History of post ‘Reflections on Rat Fest ’25’

Revision 3 · Oct 03, 2025 2:39am · View this (the most recent) version (v4)

@@ -37,6 +37,6 @@ As if to confirm the timeliness of my talk and the urgency of the problem I had

I had many more discussions throughout Rat Fest that were interesting – too many to recount them all. In the end, I was impressed with how organized the conference was. Everything went without a hitch, and everyone was courteous and professional at all times. As president of Conjecture Institute, Logan Chipkin deserves special recognition for running the event so smoothly. He’s knowledgeable, he’s kind and genuine, and he’s Good People. Everyone was in great hands. I’m confident he’ll continue conquering the CR space, and I hope he makes a fortune.

One thing I’d like to see next year is the addition of panel discussions to the talks. Also, Logan announced that Rat Fest may be rebranded to ‘Conjecture Con’. I believe attendee -Jesse Nichols+[Jesse Nichols](https://x.com/JesseNichols) came up with the new name. I like it. It sounds more serious; the alliteration has a nice ring to it. The new name would be instantly recognizable and more clearly connected to Conjecture Institute.

I recommend that anyone interested in philosophy and rationality attend Rat Fest/Conjecture Con in 2026.

Revision 2 · Oct 02, 2025 6:50pm · View this version (v3)

It’s not a painting!

@@ -14,14 +14,14 @@ My own talk, ‘Reason by Purge or by Patch?’, was on the second day. It was b

Applying this insight about honesty to rationality, I think most people are in the occasional thief’s position and don’t know it. In [Rand’s words](/posts/fun-criterion-vs-whim-worship#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBe%20rational%2C%20except%20when%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20feel%20like%20it.%E2%80%9D), they are rational, except when they don’t feel like it. How can they become fully rational? How can they achieve a state where they never feel like being irrational? I believe this is one of *the* problems of our age, and I’m not aware of any satisfactory answers. So, in the Popperian tradition, I presented the problem to the audience, taking care to point out that I do not wish to present myself as this exclusively rational guy who has figured all this out already. On the contrary, I do not know a solution, and I badly want one. (So far, my best attempt is my site [Veritula](https://veritula.com).)

Only days prior, Tom Hyde had [retweeted](https://x.com/tomhyde_/status/1971327077795365181) Francisco Goya’s 1799 -painting+[aquatint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatint "Aquatint") ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’. It perfectly captures the problem at the heart of my talk, and Tom agreed that I could use it for one of my slides:

<p>
<img alt="‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ by Francisco Goya" src="/assets/sleep-of-reason.jpg" class="mb-2"><br>
<small>‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Francisco_Goya" class="extiw" title="w:en:Francisco Goya"><span title="Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)">Francisco Goya</span></a> - <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="//www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/FAF4YL0zP9cjHg">FAF4YL0zP9cjHg at Google Cultural Institute</a> maximum zoom level, Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21982951">Link</a></small>
</p>

Phrasing the issue in terms of this -painting,+work of art, people are (metaphorically) *tired* and tempted to let their reason sleep. If only they realized that the cause of their fatigue is not reason but unreason; that sleep will make things worse! We can also phrase the issue in terms of Deutsch’s problem statement about static vs dynamic societies from his book *The Beginning of Infinity*, chapter 15, applied to individuals: how does one transition from a part static, part dynamic mind to a fully dynamic one? How do we survive this unstable in-between phase? Make no mistake, this really is a matter of life and death. If you want your life to be a beginning of infinity, you have to make an unwavering commitment to reason. You must learn to identify irrationality in all its forms – of which there are many – reject them all, and instead practice rationality – which has only one form. But how do you *do* that? Both Critical Rationalism and Objectivism provide useful pointers, but I’m not aware of any step-by-step guide with a proven track record.

During the Q&A session after my talk, Aaron [suggested](/posts/reason-by-purge-or-by-patch#comment-3754) the following: yes, stealing only once in a while isn’t good enough, you’re still a full-on thief, but gradual improvements toward figuring out *why* you want to steal *are* possible. Once you’ve figured it out, address the root cause and you should be able to stop stealing at once. I suspect that, depending on the root cause, honesty, rationality, etc, still require practice and can’t be achieved overnight, but these are preliminary thoughts, and Aaron’s suggestion is worth exploring. Another potential solution involves an exception to Popper’s opposition to revolutions: contrary to political revolutions, *scientific* ones have a rational character because a new scientific theory retains most, if not all, of the good parts of its predecessor. The latter gets to live on in the former as a limiting case or approximation (see, eg, Karl Popper’s *Conjectures and Refutations*, p. 315 and *Objective Knowledge*, p. 269). Then again, what part of irrationality could be worth preserving? Presumably none.

