What rationalists are trying to do is something like this:
Describe the paragon of virtue: a society of perfectly rational human beings.
Explain both why people fall short of that ideal, and how they can come closer to it.
Explore the tensions in that account, put that plan into practice on an individual and communal level, and hold a meta-conversation about the best ways to do that.
Now, we have heard that the meek shall inherit the earth. So we eschew the dark arts; embrace the virtues of accuracy, precision, and charity; steelman our opponents’ arguments; try to cite our sources; question ourselves first; and resist the temptation to simply the message for public consumption.
Within those bounds, however, we need to address a few question-clusters.
What keeps our community strong? What weakens it? What is the greatest danger to it in the next year? What is the greatest opportunity? What is present in abundance? What is missing?
How does this community support our individual growth as rationalists? How does it detract from it? How could we be leveraging what our community has to offer? How could we give back?
What rationalists are trying to do is something like this:
Describe the paragon of virtue: a society of perfectly rational human beings.
Explain both why people fall short of that ideal, and how they can come closer to it.
Explore the tensions in that account, put that plan into practice on an individual and communal level, and hold a meta-conversation about the best ways to do that.
This looks exactly like virtue ethics.
Now, we have heard that the meek shall inherit the earth. So we eschew the dark arts; embrace the virtues of accuracy, precision, and charity; steelman our opponents’ arguments; try to cite our sources; question ourselves first; and resist the temptation to simply the message for public consumption.
Within those bounds, however, we need to address a few question-clusters.
What keeps our community strong? What weakens it? What is the greatest danger to it in the next year? What is the greatest opportunity? What is present in abundance? What is missing?
How does this community support our individual growth as rationalists? How does it detract from it? How could we be leveraging what our community has to offer? How could we give back?