I’m finding this hard to parse because Chapman generally is using the word “rational” to mean something different from what I mean, so I can’t tell whether there’s a new thing here or not.
(Stem fluidity bridge is fun because Chapman is finally complaining about an outgroup that apparently he and I both dislike, which is… most postmodernist academics except for the very first ones. He claims the first postmodernists were correctly noticing something incomplete about “systematic rationality” [which I think still means something other than LW style rationality, or at least only a subset of LW style rationality], and then they didn’t quite articulate it, and then they accidentally trained successors who eventually lost systematic rationality, which you actually need to understand before you can transcend it)
I’d argue the thing about LW-style rationality doesn’t matter as much as most people think it does due to over indexing on the vibe of the sequences. No matter how much I hear folks say “that’s not LW-style rationality” I just look at what LW-style rationalists actually do and it’s much closer to Chapman’s notion of rationality than actual meta-rationality. Maybe at best I’d say something like playing at meta-rationality without actually giving up the key stuff about rationality that holds people back?
Anyway, that’s not an actual argument, just claiming I think there’s something important going on here that means saying he’s not talking about LW-style rationality (as written about or aspired to) misses the point.
Chapman generally does, yes; his most explicit definition for “rationality” in his sense is on this page:
The book uses “rationality” to refer to systematic, formal methods for thinking and acting; not in the broader sense of “any sensible way of thinking or acting,” as opposed to irrationality. [...]
Meanings of “rational” have multiplied and evolved over centuries, which can create confusion. In the broadest sense, it’s synonymous with “sensible.” In some narrow senses, it means using a specific mathematical system to decide what to do.
I will use it in an intermediate sense: rational methods are formal, systematic, explicit, technical, abstract, atypical, non-obvious ways of thinking and acting, which have some distinctive virtue relative to informal ones.1 “Methods” suggests that rationality is a practical activity: things we actually do, rather than a metaphysical ideal we should aspire to.
“Systematic” and “formal” are key criteria, but both are nebulous. They are a matter of degree. Mathematical logic is extremely formal; a chemistry methods manual is quite formal; a corporate personnel policy is somewhat formal; a “Do Today” task checklist is only barely formal. “System” is used vaguely to mean almost anything complicated. I’ll use it a little more specifically, as meaning a set of rules that can be printed in a book, which a person can consciously follow, and the activities and mechanisms that result.
Rationality works mainly with general knowledge. Ideally, it aims for universal truths. Typically, knowledge of a specific object does not count as “rational” unless it applies to every other object in some class. The glory of Newton’s theory of gravity is that it is true uniformly everywhere in the universe, equally for an apple and an asteroid.
I’m finding this hard to parse because Chapman generally is using the word “rational” to mean something different from what I mean, so I can’t tell whether there’s a new thing here or not.
Update: I didn’t get anything out of this piece, but I did get value from reading:
https://metarationality.com/bongard-meta-rationality
and
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
(Stem fluidity bridge is fun because Chapman is finally complaining about an outgroup that apparently he and I both dislike, which is… most postmodernist academics except for the very first ones. He claims the first postmodernists were correctly noticing something incomplete about “systematic rationality” [which I think still means something other than LW style rationality, or at least only a subset of LW style rationality], and then they didn’t quite articulate it, and then they accidentally trained successors who eventually lost systematic rationality, which you actually need to understand before you can transcend it)
I’d argue the thing about LW-style rationality doesn’t matter as much as most people think it does due to over indexing on the vibe of the sequences. No matter how much I hear folks say “that’s not LW-style rationality” I just look at what LW-style rationalists actually do and it’s much closer to Chapman’s notion of rationality than actual meta-rationality. Maybe at best I’d say something like playing at meta-rationality without actually giving up the key stuff about rationality that holds people back?
Anyway, that’s not an actual argument, just claiming I think there’s something important going on here that means saying he’s not talking about LW-style rationality (as written about or aspired to) misses the point.
Chapman generally does, yes; his most explicit definition for “rationality” in his sense is on this page: