As an experiment in communicating meta-rationality, I led an interactive unconference session with a brief presentation followed by an exercise discussion. I hope to develop a workshop on meta-rational thinking, and the exercise I posed might be a part of the curriculum.

Slides are here. The rest of this post explains the exercise, which won’t be clear from the slides alone.

Most of us who work with rational systems at a moderately advanced level also practice meta-rationality. “Meta-rationality” means not taking a rational system for granted, but reflecting on how it is working in practice, and acting more effectively better by going beyond its bounds.

Unfortunately, we are not usually particularly good at this. Because the category “meta-rationality” has rarely been pointed out, and its value has rarely been explained, it is not taught in classes; its methods are not studied by either theorists or practitioners; and so it is mainly overlooked and underdeveloped.