Revision 1 · Oct 02, 2025 6:21pm · View this version (v2)

@@ -1,42 +1,42 @@
# Reflections on Rat Fest ’25

*Rat Fest* is an annual conference in Philadelphia. It’s centered around Karl Popper’s philosophy of Critical Rationalism (CR), particularly physicist [David Deutsch’s](https://x.com/DavidDeutschOxf) version of it. (‘Rat’ is short for ‘rationalism’ – critical rationalists commonly call themselves ‘crit rats’.) [Conjecture Institute](https://x.com/ConjectureInst), led by [Logan Chipkin](https://x.com/ChipkinLogan), [Aaron Stupple](https://x.com/astupple), and [David Kedmey](https://x.com/DKedmey), hosted the three-day conference. Logan is a good friend of mine who has [authored](/posts/three-revolutionary-ideas) and [co-authored](/posts/libertarian-faq) articles on this blog. Aaron – whose book *The Sovereign Child* [I recommend](/posts/my-honest-review-of-the-sovereign-child) – is a friend as well, and also a client.

I just attended the conference for the first time this past weekend. Here’s what I learned.

I have a newfound appreciation for in-person meetups. I had previously undervalued them. Although I still believe that serious truth-seeking happens in writing, there’s always going to be a personal aspect to any rational undertaking that involves two or more people. It’s important to “remember the human”, [as Reddit says](https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1ytp7q/remember_the_human/). Shaking someone’s hand, looking them in the eye, and sharing a meal all have a special quality that you just don’t get digitally. I’ve been online friends with many attendees from the CR space for years, but it was great to finally meet in person. Once established, a personal connection can open the door to certain criticisms, and thus a growth of knowledge that would otherwise have been impossible or at least hard to get: a friend is more receptive to criticism than a stranger.

Each day, several attendees gave ten-minute talks on various topics ranging from epistemology to politics to biology and neuroscience. I enjoyed two talks in particular. One was [Sam Kuyper’s](https://x.com/Sam_kuyp) talk ‘David vs Goliath: On the Benefits of Being Small’. As I recall, he argued that small teams often have more agility than large companies. The limiting factor in any undertaking is ultimately *knowledge*, not size or funding. The other was [Tom Hyde’s](https://x.com/tomhyde_) presentation titled ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Beauty’, which taught me the difference between art, beauty, and -esthetics.+aesthetics. During one of the many lively discussions in smaller groups after dinner one night, Tom explained to me that what you see when looking up from the base of a skyscraper is not beautiful but *sublime*. In addition, he and I agree that [bodybuilding is art](/posts/bodybuilding-as-art). I also enjoyed my discussions with [Lucas Smalldon](https://x.com/reason_wit_me), whose talk about a problem with the correspondence theory of truth I unfortunately missed. So it’s a good thing he wrote a [follow-up](https://barelymorethanatweet.com/2025/09/30/who-killed-correspondence/).

Writer and skeptic [Michael Shermer](https://x.com/michaelshermer) was a remote guest speaker on the topic of ‘Moral Progress’. [Brett Hall](https://x.com/ToKTeacher), a CR podcaster who has made Deutsch’s work more accessible to many, also gave a remote guest lecture, titled ‘AI and the Philosophy of Science’, which expertly addressed and debunked all the common AI doomsday arguments. No doubt, Deutsch’s remote appearance for a final, hour-long Q&A session on the last day was a highlight for many attendees.

My own talk, ‘Reason by Purge or by Patch?’, was on the second day. It was based on my [article by the same title](/posts/reason-by-purge-or-by-patch). I want to figure out how to live a life that is 100% guided by reason, and I think I’ve identified a conflict between Critical Rationalism and Objectivism that needs to be resolved to achieve that. In short, CR says that improvements in any knowledge-laden system are necessarily gradual and piecemeal, and ideally reversible. Knowledge grows through evolution. [Don’t try revolutions:](/posts/starting-over) you will end up in a much worse place than where you started. You risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now, I think gradual improvement is all well and good if you want to get better at a skill like playing the piano, say. But Objectivism rightly points out that basic principles have an all-or-nothing character. Any [compromises](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html) between truth and falsehood, good and evil, reason and unreason, any ‘mixed premises’, as objectivists call them, automatically favor vice and undercut virtue. “What is the moral status of an honest man who steals once in a while?”, asks the founder of objectivism, Ayn Rand (*Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal*, p. 161). Clearly, someone who steals once in a while is better than a full-on kleptomaniac, but in order to be honest, you can’t steal *at all.* However, if an occasional thief tried to purge his dishonesty and go to 100% honesty in one fell swoop, that would be revolutionary, and he might relapse into a worse state than before.

