Published on September 22, 2025 4:19 AM GMT
I’m stealing this terminology from Eliezer (from planecrash, heavy spoilers), but modifying them to point at concepts that I think those words more naturally evoke for me.
This post contains emotionally significant but not very plot-revealing HPMOR spoilers.
Introduction
This is less a post about the proper Methods of Rationality and more about some fuzzy parts of rationalist culture that motivate me and that I want to emphasize. These may not be useful for everyone, but they will be useful for someone. Beyond that, this post will be useful for me, since I have several times wanted to explain these concepts in conversation and wanted a post about them to point to. This is that post.
This post is also part of my thinking about the Secular Winter Solstice, since that has left a large impact on me. I think that these ideas may help people get more out of subsequent ones.
Warmth
There are many virtues of a healthy rationalist culture, but before a culture can even exist, you need the Warmth of Friendship. Warmth is a very general feeling that shows up in a lot of places: nurturing a precious child or a younger sibling, looking at a cute animal, having a friend go out of their way to help you greatly without any reward, finding a community you feel deeply welcomed by. Warmth is not unique to the rationalists, but we must not neglect it.
At least in my culture, warmth also manifests in Curiosity, the first virtue of a rationalist. Not just my own curiosity, but that of those around me. It is Warm when someone shares this weird thing they found on Wikipedia, or we discuss an impractical hypothetical, or they hand me a puzzle. Warmth is to be nurtured, to spread to others, whether it manifests as Curiosity or love or anything else.
Warmth is what makes somewhere home, just as literal warmth from blankets, electric heating, and hoodies all make places nicer to be in.
Light
Countless winter nights ago,
a woman shivered in the cold,
cursed the sky, and wondered why
the gods invented pain.[1]
Sometimes, the world is Dark and Cold. Warmth can help with that some, but no amount of friendship and love can let you discern any more on a cloudy night. Thus comes Light:
Aching, angry flesh and bone,
bitterly she struck the stone
'till she saw that sudden spark
of Light and golden Flame.[1]
Light comes when we use our intelligence and resources around us to drive away some of the Darkness. Sometimes this manifests as big dramatic shifts like learning how to make fire for the first time, but sometimes it's smaller things like learning that you can use many lightbulbs as a substitute for sunlight.
Going forward from the invention of fire, the progression of Light continues, with stone tools, language, mathematics, particle accelerators. Light is the process that took us from apehood to fire, and the process that took us from fire to landing on the moon and cryopreserving human brains. The process that, if we do it right, could yet take us much further than that.
Light is not just another name for technology, or progress, or science. All of those things are manifestations of Light that humanity has nurtured, but there is some larger process generating them. The kind of process that looks at the world and decides "I'm going to figure out how this works, not just for the sake of my Curiosity, but also to make things better."
Flame
Sometimes, when Warmth is threatened, the tension reaches a breaking point and bursts into Flame. Flame appears to protect someone Warm from danger, or to protect civilization from ruin. It is the drive to Just Stay Alive, in spite of all the Darkness.
Sufficient amounts of Flame don't stop at "good enough," they burn down everything in the way of optimality. While it is heartening to see humanity make one day brighter than before, the goal is to get rid of as much darkness as possible, all of it if we can, and the virtue of Flame is to not lose sight of that goal.
Light gave us the tools to develop human cryopreservation, one of the best chances we have at living forever. Flame, however, brought us that prerequisite desire to live forever; the drive to not only make marginal contributions to longevity, but to aspire to win longevity.
I'm reminded of Harry's Monologue Against Death:
You are not invincible, and someday the human species will end you.
I will end you if I can, by the power of mind and magic and science.
I won't cower in fear of Death, not while I have a chance of winning.
I won't let Death touch me, I won't let Death touch the ones I love.
And even if you do end me before I end you,
Another will take my place, and another,
Until the wound in the world is healed at last.[2]
Or consider the case of the eradication of Smallpox, which took not only Light but also the Flame to follow through and win the fight for good:
On December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory. The horror from beyond memory, the monster that took five hundred million people from this world, was destroyed.
You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in this world.[1]
Beyond just bold proclamations and victories, "Flame" encodes the determination that looks at a grave loss and solemnly says "We shall have to work faster.[3]" We also see this in some openings to Winter Solstices: "WE'RE NOT DEAD YET."
This is not to say that marginal improvements upon the status quo aren't worth celebrating; each case of Smallpox cured is a success of sorts. But we're not aiming to make the world only a little bit better, if we can do more.
Conclusion
Warmth, Light, and Flame must go together. Academia has a stale form of Light with hardly any Warmth nor Flame backing it up. Terrorist cells have a great deal of Flame, but lack critical components of Warmth and Light. A community of rationalists is stronger than solely a website of rationalist blog posts, as they have a Warmth to bring them together and inspire new initiatives and explorations that never would've happened otherwise.
Discuss
