Comment by Ifkaluva
4 days ago
That is the definition of “rationalism” as proposed by philosophers like Descartes and Kant, but I don’t think that is an accurate representation of the type of “rationalism” this article describes.
This article describes “rationalism” as described in LessWrong and the sequences by Eliezer Yudkowsky. A good amount of it based on empirical findings from psychology behavior science. It’s called “rationalism” because it seeks to correct common reasoning heuristics that are purported to lead to incorrect reasoning, not in contrast to empiricism.
Agreed, I appreciate that there's a conceptual distinction between the philosophical versions of rationalism and empiricism, but what's being talked about here is a conception that (again, at least notionally) is interested in and compatible with both.
I am pretty sure many of the LessWrong posts are about how to understand the meaning of different types of data and are very much about examining, developing, criticizing a rich variety of empirical attitudes.
I was going to write a similar comment as op, so permit me to defend it:
Many of their "beliefs" - Super-duper intelligence, doom - are clearly not believed by the market; Observing the market is a kind of empiricism and it's completely discounted by the lw-ers