I generally using “rationalist” as a short-hand catchall among people who will already know what i’m talking about, ie with my girlfriend or with ppl in ratsphere tumblr. i would never introduce myself to someone outside of the community that way, so maybe i’m also not the target audience for your question.
however, i feel like the minority of people who would self-identify as a “rationalist” to someone decidedly outgroup (hasn’t heard of LessWrong/EY, isn’t interested in EA, consequentialism, etc) is a different problem where the term itself isn’t inherently the problem. people would probably be equally weirded out if you described yourself as a “utilitarian” or “effective altruist” just bc describing ourselves by our philosophies is not super common in the world-at-large.
i do really like the term aspirationalist tho. is it pronounced like aspir-rationalist or aspiration-alist ?
While I do think it’s fine to use them term reactively with people who initiate it, I would still advice against using it proactively because sometimes a person you think is ingroup is actually surprisingly outgroup. My local EA group has a surprising lack of LWers and I would rather we slowly faze-out or replace it’s usage, instead of continuing to use it and increasing the risk of causing unnecessary confusion amongst the pseudo-ingroup.
EDIT: Also saying you’re utilitarian is indeed weird, but it is not actively causing confusion like ‘rationalist’ does, so I would honestly prefer that.
Since this is me throwing a compromise to the folk that do use rationalist, I would suggest pronouncing it like aspir-rationalist.
I generally using “rationalist” as a short-hand catchall among people who will already know what i’m talking about, ie with my girlfriend or with ppl in ratsphere tumblr. i would never introduce myself to someone outside of the community that way, so maybe i’m also not the target audience for your question.
however, i feel like the minority of people who would self-identify as a “rationalist” to someone decidedly outgroup (hasn’t heard of LessWrong/EY, isn’t interested in EA, consequentialism, etc) is a different problem where the term itself isn’t inherently the problem. people would probably be equally weirded out if you described yourself as a “utilitarian” or “effective altruist” just bc describing ourselves by our philosophies is not super common in the world-at-large.
i do really like the term aspirationalist tho. is it pronounced like aspir-rationalist or aspiration-alist ?
While I do think it’s fine to use them term reactively with people who initiate it, I would still advice against using it proactively because sometimes a person you think is ingroup is actually surprisingly outgroup. My local EA group has a surprising lack of LWers and I would rather we slowly faze-out or replace it’s usage, instead of continuing to use it and increasing the risk of causing unnecessary confusion amongst the pseudo-ingroup.
EDIT: Also saying you’re utilitarian is indeed weird, but it is not actively causing confusion like ‘rationalist’ does, so I would honestly prefer that.
Since this is me throwing a compromise to the folk that do use rationalist, I would suggest pronouncing it like aspir-rationalist.