At the Australia online hangout; one of the topics we discussed (before I fell asleep on camera for a bunch of people) Was writing a rationality TV show as an outreach task. Of course there being more ways for this to go wrong than right I figured its worth mentioning the ideas and getting some comments.
The strategy is to have a set of regular characters who's rationality behaviour seems nuts. Effectively sometimes because it is; when taken out of context. Then to have one "blank" person who tries to join - "rationality house". and work things out. My aim was to have each episode straw man a rationality behaviour and then steelman it. Where by the end of the episode it saves the day; makes someone happy; achieves a goal - or some other <generic win-state>.
Here is a list of notes of characters from the hangout or potential topics to talk about.
- No showers. Bacterial showers
- Stopwatches everywhere
- temperature controls everywhere, light controls.
- radical honesty person.
- Soylent only eating person
- born-again atheist
- bayesian person
- Polyphasic sleep cycles.
As an experienced writer and someone who has experience in TV and Film I can say that this concept would really work especially if you had a different scenario each episode and then also had a cast of characters who represented different spectrums of rational living. So for example:
Character A: Biohacker Character B: Quantified Self Character C: Time efficiency expert
and so on, find someone who has taken up a particular area of rationalist living and then create your scenarios:
Ergonomics (I love my Vibrams please and thank you!) Quantified Self Time Efficiency Consciousness Bio-showering Sleep cycles Religion/atheist
Then each week you would have your characters explore each area from their unique perspective and watch the fun. The test would be not only to highlight the different way that people live but also what they decide to adopt as apart of their rationalist thinking. You could take the characters to different experts that would teach them how to live in that manner and then give them a challenge. So for example:
Week 1: Bio-showers Characters go to a bio-shower expert and learn to bio shower. Characters then live 3 days on only bio-showering after extreme physical activity, sedentary activity, and medium intensity activity and after bio-showering then going to close quarters environments like a library, a subway/bus, or a store. Then track the reactions of people and how it all works out.
You could also find out how far the characters are willing to go to live a fully rational life. Cut in some personal interviews and you have a show. I would recommend 6 characters with 3 men and 3 women.
Feel free to contact....