From the survey and mentions directly to me

Reminds me of the neologism, "sonder"

This reminded me of this quote from Victor Frankl, "The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living."

When looking it up here, the tags made me laugh; "tags: holocaust, humor, suffering"

"Decide in full knowledge"; I think that's exactly what I was aiming for, thank you.

My impression (and maybe I just haven't seen the articles) is that there is more focus on "these are the traits of people who have done well in this path" and something along these lines would attempt to balance that.

I may also be biased as I have a lot of interests, and narrowing down feels much better than adding more options to my plate.

Thanks for this post! I especially enjoy your emphasis on creating a hypothesis as a "flag pole" that you can iteratively test your understanding against; I imagine this is a great way to embody Kant's advice of "Have the courage to use your own reason" as well as getting used to overcoming Confirmation Bias. Really cool suggestion that I'll be implementing, thank you!

It seems there is some interest in the public scrutiny of ideas when going through this type of research (from Jeremy, David B, and Laain) and I'd also enjoy having a space of idea scrutiny to get that feedback from outside. Would you all be open to an initial low investment testing of a space like this? 

If we have common areas we'd like to investigate we can give each other our feedback (Step 4 and 8) to reduce the individual strain that Holden describes above. Maybe a lite test of this would be to have a small email thread bringing attention to topics that feedback is being asked on, and another area (slack/discord?) that allows the hashing out of said claims? I believe this could increase the group's familiarity with the work as well as reduce the strain of an individual. If this could be done at scale, I initially believe this could serve as a great method of community updating and involvement. Finally, this exploration is certainly acting in the "not a finished thought, but am discovering an answer" and am open to ideas.

Ah, I see. Well, I'm all in for the lower commitment at this point. Will you be advertising the start on this post?

I'm interested as well, for participating or helping with organization. 

Idea when project is up to speed; if multiple groups are operating at the same time, have a central theme that all each group focuses on and at the end of a "sequence" of these a larger article could be written on the collective insights developed. Something along those lines.