About The Rationality Project

It started with three questions that kept me up at night:

Why do people resist evidence that seems obviously true?

Why is debating online so emotionally draining?

Why do these conversations rarely change anyone's mind?

I wasn't a professor or researcher. Just a guy with a background in Ancient Greek and Roman history, working in IT, who noticed I was spending hours crafting perfect arguments that accomplished nothing except raising my blood pressure. Many of you know the feeling.

So I did what I do in my systems work: I started analyzing the problem like an IT Professional. What is broken and what process can improve it?

The Unexpected Discovery

After I spent a month researching the issues and trying different things...I landed on an ancient method that I had forgotten from my college days. Socratic Questioning.

Something strange happened when I shifted from making arguments to asking questions. Instead of feeling frustrated after online debates, I felt calm. Clear. Oftentimes energized and occasionally amused.

The challenge of crafting a good question became more rewarding than fact-dumping or calling out logical fallacies. Rather than carrying anger for hours after an exchange, I found myself genuinely curious about how people think and WHY they think the way they do.

This wasn't supposed to happen. The internet is designed to make us emotional. Hot takes get clicks. Rage bait drives engagement. Engagement makes money. The entire digital ecosystem profits from our outrage.

But here I was, using a 2,400-year-old technique, Socratic questioning, and feeling the opposite of what the algorithm wanted.

The Research

My personal experience sent me digging. What I found confirmed what I was discovering:

When we argue, we trigger defensive reactions in ourselves and others. When we ask genuine questions, the dynamic shifts. The research on motivated reasoning, identity-protective cognition, and persuasion all pointed to the same conclusion:

I was doing this all wrong. We all are.

Direct confrontation activates identity defense. Calm inquiry bypasses it. This isn't new wisdom. Socrates knew it 2,400 years ago. Modern psychology just explains why it works.

A Different Way

The Rationality Project emerged from this realization.

It's not about winning arguments. It's about discovering that a well-aimed question accomplishes more than a perfectly crafted takedown. That calm curiosity is more powerful than righteous anger. That you can engage with controversial topics and feel better afterward, not worse.

One target. Three dynamics. Nine principles.

We call it the 139 Method.

What This Is

I spent nine months developing and testing this methodology in hostile online environments: young-earth creationist groups, political debates, the most identity-fused spaces I could find. Hundreds of conversations. Documented patterns. Refined principles.

TRP is built on classical philosophy, backed by cognitive science, and optimized for the algorithmic battlefield of modern discourse.

Questions are the tip of the spear.

If you're tired of arguments that go nowhere and leave you drained, there's another way.

— Mike