It's because rationality that's committed to a narrow definition of what rationality means typically leads to irrationality at some terminal point.
When people describe themselves as "rationalist" they typically mean "instrumental reason" which is a form of reasoning that has its own bias and baked in values (e.g. western modern values, often supremely meritocratic, technocratic, utilitarian values) which are different from the values powering the methods and forms of reasoning of other cultures and other historical periods. There's a tendency for a superiority complex to creep in where one who takes undue pride in one's "reasoning" sees only one mode of reasoning as the one true reasoning (one true value system).
Ancient cultures had value systems that were entirely different than ours, this doesn't make our scientific reasoning "better" it makes our reasonings incommensurable until you commit to some system of shared values as the one true system of values (e.g. self-preservation, but there's nothing saying that's what humanity should value and in fact one could argue that one of the important facets of being human is the capability to reject this value).
> Ancient cultures had value systems that were entirely different than ours, this doesn't make our scientific reasoning "better"
It's better at coming to the correct conclusions about objective aspects of the world (better – not perfect, mind you). This is useful if your value system prioritises knowledge, though knowledge is pretty useful for all sorts, so I think science is good unless your value system penalises knowledge-generation.
Probably because self-ascribed 'rationalism' can potentially come across a bit self-aggrandizing. Like calling oneself part of the 'patriot' party (which implicitly implies members of other political groups aren't patriotic).
Not that I have a problem with SSC, I think it's a cool blog.
At this point it's pretty common for self-identifying lesswrong-style rationalists to use quote marks, or add a bunch of qualifiers. Weird nerdy people get a lot of hate, there are whole subreddits devoted to hating on "rationalists" for a variety of reasons. Adding quotes tends to calm those people down, and make them a bit less hateful.
“Democrat” is the singular noun form, “Democrats” is the plural noun form, “Democratic” is the adjective form, and “Democrat”-as-adjective is the “signal that the speaker is a hostile partisan" form. They are all useful distinctions.
> While some people get upset about it, "Democrat" is useful to differentiate the two verbally. Obviously capitalization isn't possible.
Not really. "Democrat Party" is literally just a shibboleth used by opposing partisans who are upset that "democratic" is an adjective with positive associations. Everything else is just a post-hoc rationalization.
You think that because a) you don't know the origin of the intentionally incorrect usage of "Democrat" as an adjective, and b) you're confused about the difference between an adjective and a noun.
The usage in that domain name is as a noun. "Joe is a Democrat" is fine. That's a noun. "Democrat politicians" is not fine. That's an adjective.
I would note the pattern is not unique to "Democrat/Democratic"; it is used to turn other descriptors into slurs. Cf. "Jewish" vs. "Jew" as adjectives.
Yes, and I'd certainly try to distinguish whether I meant the specific party or the general concept (either by putting it in quotes or using a capital letter).
Some members of the LessWrong online community call themselves "the rationalist community," but there are plenty of people who self-ascribe as rationalist who don't affiliate with that community. Here, the term means the LessWrong rationalists, not all rationalists everywhere.
I don't know about them, but I've found the community around it both intelligent and accepting. That's not what I've come to expect from the word rationalist.
I remember at the peak of the 2016 post-election meltdown the SSC subreddit hosted a sort of "ask Trump supporters anything" thread. Despite the absolute insanity of the time and only a minuscule fraction of the sub's readership supporting Trump, the conversation was interesting, calm and uniformly civil.
There were a few Social Justice types that used to comment there too; again, all very civil, although there was sometimes the sense that they were regarded as an interesting zoo exhibit.
The quotes might signal opposition, but they also might just signal fuzziness. E.g. This is a word that you're probably familiar with used in a specific jargony way that you cannot deduce merely from the standard definition.
Would you agree that each of those words can be used in "a specific jargony way" and that putting quotation marks around either very likely signals opposition?
I'm not familiar with a distinction between a more common usage and a more jargony usage of those two words. Is there one? Actually, I don't think I really understand any usage of the word "humanist" very well.
With no context, humanism sounds like it's just something pertaining to humans. Also, at least to my perception, the word has a built-in positive valence. But, it has a much more specific meaning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism
ah, but here "rationalist" isn't being used in that particular way. One of the reasons it is sometimes put in quotes, I think, is to distinguish it from the meaning that you've linked.
A rationalist in that sense is someone who holds the philosophical positions described in that article.
A rationalist-in-this-other-sense is someone who, uh, generally has beliefs in some other collection of philosophical positions, and is involved in a certain community/social-circle .
It is an unfortunate overloading of a term.
Some have given a definition of rationalist (or rationalist-adjacent) as : Eliezer Yudkowsky is a rationalist, and anyone who spends a lot of time arguing with rationalists is a rationalist.
This is quite a different thing that the sense of the word described in the Wikipedia article.
Personally, I'm rather fond of the group, but there are still cases where I find myself using quote marks when describing it.
Humans aren't rational. Anyone who claims they are, doesn't understand enough about the human condition to offer you any advice that you should care about.
I think that's part of the problem. The stated goal is to understand our biases and flaws, and to become "less wrong." But it's easy to fall into a trap where one claims to get better at such biases, therefore making them more rational than people who haven't, therefore making their position superior - hence re-enforcing their biases.
A lot of the public declarations coming from "rationalist" communities remind me of public declarations of sin coming from certain religious groups. Though it presents itself as self-effacing, it ends up being affirming. You rarely see the thought extend to "therefore, outgroups that I've been deriding perhaps know better than my ingroup."
Particularly interesting when there are biases that have almost become dogma in certain "rationalist" circles, such as the preoccupation with godlike artificial superintelligence.
