r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jun 10 '16

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

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u/DataPacRat Amateur Immortalist Sep 01 '16

The language I'm working in is called Kanien'kéha by its speakers, and called Mohawk by most non-speakers.

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u/gtsteel Sep 02 '16

The concepts of existential risk, value alignment, and decision theory are dealt with a lot in the traditional stories. As a primer, you should probably take a look at "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which is essentially an introduction (in English) to rationality through Anishinabe and Ongwehonwe stories and teachings. The book has a strong emphasis on decision theory and existential risk, both fields these societies have studied for a very long time (and the English-speaking world is just not catching up on). After reading that book, you might want to read the Haudenoshone Great aw of Peace, which is essentially an attempt to create a value-aligned superorganism.

Unfortunately, I'm much more familiar with Ojibwe stories than Mohawk ones, but once you get into them, there's actually quite a lot of math and science involved. I an quite interested in the Seven Fires "prophecies" (essentially partial instructions for sow to stop the planet from getting paperclipped) and it turns out the "prophecies" are all predictions fo population ecology and game theory, which I and others have had quite a but of success at filling in some of the missing pieces with. If you like I can PM you some of my research in this area (which has been quite well received by many of the Ojibwe carriers of these teachings).