Applying this insight about honesty to rationality, I think most people are in the occasional thief’s position and don’t know it. In [Rand’s words](/posts/fun-criterion-vs-whim-worship#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBe%20rational%2C%20except%20when%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20feel%20like%20it.%E2%80%9D), they are rational, except when they don’t feel like it. How can they become fully rational? How can they achieve a state where they never feel like being irrational? I believe this is one of *the* problems of our age, and I’m not aware of any satisfactory answers. So, in the Popperian tradition, I presented the problem to the audience, taking care to point out that I do not wish to present myself as this exclusively rational guy who has figured all this out already. On the contrary, I do not know a solution, and I badly want one. (So far, my best attempt is my site [Veritula](https://veritula.com).)

Only days prior, Tom Hyde had [retweeted](https://x.com/tomhyde_/status/1971327077795365181) Francisco Goya’s 1799 painting ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’. It perfectly captures the problem at the heart of my talk, and Tom agreed that I could use it for one of my slides:

<p>
<img alt="‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ by Francisco Goya" src="/assets/sleep-of-reason.jpg" class="mb-2"><br>
<small>‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Francisco_Goya" class="extiw" title="w:en:Francisco Goya"><span title="Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)">Francisco Goya</span></a> - <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="//www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/FAF4YL0zP9cjHg">FAF4YL0zP9cjHg at Google Cultural Institute</a> maximum zoom level, Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21982951">Link</a></small>
</p>

Phrasing the issue in terms of this painting, people are (metaphorically) *tired* and tempted to let their reason sleep. If only they realized that the cause of their fatigue is not reason but unreason; that sleep will make things worse! We can also phrase the issue in terms of Deutsch’s problem statement about static vs dynamic societies from his book *The Beginning of Infinity*, chapter 15, applied to individuals: how does one transition from a part static, part dynamic mind to a fully dynamic one? How do we survive this unstable in-between phase? Make no mistake, this really is a matter of life and death. If you want your life to be a beginning of infinity, you have to make an unwavering commitment to reason. You must learn to identify irrationality in all its forms – of which there are many – reject them all, and instead practice rationality – which has only one form. But how do you *do* that? Both Critical Rationalism and Objectivism provide useful pointers, but I’m not aware of any step-by-step guide with a proven track record.

During the Q&A session after my talk, Aaron [suggested](/posts/reason-by-purge-or-by-patch#comment-3754) the following: yes, stealing only once in a while isn’t good enough, you’re still a full-on thief, but gradual improvements toward figuring out *why* you want to steal *are* possible. Once you’ve figured it out, address the root cause and you should be able to stop stealing at once. I suspect that, depending on the root cause, honesty, rationality, etc, still require practice and can’t be achieved overnight, but these are preliminary thoughts, and Aaron’s suggestion is worth exploring. Another potential solution involves an exception to Popper’s opposition to revolutions: contrary to political revolutions, *scientific* ones have a rational character because a new scientific theory retains most, if not all, of the good parts of its predecessor. The latter gets to live on in the former as a limiting case or approximation (see, eg, Karl Popper’s *Conjectures and Refutations*, p. 315 and *Objective Knowledge*, p. 269). Then again, what part of irrationality could be worth preserving? Presumably none.

