A related thing I was thinking about for some time: Seems to me that the line between “building on X” and “disagreeing with X” is sometimes unclear, and the final choice is often made because of social reasons rather than because of the natural structure of the idea-space. (In other words, the ideology is not the community; therefore the relations between two ideologies often do not determine the relations between the respective communities.)
Imagine that there was a guy X who said some wise things: A, B, and C. Later, there was another guy Y who said: A, B, C, and D. Now depending on how Y feels about X, he could describe his own wisdom as either “standing on shoulders of giants, such as X”, or “debunking of teachings of X, who was foolishly ignorant about D”. (Sometimes it’s not really Y alone, but rather the followers of Y, who make the choice.) Two descriptions of the same situation; very different connotations.
To give a specific example, is Scott Alexander a post-rationalist? (I am not sure whether he ever wrote anything on this topic, but even if he did, let’s ignore it completely now, because… well, he could be mistaken about where he really belongs.) Let’s try to find out the answer based on his online behavior.
There are some similarities: He writes a blog outside of LW. He goes against some norms of LW (e.g. he debates politics). He is admired by many people on LW, because he writes things they find insightful. At the same time, a large part of his audience disagrees with some core LW teachings (e.g. all religious SSC readers presumably disagree with LW taking atheism as the obviously rational conclusion).
So it seems like he is in a perfect position to brand himself as something that means “kinda like the rationalists, only better”. Why didn’t this happen? First, because Scott is not interested in doing this. Second, because Scott writes about the rationalist community in a way that doesn’t even allow his fans (e.g. the large part that disagrees with LW) to do this for him. Scott is loyal to the rationalist project and community.
If we agree that this is what makes Scott a non-post-rationalist, despite all the similarities with them, than it provides some information about what being a post-rationalist means. (Essentially, what you wrote in the article.)
Scott could do all those things and be a rationalist-adjacent. He’s a rationalist under my typology because he shares the sincere yearning and striving for understanding all of the things in one modality, even if he is okay with the utility of sometimes spending time in other modalities. (Which he doesn’t seem to, much, but he respects people who do- he just wants to understand what’s happening with them.)
A related thing I was thinking about for some time: Seems to me that the line between “building on X” and “disagreeing with X” is sometimes unclear, and the final choice is often made because of social reasons rather than because of the natural structure of the idea-space. (In other words, the ideology is not the community; therefore the relations between two ideologies often do not determine the relations between the respective communities.)
Imagine that there was a guy X who said some wise things: A, B, and C. Later, there was another guy Y who said: A, B, C, and D. Now depending on how Y feels about X, he could describe his own wisdom as either “standing on shoulders of giants, such as X”, or “debunking of teachings of X, who was foolishly ignorant about D”. (Sometimes it’s not really Y alone, but rather the followers of Y, who make the choice.) Two descriptions of the same situation; very different connotations.
To give a specific example, is Scott Alexander a post-rationalist? (I am not sure whether he ever wrote anything on this topic, but even if he did, let’s ignore it completely now, because… well, he could be mistaken about where he really belongs.) Let’s try to find out the answer based on his online behavior.
There are some similarities: He writes a blog outside of LW. He goes against some norms of LW (e.g. he debates politics). He is admired by many people on LW, because he writes things they find insightful. At the same time, a large part of his audience disagrees with some core LW teachings (e.g. all religious SSC readers presumably disagree with LW taking atheism as the obviously rational conclusion).
So it seems like he is in a perfect position to brand himself as something that means “kinda like the rationalists, only better”. Why didn’t this happen? First, because Scott is not interested in doing this. Second, because Scott writes about the rationalist community in a way that doesn’t even allow his fans (e.g. the large part that disagrees with LW) to do this for him. Scott is loyal to the rationalist project and community.
If we agree that this is what makes Scott a non-post-rationalist, despite all the similarities with them, than it provides some information about what being a post-rationalist means. (Essentially, what you wrote in the article.)
Scott could do all those things and be a rationalist-adjacent. He’s a rationalist under my typology because he shares the sincere yearning and striving for understanding all of the things in one modality, even if he is okay with the utility of sometimes spending time in other modalities. (Which he doesn’t seem to, much, but he respects people who do- he just wants to understand what’s happening with them.)