Origin story
We began with a question and kept asking why until we found an uncomfortable truth.
That was, in April of 2020, “Why is there a Coronavirus pandemic?”. This can be explained at progressively deeper levels: One, it’s an ongoing public health issue that depends on the diligence of individuals. Two, it’s an issue of the decisions of policymakers about what policies to enact. And three, it’s an issue of the ability of human beings to make rational decisions.
The third explanation is the most fundamental and the commonality we see underlying difficulties that span almost every aspect of the current crisis: from early policy decisions, decisions by members of the public, as well as research strategy and operational decisions of those seeking to develop vaccines - in all cases, we are limited by an unfortunately large complement of innate human tendencies away from pure rationality.
So we can summarize it as an answer to the often-asked question in the technology industry - what is the most important thing you know that is almost universally not known? Our answer: humans are irrational and that is seriously undermining our ability to prevent and respond to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Orienting
We expanded on our initial focus on cognitive bias to include other key dimensions of rationality education including eastern introspection practices, key dimensions of human physiology (like sleep), and major areas of psychology relevant to teams and organizations.
We further sought to orient our institute towards a set of the most important grand challenge problems including pandemics, climate, diversity, inclusive growth, and medicine - all of which we see as standing to fundamentally benefit from enhancements to researcher and policymaker rationality. We further assert that specifying directional objectives is an important part of finding one’s path in the world - and that by specifying these challenges we can over time adapt our efforts and understanding to better enhance the effectiveness of those seeking to address such challenges.
The Future
In short, the goal is advancing progress towards the challenges. And our part is to increase the abundance of those able to contribute meaningfully to this effort. We’re working to do so by providing a next-generation rationality education experience.
There are significant challenges facing the world today but there is also a significant wealth of ability, interest, and resources globally available to be applied to such efforts and we are optimistic that rational approaches will deliver success.
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