[Amaro Koberle](https://x.com/AmaroKoberle) questioned whether honesty was really something that could ever fully be achieved. He suggested that we can only ever be “fallibly honest”; that there is necessarily going to be at least some small degree of dishonesty in everyone. I disagree, but he is in good company: many people who consider themselves fallibilists (effectively another word for critical rationalists) are, in fact, [what I call cynics](/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far). Contrary to Deutsch, they do *not* believe that problems are fully soluble; contrary to Popper, they do *not* believe that we can ever find the truth in any matter. [They think](https://x.com/InfinitOptimism/status/1477102109661151234) *all* our ideas are false and flawed in some way. In reality, we can and often do speak the truth – we just don’t know when. There’s no criterion to distinguish with certainty between true and false statements, as Popper rightly [pointed out](/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far#:~:text=I%20do%20not%20believe%20that%20there%20is%20a%20criterion%20to%20distinguish%20with%20certainty%20between%20true%20statements%20and%20false%20statements.) – but, [as he also said](/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far#:~:text=I%20do%20believe%20that%20very%20many%20of%20the%20statements%20which%20we%20hold%20for%20truth%20are%20true.), many of our statements *are* true. And by that I mean: 100% The Truth, with zero pending errors or criticisms. You *can* fully solve a problem, be done with it, and then move on to the next problem. You should expect to make mistakes *somewhere*, but you don’t necessarily make mistakes *everywhere.*

The same is true for honesty and rationality. You can practice these things, correct mistakes relentlessly, and perfect them to the point where there are no errors left to fix. Think of legendary golfer Tiger Woods: at his skill level, there are just certain beginner errors that, as long as he keeps practicing, he will never make again. You *can* fully correct an error, where ‘fully’ means you never repeat it and it [stays corrected](/posts/error-prevention-error-correction-s-forgotten-b). And then you can move on to an infinity of other problems waiting for you to solve them. Why would honesty and rationality be any different? Why would everyone be doomed to repeat the same mistakes no matter what they tried?

Throughout the rest of the weekend, several people approached me about my talk. After speaking with a few of them, I realized they all fell into one of two distinct camps. (This binary reflects the objectivist insight that no compromise between reason and unreason is possible.) The first, a minority, seemed not only freaked out by the necessity of choosing between reason and unreason, but also deeply worried about being bad people, and being judged as such, for not having chosen reason already. I’m not sure they realized how much they accidentally confessed by expressing their concern. One woman pulled me aside and talked to me under her breath, constantly scanning the room as if in a mild panic. It seemed like she sought license to be irrational and confirmation that she wasn’t a bad person for wanting to continue living with mixed premises. I could not give her the reassurance she wanted, but encouraged her to try reason. The second camp, a majority, was fired up and excited about the possibility of a life exclusively guided by reason. The second are obviously the kinds of people you (should) want to surround yourself with.

Not everyone agreed, of course. One night, on the hotel patio overlooking part of downtown Philadelphia, one attendee told me he liked rationality, sure, but religion was fine as long as it made people happy or gave them comfort. I asked him, what could be the value of happiness based on irrationality, on opposition to reality? What good is comfort in falsehood? When he struggled to find an answer, he instead offered a ‘don’t harsh my mellow’ kind of response and stated that he did not *dislike* rationality. When he didn’t see that his impartial attitude automatically favored unreason, I asked which side would quote him for support – reason or unreason? – and he agreed that it was unreason who would quote him. Well, at least he was honest.

As if to confirm the timeliness of my talk and the urgency of the problem I had presented, the next day, a speaker who shall remain nameless because I don’t want to give him a platform, suggested that the future belong to both rationality *and* religion. (He should have titled his talk, ‘How to Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too’.) Not only does the dominant philosophy of our age already advocate such a mixture, but he also didn’t notice his implicit admission that religion was irrational. He simultaneously contradicted himself by suggesting people could be *more* rational for being religious. (Then why phrase religion in opposition to rationality in the first place?) One audience member perked up and asked whether we could turn Critical Rationalism into a religion. Just when I thought all was lost, attendee and science writer [John Horgan](https://x.com/horganism) challenged the speaker, “What do we need religion for when we can just stick with rationality?” A sigh of relief: a voice of reason. Maybe my talk had made a difference after all.

I had many more discussions throughout Rat Fest that were interesting – too many to recount them all. In the end, I was impressed with how organized the conference was. Everything went without a hitch, and everyone was courteous and professional at all times. As president of Conjecture Institute, Logan Chipkin deserves special recognition for running the event so smoothly. He’s knowledgeable, he’s kind and genuine, and he’s Good People. Everyone was in great hands. I’m confident he’ll continue conquering the CR space, and I hope he makes a fortune.

One thing I’d like to see next year is the addition of panel discussions to the talks. Also, Logan announced that Rat Fest may be rebranded to ‘Conjecture Con’. I believe attendee Jesse Nichols came up with the new name. I like it. It sounds more serious; the alliteration has a nice ring to it. The new name would be instantly recognizable and more clearly connected to Conjecture Institute.

