They are very much the product of a dominator culture as opposed to being more focused on, say, care and nurturing - be it of fellow human beings or our natural environment
For someone with a strong interest in or preference towards caring and nurturing, rationality is still very useful. It helps you learn on how to best care for as many people as possible or to nurture as many pandas (or whatever). Caring and nurturing still have win-states, they're just cooperative instead of competitive.
It helps you learn on how to best care for as many people as possible or to nurture as many pandas (or whatever).
What evidence do you have for that claim? Would that pass objective tests for good evidence?
This would count toward my major, and if I weren't going to take it, the likely replacement would be a course in experimental/"folk" philosophy. But I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the virtues of academic rationality courses in general.
(The main counterargument, I'd imagine, is that the Sequences cover most of the same material in a more fluid and comprehensible fashion.)
Here is the syllabus: http://www.yale.edu/darwall/PHIL+333+Syllabus.pdf
Other information: I sampled one lecture for the course last year. It was a noncommital discussion of Newcomb's problem, which I found somewhat interesting despite having read most of the LW material on the subject.
When I asked what Omega would do if we activated a random number generator with a 50.01% chance of one-boxing us, the professors didn't dismiss the question as irrelevant, but they also didn't offer any particular answer.
I help run a rationality meetup at Yale, and this seems like a good place to meet interested students. On the other hand, I could just as easily leave flyers around before the class begins.
Related question: Could someone quickly sum up what might be meant by the "feminist critique" of rationality, as would be discussed in the course? I've read a few abstracts, but I'm still not sure I know the most important points of these critiques.