Comment by optimalsolver
4 days ago
Pertinent Twitter comment:
"Rationalism is such an insane name for a school of thought. Like calling your ideology correctism or winsargumentism"
4 days ago
Pertinent Twitter comment:
"Rationalism is such an insane name for a school of thought. Like calling your ideology correctism or winsargumentism"
IIUC the name in its current sense was sort of an accident. Yudkowsky originally used the term to mean "someone who succeeds at thinking and acting rationally" (so "correctism" or "winsargumentism" would have been about equally good), and then talked about the idea of "aspiring rationalists" as a community narrowly focused on developing a sort of engineering discipline that would study the scientific principles of how to be right in full generality and put them into practice. Then the community grew and mutated into a broader social milieu that was only sort of about that, and people needed a name for it, and "rationalists" was already there, so that became the name through common usage. It definitely has certain awkwardnesses.
To be honest I don't understand that objection. If you strip it from all its culty sociological effects, one of the original ideas of rationalism was to try to use logical reasoning and statistical techniques to explicitly avoid the pitfalls of known cognitive biases. Given that foundational tenet, "rationalism" seems like an extremely appropriate moniker.
I fully accept that the rationalist community may have morphed into something far beyond that original tenet, but I think rationalism just describes the approach, not that it's the "one true philosophy".
That it refers to a different but confusingly related concept in philosophy is a real downside of the name.
That point seems fair enough to me, as I'm not familiar with the specifics and history of the related concept in philosophy. But that seems different than the objection that calling yourself "rationalist" somehow implies you think that you have the "1 true answer" to the world's problems.
I'm going to start a group called "Mentally Healthy People". We use data, logical thinking, and informal peer review. If you disagree with us, our first question will be "what's wrong with mental health?"
But, to be frank, "Mentally Healthy People" fully acknowledge and accept their emotions, and indeed understand that emotions are the fundamental way that natural selection implements motivation.
Calling yourself "rationalist" doesn't inherently mean that you think you're better than everyone else, or somehow infallible. To me it just means your specific approach to problem solving.
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So... Psychiatry? Do you think psychiatrists are particularly prone to starting cults? Do you think learning about psychiatry makes you at risk for cult-like behavior?
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Right and to your point, I would say you can distinguish (1) "objective" in the sense of relying on mind-independent data from (2) absolute knowledge, which treats subjects like closed conversations. And you can make similar caveats for "rational".
You can be rational and objective about a given topic without it meaning that the conversation is closed, or that all knowledge has been found. So I'm certainly not a fan of cult dynamics, but I think it's easy to throw an unfair charge at these groups, that their interest in the topic necessitates an absolutist disposition.
It's not particularly unusual, though. See the various kinds of 'Realist' groups, for example, which have a pretty wild range of outlooks. (both Realist and Rationalist also have the neat built-in shield of being able to say "look, I don't particularly like the conclusions I'm coming to, they just are what they are", so it's a convenient framing for unpalatable beliefs)
Objectivisim?
What do you make of the word “science” then?
Great names! Are you using them, or are they available? /s