Noah Topper

Sorry if this is somewhat off topic, but I have a small dream of sign language becoming a rationalist shibboleth and serving as a jumping off point for sign to spread more in society at large. I know this is pretty unlikely, but it seems worth a shot. I gave a presentation on it at a LessWrong Community Weekend, and people seemed interested. Sign language is also super intellectually interesting in its own right and is a very fun learning experience! Anyway, on with the show. (EDIT: A few extra notes based on comments. First, I actually think ASL is pretty easy to learn from the video lectures I link below. I did okay in a one-on-one conversation with a deaf person after that. Second, you'll obviously have to weigh up if learning to sign is worth it for you. I have just tried to argue that it's more useful and enriching than you might otherwise have thought. Finally, this mostly is just a Neat Thing. The only "rationalist" aspects would come from an interest in learning neat things, and my argument that society would be better optimized if everyone knew how to sign. Sorry again for being off topic.) Introduction I’ve been learning sign language for four years now, and I swear it’s fun like nothing else in the world. At the risk of projecting my interests onto others, I’d like to make the case for learning to sign. I’ll focus primarily on American Sign Language (ASL) since it’s what I know, but most of what I say should generalize to other sign languages too. If you want to learn ASL, I highly recommend Dr. Bill Vicars’ materials here. Vicars has a PhD in deaf education, is deaf himself, and has published his core ASL 1 - 4 lectures online, plus much more, free of charge. He is seriously excellent. What is sign language anyway? First, I should explain what sign language is. The basics are probably pretty clear: it’s a language where you communicate using the shape and movement of your hands, rather than spoken or written words (although really other bo