I don’t remember BECOMING a rationalist, just going through life thinking how stupid everyone was.
When I was seven or so, I asked my mother if she and dad believed in god, and she gave some handwavy answer about believing in a kind of magical force to the universe, like in star wars, and I thought “Boy, that’s stupid.”
I don’t use the word “rationalist” to refer to myself, because it throws me in with you lot, most of whom I still think are stupid.
To my way of thinking, “rationalist” has a certain stink to it, it has connotations of people sitting around arguing about arguing, writing pages of tedious probability math using “prior probabilities” they pulled out of their asses.
In one sense, being a rationalist just means that you try to be rational. But it seems like a stupid thing to wear on your sleeve, because everybody tries to be rational.
There’s a sense in which objectivism is just the belief that reality is mind-independent. But I don’t go around calling myself an objectivist either.
Not everyone tries to be rational. Some people despise rationality because of the same stink you attribute to it, or because of others. To them it might connote atheism, or linking themselves to low-status entities like “the man” or “the sheeple.”
A rational person is someone who applies rationality. A rationalist is someone who advocates the application of rationality, just as a racist is someone who argues the fundamental importance of racial status and history, or a “homosexualist” is someone who (purportedly) wants to make homosexuality part of all our lives.
There’s a dangerous potential to be confused between (for example) “objectivity” (the belief you mention) and “objectivism” (membership in the low-status group you mention).
I don’t remember BECOMING a rationalist, just going through life thinking how stupid everyone was.
When I was seven or so, I asked my mother if she and dad believed in god, and she gave some handwavy answer about believing in a kind of magical force to the universe, like in star wars, and I thought “Boy, that’s stupid.”
I don’t use the word “rationalist” to refer to myself, because it throws me in with you lot, most of whom I still think are stupid.
By this logic you may as well not call yourself a human, “because most humans are stupid”.
To my way of thinking, “rationalist” has a certain stink to it, it has connotations of people sitting around arguing about arguing, writing pages of tedious probability math using “prior probabilities” they pulled out of their asses.
In one sense, being a rationalist just means that you try to be rational. But it seems like a stupid thing to wear on your sleeve, because everybody tries to be rational.
There’s a sense in which objectivism is just the belief that reality is mind-independent. But I don’t go around calling myself an objectivist either.
Not everyone tries to be rational. Some people despise rationality because of the same stink you attribute to it, or because of others. To them it might connote atheism, or linking themselves to low-status entities like “the man” or “the sheeple.”
A rational person is someone who applies rationality. A rationalist is someone who advocates the application of rationality, just as a racist is someone who argues the fundamental importance of racial status and history, or a “homosexualist” is someone who (purportedly) wants to make homosexuality part of all our lives.
There’s a dangerous potential to be confused between (for example) “objectivity” (the belief you mention) and “objectivism” (membership in the low-status group you mention).