire to see the world as it really is, not as you want it to be. This means having an open mind, learning about human cognitive biases and how to work around them as well as applying the scientific method (hypothesis + experiment).

Is Rationality the rejection of emotions or are human emotions bad?

No. Emotions and gut feelings are an integral part of the human experience and in fact, vital for our survival. Seeing the world as it really is also implies seeing humans as they really are. Emotions and intuitions work very well in most situations, only in some cases they can mislead us. Recognizing those cases and then improving the result of your decisions is useful.

What do you do?

We have meetups every two weeks where we discuss interesting topics and do exercises or play games that are fun and sometimes teach us useful skills to better reach our personal goals. We also have a book club and a statistics study group.

Is this group affiliated with a political party or entity?

No.

Is this group a cult/sect?

No. But remember that every cause wants to be a cult, so we encourage you to always stay skeptical.

Contact

info@rationality-freiburg.de

You can also find us on meetup.com or LessWrong Community.

We have a Signal messenger group as well as a mailing list that you can join after coming to one of our meetups.

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