Vision

What is Rationality Enhancement?

Rationality Enhancement is the science and practice of developing intelligent technologies that help people improve their minds, achieve their goals, and become the persons they want to be. To achieve this, we build on a mathematically precise theory of optimal decision making under the constraints of limited time and bounded cognitive resources.

Why do we do what we do?

People have a universal psychological need for meaning and purpose. We need to know that we are making at least a small positive difference or else our life feels empty and meaningless. But making a valuable contribution is really difficult. Many people have a hard time finding meaningful goals, struggle to make progress towards them, or have given up on meaning and become cynical. The resulting lack of meaning causes a lot of existential suffering. To overcome this existential suffering and find fulfillment, many people need strategies and tools that help them set meaningful goals, stick to those goals, pursue them effectively, and improve themselves. But despite a tremendous demand for self-improvement, personal development, productivity tools, and guidance, the fundamental scientific questions that need to be answered to effectively support people in these pursuits have been severely neglected in academic research, and the technical challenges of developing intelligent assistants that can assist people with these challenges have been similarly neglected. This is why our research focuses on developing a scientific foundation and innovative approaches and technologies for empowering people to find meaningful goals and pursue them effectively,

What does success look like?

If we succeed, then there will be effective self-improvement apps that enable people to become the persons they want to be and intelligent assistants that help people to figure out what their goals are and how to achieve them. Instead of suffering existential dread, more people will live meaningful lives and make valuable contributions that make the world a better place for everyone. There will be a new scientific discipline focused on improving the human mind. We will have a solid understanding of cognitive growth, proactivity, and optimal living.

How must we act to ensure success?

To succeed, we need to focus our scientific rigor and technical skills on the most important and most challenging human problems of living a good life: choosing meaningful goals, pursuing them effectively, and self-improvement. We have to answer fundamental questions about these essential cognitive functions in synergy with developing and evaluating practical tools, strategies, and interventions for supporting and promoting them in the real world. How can people learn to become more proactive and set better goals for themselves? Can we leverage artificial intelligence to help people learn how to make better decisions, enable them to overcome motivational obstacles, make better plans, and achieve their goals? What are the bottlenecks of personal growth and self-improvement? How can intelligent apps and clever strategies help people overcome those obstacles? And how can we ensure that our tools will be used to benefit humanity? These are just some of the many questions we need to answer to empower people who want to improve themselves and live a more meaningful life.