Excellent post, thanks, Eli. You’ve captured some core themes and attitudes of rationalism quite well.
I find the “post” prefix unhelpful whenever I see it used. It implies a final state of whatever it is referring to.
What meaning of “rationality” does “post-rationality” refer to? Is “post-rationality” referring to “rationality” as a cultural identity, or is it referring to “rationality” as a process of optimisation towards achieving some desirable states of the world?
There is an important distinction between someone identifying as a rationalist but acting in self-defeating and antisocial ways and the abstract concept of optimisation itself.
I started attending in-person LessWrong meetups a few months ago, and I’ve found that they attract a wide range of people. Of course, there are the abrasive “truth-seekers” who won’t miss an opportunity to make others feel terrible for saying anything that they deemed to be factually or morally imperfect. However, on the whole, this is not much different from any other group of people I engage. I fail to see how prefixing a word with “post” solves any problems.
Excellent post, thanks, Eli. You’ve captured some core themes and attitudes of rationalism quite well.
I find the “post” prefix unhelpful whenever I see it used. It implies a final state of whatever it is referring to.
What meaning of “rationality” does “post-rationality” refer to? Is “post-rationality” referring to “rationality” as a cultural identity, or is it referring to “rationality” as a process of optimisation towards achieving some desirable states of the world?
There is an important distinction between someone identifying as a rationalist but acting in self-defeating and antisocial ways and the abstract concept of optimisation itself.
I started attending in-person LessWrong meetups a few months ago, and I’ve found that they attract a wide range of people. Of course, there are the abrasive “truth-seekers” who won’t miss an opportunity to make others feel terrible for saying anything that they deemed to be factually or morally imperfect. However, on the whole, this is not much different from any other group of people I engage. I fail to see how prefixing a word with “post” solves any problems.