I recommend that anyone interested in philosophy and rationality attend Rat Fest/Conjecture Con in 2026.

Original · Oct 02, 2025 5:39pm · View this version (v1)

# Reflections on Rat Fest ’25

*Rat Fest* is an annual conference in Philadelphia. It’s centered around Karl Popper’s philosophy of Critical Rationalism (CR), particularly physicist [David Deutsch’s](https://x.com/DavidDeutschOxf) version of it. (‘Rat’ is short for ‘rationalism’ – critical rationalists commonly call themselves ‘crit rats’.) [Conjecture Institute](https://x.com/ConjectureInst), led by [Logan Chipkin](https://x.com/ChipkinLogan), [Aaron Stupple](https://x.com/astupple), and [David Kedmey](https://x.com/DKedmey), hosted the three-day conference. Logan is a good friend of mine who has [authored](/posts/three-revolutionary-ideas) and [co-authored](/posts/libertarian-faq) articles on this blog. Aaron – whose book *The Sovereign Child* [I recommend](/posts/my-honest-review-of-the-sovereign-child) – is a friend as well, and also a client.

I just attended the conference for the first time this past weekend. Here’s what I learned.

I have a newfound appreciation for in-person meetups. I had previously undervalued them. Although I still believe that serious truth-seeking happens in writing, there’s always going to be a personal aspect to any rational undertaking that involves two or more people. It’s important to “remember the human”, [as Reddit says](https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1ytp7q/remember_the_human/). Shaking someone’s hand, looking them in the eye, and sharing a meal all have a special quality that you just don’t get digitally. I’ve been online friends with many attendees from the CR space for years, but it was great to finally meet in person. Once established, a personal connection can open the door to certain criticisms, and thus a growth of knowledge that would otherwise have been impossible or at least hard to get: a friend is more receptive to criticism than a stranger.

Each day, several attendees gave ten-minute talks on various topics ranging from epistemology to politics to biology and neuroscience. I enjoyed two talks in particular. One was [Sam Kuyper’s](https://x.com/Sam_kuyp) talk ‘David vs Goliath: On the Benefits of Being Small’. As I recall, he argued that small teams often have more agility than large companies. The limiting factor in any undertaking is ultimately *knowledge*, not size or funding. The other was [Tom Hyde’s](https://x.com/tomhyde_) presentation titled ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Beauty’, which taught me the difference between art, beauty, and esthetics. During one of the many lively discussions in smaller groups after dinner one night, Tom explained to me that what you see when looking up from the base of a skyscraper is not beautiful but *sublime*. In addition, he and I agree that [bodybuilding is art](/posts/bodybuilding-as-art). I also enjoyed my discussions with [Lucas Smalldon](https://x.com/reason_wit_me), whose talk about a problem with the correspondence theory of truth I unfortunately missed. So it’s a good thing he wrote a [follow-up](https://barelymorethanatweet.com/2025/09/30/who-killed-correspondence/).

Writer and skeptic [Michael Shermer](https://x.com/michaelshermer) was a remote guest speaker on the topic of ‘Moral Progress’. [Brett Hall](https://x.com/ToKTeacher), a CR podcaster who has made Deutsch’s work more accessible to many, also gave a remote guest lecture, titled ‘AI and the Philosophy of Science’, which expertly addressed and debunked all the common AI doomsday arguments. No doubt, Deutsch’s remote appearance for a final, hour-long Q&A session on the last day was a highlight for many attendees.

My own talk, ‘Reason by Purge or by Patch?’, was on the second day. It was based on my [article by the same title](/posts/reason-by-purge-or-by-patch). I want to figure out how to live a life that is 100% guided by reason, and I think I’ve identified a conflict between Critical Rationalism and Objectivism that needs to be resolved to achieve that. In short, CR says that improvements in any knowledge-laden system are necessarily gradual and piecemeal, and ideally reversible. Knowledge grows through evolution. [Don’t try revolutions:](/posts/starting-over) you will end up in a much worse place than where you started. You risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now, I think gradual improvement is all well and good if you want to get better at a skill like playing the piano, say. But Objectivism rightly points out that basic principles have an all-or-nothing character. Any [compromises](https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compromise.html) between truth and falsehood, good and evil, reason and unreason, any ‘mixed premises’, as objectivists call them, automatically favor vice and undercut virtue. “What is the moral status of an honest man who steals once in a while?”, asks the founder of objectivism, Ayn Rand (*Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal*, p. 161). Clearly, someone who steals once in a while is better than a full-on kleptomaniac, but in order to be honest, you can’t steal *at all.* However, if an occasional thief tried to purge his dishonesty and go to 100% honesty in one fell swoop, that would be revolutionary, and he might relapse into a worse state than before.

