Communication is inevitable, but one is not inevitably good at it. This course will teach you the components of communication and hone each aspect of sending reliable messages. We’ll dive in on how to have deep conversations, and once you’ve walked the hardest path, you’ll see that all communication can be deep, even the smallest conversation.

Writer's block got you down? Characters all feel the same? Do people describe your writing as "choppy" and "bland"? These problems are infamous among novice writers and can often seem insurmountable -- but nothing could be further from the truth. This course will teach you to transmute your mental dream into tangible reality, with techniques for flow, pacing, and overcoming the dreaded writer's block. Even if you aren't interested in fiction, the average person writes several hundred words per day. Level up your writing skills and improve every textual interaction, from casual DMs with your friends, to Twitter flash fiction, to million-word web serial epics.

From French, to skiing, to playing the violin, all skills follow a learning curve. This course will teach you to break down skills with the Pareto principle and get 80% of the effect with 20% of the effort. Ten thousand hours is only necessary if one's goal is to become an expert -- for 'mere' proficiency, a fraction of the time suffices. Metalearning was first pioneered by bestselling author Tim Ferris and this course will help you accelerate your learning and focus on the advanced skills that really matter.

This is a course in decision theory that focuses on practical applications. We will learn basic academic decision theory and Bayesian reasoning. Students will obtain a firm grasp on the theoretical fundamentals of making predictions and decisions. The real value of the course will be in the implementation of strategies, heuristics and workflows to employ these powerful ideas in your daily life.

Loneliness is an epidemic. Cultures all around the world are measuring a lack of community and the subsequent issues that come from that. This class is aimed at helping people understand the mechanics of social networks, how to build them, and the rich value they bring to our lives. You will be given a step-by-step series of examples and instructions on how to meet people and build friendships. More importantly, this class will help you find people that you care enough about to spend your time and effort helping.

Analyze your present to take charge of your future. This class will use a tool called the ‘Character Sheet’ to identify what stands between you and the person you wish to be. This course will use a series of tools to find 'bugs' in your life, and reveal how best to prioritize each one. The first tool will be a chronological walkthrough of your daily routine, followed by an examination of your surrounding physical space, then finally an introspection called ‘Hamming Questions’. Once you have created your Character Sheet, you can then leverage the other skills you learn in the Guild, along with support of your cohort, to systematize your self improvement.

This course will teach the methods of constrained and unconstrained optimization and how to apply them to real-life problem. Content will be presented in two tracks. The basic track will use a literary description of optimization to convey the basic concepts. The advanced track will include a technical description of the math involved, as well as additional details that can't be described through a literary framework.

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. Unfortunately, even fiction can be coherent, in which case the previously mentioned mantra does not help. In this course, you will cultivate habits to prevent fiction from taking hold of you in the first place, so that you may see the world as it is and draw correct conclusions.