Phil’s terminology is probably the way I would have worded the same.
Posts that talk about things like “how do we use the anthropic principle”, “what is morality”, “what decision theory makes sense”, “what is a mysterious answer to a mysterious question”, etc. all seem object-level...
...whereas there’s another class of posts that always uses the word “rationality”—ie “how can we be more rational in our lives”, “how can we promote rationality”, “am I a good enough rationalist if...” “who is/isn’t a rationalist” et cetera, and these seem properly termed meta-level because they involve being rational about rationality.
I have a feeling the latter class of posts would benefit if they tried to taboo “rationality”.
Phil’s terminology is probably the way I would have worded the same.
Posts that talk about things like “how do we use the anthropic principle”, “what is morality”, “what decision theory makes sense”, “what is a mysterious answer to a mysterious question”, etc. all seem object-level...
...whereas there’s another class of posts that always uses the word “rationality”—ie “how can we be more rational in our lives”, “how can we promote rationality”, “am I a good enough rationalist if...” “who is/isn’t a rationalist” et cetera, and these seem properly termed meta-level because they involve being rational about rationality.
I have a feeling the latter class of posts would benefit if they tried to taboo “rationality”.
or: use rationality and don’t mention it.
Bingo.
Perhaps these would be good rewrite targets.
Much clearer than the original post.