Applying this insight about honesty to rationality, I think most people are in the occasional thief’s position and don’t know it. In [Rand’s words](/posts/fun-criterion-vs-whim-worship#:~:text=%E2%80%9CBe%20rational%2C%20except%20when%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20feel%20like%20it.%E2%80%9D), they are rational, except when they don’t feel like it. How can they become fully rational? How can they achieve a state where they never feel like being irrational? I believe this is one of *the* problems of our age, and I’m not aware of any satisfactory answers. So, in the Popperian tradition, I presented the problem to the audience, taking care to point out that I do not wish to present myself as this exclusively rational guy who has figured all this out already. On the contrary, I do not know a solution, and I badly want one. (So far, my best attempt is my site [Veritula](https://veritula.com).)

Only days prior, Tom Hyde had [retweeted](https://x.com/tomhyde_/status/1971327077795365181) Francisco Goya’s 1799 painting ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’. It perfectly captures the problem at the heart of my talk, and Tom agreed that I could use it for one of my slides:

<p>
<img alt="‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ by Francisco Goya" src="/assets/sleep-of-reason.jpg" class="mb-2"><br>
<small>‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Francisco_Goya" class="extiw" title="w:en:Francisco Goya"><span title="Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)">Francisco Goya</span></a> - <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="//www.google.com/culturalinstitute/asset-viewer/FAF4YL0zP9cjHg">FAF4YL0zP9cjHg at Google Cultural Institute</a> maximum zoom level, Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21982951">Link</a></small>
</p>

Phrasing the issue in terms of this painting, people are (metaphorically) *tired* and tempted to let their reason sleep. If only they realized that the cause of their fatigue is not reason but unreason; that sleep will make things worse! We can also phrase the issue in terms of Deutsch’s problem statement about static vs dynamic societies from his book *The Beginning of Infinity*, chapter 15, applied to individuals: how does one transition from a part static, part dynamic mind to a fully dynamic one? How do we survive this unstable in-between phase? Make no mistake, this really is a matter of life and death. If you want your life to be a beginning of infinity, you have to make an unwavering commitment to reason. You must learn to identify irrationality in all its forms – of which there are many – reject them all, and instead practice rationality – which has only one form. But how do you *do* that? Both Critical Rationalism and Objectivism provide useful pointers, but I’m not aware of any step-by-step guide with a proven track record.

During the Q&A session after my talk, Aaron [suggested](/posts/reason-by-purge-or-by-patch#comment-3754) the following: yes, stealing only once in a while isn’t good enough, you’re still a full-on thief, but gradual improvements toward figuring out *why* you want to steal *are* possible. Once you’ve figured it out, address the root cause and you should be able to stop stealing at once. I suspect that, depending on the root cause, honesty, rationality, etc, still require practice and can’t be achieved overnight, but these are preliminary thoughts, and Aaron’s suggestion is worth exploring. Another potential solution involves an exception to Popper’s opposition to revolutions: contrary to political revolutions, *scientific* ones have a rational character because a new scientific theory retains most, if not all, of the good parts of its predecessor. The latter gets to live on in the former as a limiting case or approximation (see, eg, Karl Popper’s *Conjectures and Refutations*, p. 315 and *Objective Knowledge*, p. 269). Then again, what part of irrationality could be worth preserving? Presumably none.

[Amaro Koberle](https://x.com/AmaroKoberle) questioned whether honesty was really something that could ever fully be achieved. He suggested that we can only ever be “fallibly honest”; that there is necessarily going to be at least some small degree of dishonesty in everyone. I disagree, but he is in good company: many people who consider themselves fallibilists (effectively another word for critical rationalists) are, in fact, [what I call cynics](/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far). Contrary to Deutsch, they do *not* believe that problems are fully soluble; contrary to Popper, they do *not* believe that we can ever find the truth in any matter. [They think](https://x.com/InfinitOptimism/status/1477102109661151234) *all* our ideas are false and flawed in some way. In reality, we can and often do speak the truth – we just don’t know when. There’s no criterion to distinguish with certainty between true and false statements, as Popper rightly [pointed out](/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far#:~:text=I%20do%20not%20believe%20that%20there%20is%20a%20criterion%20to%20distinguish%20with%20certainty%20between%20true%20statements%20and%20false%20statements.) – but, [as he also said](/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far#:~:text=I%20do%20believe%20that%20very%20many%20of%20the%20statements%20which%20we%20hold%20for%20truth%20are%20true.), many of our statements *are* true. And by that I mean: 100% The Truth, with zero pending errors or criticisms. You *can* fully solve a problem, be done with it, and then move on to the next problem. You should expect to make mistakes *somewhere*, but you don’t necessarily make mistakes *everywhere.*

