none of this stuff about choosing beliefs is in conflict with standard LW rationality
What do you mean, “choosing beliefs”? The bit of my comment that you quoted said nothing about choosing beliefs. The situation I describe doesn’t seem to require “choosing beliefs”. You just believe what is, to the best of your ability to discern, true. That’s all. What “choosing” is there?
Someone might then respond, “well if it’s so ordinary, what’s this whole thing about post/metarationality being totally different from ordinary rationality, then?” Honestly, beats me. I don’t think it really is particularly different, and giving it a special label that implies that it’s anything else than just a straightforward application of ordinary rationality is just confusing matters and doing everyone a disservice. But that’s the label we seem to have ended up with.
Maybe what you’re talking about is different from what everyone else who is into “postrationality”, or what have you, is talking about?
Without getting deeper into that topic, I’ll just say that there are ways of interpreting mythic mode which I think are perfectly in line with the kinds of examples I’ve been giving in the comments of this post
But… I think that your examples are examples of the wrong way to think about things… “crazy” is probably an overstatement for your comments (as opposed to those of some other people), but “wrong” does not seem to be…
“Someone might then respond, “well if it’s so ordinary, what’s this whole thing about post/metarationality being totally different from ordinary rationality, then?” Honestly, beats me. I don’t think it really is particularly different, and giving it a special label that implies that it’s anything else than just a straightforward application of ordinary rationality is just confusing matters and doing everyone a disservice. But that’s the label we seem to have ended up with.”
Maybe what you’re talking about is different from what everyone else who is into “postrationality”, or what have you, is talking about?
(sorry; I can’t seem to nest blockquotes in the comments; that’s the best I could do)
For myself I find this point is poorly understood by most self-identified rationalists, and I think most people reading the sequences come out of them as positivists because Eliezer didn’t hammer the point home hard enough and positivism is the default within the wider community of rationality-aligned folks (e.g. STEM folks). I wish all this disagreement were just a simple matter politics over who gets to use what names, but it’s not because there’s a real disagreement over epistemology. Given that “rationality” was always a term that was bound to get conflated with the rationality of high modernism, it’s perhaps not surprising that those of us who got fed up with the positivists ended up giving ourselves a new name.
This is made all the more complicated because Eliezer does specifically call out positivism as a failure mode, so it makes pinning people down on this all the more tricky because they can just say “look, Eliezer said rationality is not this”. As the responses to this post make clear, though, the positivist streak is alive and well in the LW community given what I read as a strong reaction against the calling out of positivism or for that matter privileging any particular leap of faith (although positivists don’t necessarily think of themselves as doing that because they disagree with the premise that we can’t know the criterion of truth). So this all leads me to the position that we have need of a distinction for now because of our disagreement on this fundamental issue that has many effects on what is and is not considered to be useful to our shared pursuits.
For myself I find this point is poorly understood by most self-identified rationalists, and I think most people reading the sequences come out of them as positivists because Eliezer didn’t hammer the point home hard enough and positivism is the default within the wider community of rationality-aligned folks (e.g. STEM folks).
Maybe so, but I can’t help noticing that whenever I try to think of concrete examples about what postrationality implies in practice, I always end up with examples that you could just as well justify using the standard rationalist epistemology. E.g. all my examples in this comment section. So while I certainly agree that the postrationalist epistemology is different from the standard rationalist one, I’m having difficulties thinking of any specific actions or predictions that you would really need the postrationalist epistemology to justify. Something like the criterion of truth is a subtle point which a lot of people don’t seem to get, yes, but it also feels like one which doesn’t make any practical difference whether you get it or not. And theoretical points which people can disagree a lot about despite not making any practical difference are almost the prototypical example of tribal labels. John Tooby:
The more biased away from neutral truth, the better the communication functions to affirm coalitional identity, generating polarization in excess of actual policy disagreements. Communications of practical and functional truths are generally useless as differential signals, because any honest person might say them regardless of coalitional loyalty. In contrast, unusual, exaggerated beliefs—such as supernatural beliefs (e.g., god is three persons but also one person), alarmism, conspiracies, or hyperbolic comparisons—are unlikely to be said except as expressive of identity, because there is no external reality to motivate nonmembers to speak absurdities.
(sorry; I can’t seem to nest blockquotes in the comments; that’s the best I could do)
Not related to your points, but re: blockquotes and nesting, try the GreaterWrong editor; you can select some text and click the blockquote button, then select text (including the blockquoted) and click blockquote again, etc., and it’ll nest it properly for you.
What do you mean, “choosing beliefs”? The bit of my comment that you quoted said nothing about choosing beliefs. The situation I describe doesn’t seem to require “choosing beliefs”. You just believe what is, to the best of your ability to discern, true. That’s all. What “choosing” is there?
Maybe what you’re talking about is different from what everyone else who is into “postrationality”, or what have you, is talking about?
But… I think that your examples are examples of the wrong way to think about things… “crazy” is probably an overstatement for your comments (as opposed to those of some other people), but “wrong” does not seem to be…
(sorry; I can’t seem to nest blockquotes in the comments; that’s the best I could do)
For myself I find this point is poorly understood by most self-identified rationalists, and I think most people reading the sequences come out of them as positivists because Eliezer didn’t hammer the point home hard enough and positivism is the default within the wider community of rationality-aligned folks (e.g. STEM folks). I wish all this disagreement were just a simple matter politics over who gets to use what names, but it’s not because there’s a real disagreement over epistemology. Given that “rationality” was always a term that was bound to get conflated with the rationality of high modernism, it’s perhaps not surprising that those of us who got fed up with the positivists ended up giving ourselves a new name.
This is made all the more complicated because Eliezer does specifically call out positivism as a failure mode, so it makes pinning people down on this all the more tricky because they can just say “look, Eliezer said rationality is not this”. As the responses to this post make clear, though, the positivist streak is alive and well in the LW community given what I read as a strong reaction against the calling out of positivism or for that matter privileging any particular leap of faith (although positivists don’t necessarily think of themselves as doing that because they disagree with the premise that we can’t know the criterion of truth). So this all leads me to the position that we have need of a distinction for now because of our disagreement on this fundamental issue that has many effects on what is and is not considered to be useful to our shared pursuits.
Maybe so, but I can’t help noticing that whenever I try to think of concrete examples about what postrationality implies in practice, I always end up with examples that you could just as well justify using the standard rationalist epistemology. E.g. all my examples in this comment section. So while I certainly agree that the postrationalist epistemology is different from the standard rationalist one, I’m having difficulties thinking of any specific actions or predictions that you would really need the postrationalist epistemology to justify. Something like the criterion of truth is a subtle point which a lot of people don’t seem to get, yes, but it also feels like one which doesn’t make any practical difference whether you get it or not. And theoretical points which people can disagree a lot about despite not making any practical difference are almost the prototypical example of tribal labels. John Tooby:
Not related to your points, but re: blockquotes and nesting, try the GreaterWrong editor; you can select some text and click the blockquote button, then select text (including the blockquoted) and click blockquote again, etc., and it’ll nest it properly for you.