Comment by ngruhn
4 days ago
Rationalisation is the default mode of operation for humans. Believe first; find evidence to justify it. That's what everyone is doing. Not that self proclaimed rationalists would be free of that. But pretty unfair characterization for a movement whose key goal is to that as little as possible.
The heart of science is not doing this but checking your reason against reality constantly.
It took us thousands upon thousands of years to arrive at this simple idea because it's a blow to our egos and to primate hierarchy and its pretensions of authority. If I am big monkey, I must be right.
I would say it is spot on based on what they do, despite being based at doing the opposite.
Their stated key goal is avoiding it, sure. But in practice?
My idea is that through first principles and made up probabilities, they can reach any conclusion they want. But there's a veil of authority: "I'm a rationalist, therefore I arrived this conclusion, surely not from rationalization, but from first principles, probabilities and logic! It doesn't matter if it sounds insane, because it uses first principles, probabilities and logic!".
Not sure - perhaps true for an oversocialized subset or people who try to wield and gather social influence.
Robinson Crusoe has no use for rationalization. Him rationalizing the berry he ate is not poisonous, or that the shack he built will hold up in the storm is outright dangerous, and definitely useless.
Totally agree, it's like their singular defining characteristic.
It's just that: wanting to have more accurate beliefs. Believing that this is worthwhile even if it's hard to push against human nature of habitually "choosing" beliefs.
Pretty unfair of you to conflate a movement's stated goals with its behavior when the comment that you are replying to is very obviously talking about the latter. So rationalist!