The same is true for honesty and rationality. You can practice these things, correct mistakes relentlessly, and perfect them to the point where there are no errors left to fix. Think of legendary golfer Tiger Woods: at his skill level, there are just certain beginner errors that, as long as he keeps practicing, he will never make again. You *can* fully correct an error, where ‘fully’ means you never repeat it and it [stays corrected](/posts/error-prevention-error-correction-s-forgotten-b). And then you can move on to an infinity of other problems waiting for you to solve them. Why would honesty and rationality be any different? Why would everyone be doomed to repeat the same mistakes no matter what they tried?

Throughout the rest of the weekend, several people approached me about my talk. After speaking with a few of them, I realized they all fell into one of two distinct camps. (This binary reflects the objectivist insight that no compromise between reason and unreason is possible.) The first, a minority, seemed not only freaked out by the necessity of choosing between reason and unreason, but also deeply worried about being bad people, and being judged as such, for not having chosen reason already. I’m not sure they realized how much they accidentally confessed by expressing their concern. One woman pulled me aside and talked to me under her breath, constantly scanning the room as if in a mild panic. It seemed like she sought license to be irrational and confirmation that she wasn’t a bad person for wanting to continue living with mixed premises. I could not give her the reassurance she wanted, but encouraged her to try reason. The second camp, a majority, was fired up and excited about the possibility of a life exclusively guided by reason. The second are obviously the kinds of people you (should) want to surround yourself with.

Not everyone agreed, of course. One night, on the hotel patio overlooking part of downtown Philadelphia, one attendee told me he liked rationality, sure, but religion was fine as long as it made people happy or gave them comfort. I asked him, what could be the value of happiness based on irrationality, on opposition to reality? What good is comfort in falsehood? When he struggled to find an answer, he instead offered a ‘don’t harsh my mellow’ kind of response and stated that he did not *dislike* rationality. When he didn’t see that his impartial attitude automatically favored unreason, I asked which side would quote him for support – reason or unreason? – and he agreed that it was unreason who would quote him. Well, at least he was honest.

As if to confirm the timeliness of my talk and the urgency of the problem I had presented, the next day, a speaker who shall remain nameless because I don’t want to give him a platform, suggested that the future belong to both rationality *and* religion. (He should have titled his talk, ‘How to Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too’.) Not only does the dominant philosophy of our age already advocate such a mixture, but he also didn’t notice his implicit admission that religion was irrational. He simultaneously contradicted himself by suggesting people could be *more* rational for being religious. (Then why phrase religion in opposition to rationality in the first place?) One audience member perked up and asked whether we could turn Critical Rationalism into a religion. Just when I thought all was lost, attendee and science writer [John Horgan](https://x.com/horganism) challenged the speaker, “What do we need religion for when we can just stick with rationality?” A sigh of relief: a voice of reason. Maybe my talk had made a difference after all.

I had many more discussions throughout Rat Fest that were interesting – too many to recount them all. In the end, I was impressed with how organized the conference was. Everything went without a hitch, and everyone was courteous and professional at all times. As president of Conjecture Institute, Logan Chipkin deserves special recognition for running the event so smoothly. He’s knowledgeable, he’s kind and genuine, and he’s Good People. Everyone was in great hands. I’m confident he’ll continue conquering the CR space, and I hope he makes a fortune.

One thing I’d like to see next year is the addition of panel discussions to the talks. Also, Logan announced that Rat Fest may be rebranded to ‘Conjecture Con’. I believe attendee Jesse Nichols came up with the new name. I like it. It sounds more serious; the alliteration has a nice ring to it. The new name would be instantly recognizable and more clearly connected to Conjecture Institute.

I recommend that anyone interested in philosophy and rationality attend Rat Fest/Conjecture Con in 2026.