As a note on terminology, I don’t think that (Yudkowskian) rationalists use the word “rationalism” to describe our worldview/practice. It’s a natural modification of “rationalist”, and I’ve seen a few people outside the rationalist community use it to refer to our worldview, but e.g. no one ever comes up to me at a party and says, “Have any thoughts about rationalism lately?” We tend to just say “rationality” or “the art of rationality”.
I’d also strongly advocate that we not start using the word “rationalism” for it. Mostly this is because I share your grumble about how the word “rationalist” already has a well-defined meaning to the rest of the world, and I don’t want to extend that overloading and inevitable confusion by using the word “rationalism” alongside it.
I’m tempted to try to come up with better names for our worldview, but there are actually some advantages to not having a clear proper-noun-type name. One is that everyone immediately gets the gist of what “rationalists” are about. Stereotypes aside, it’s an advantage over being called “the Frobnitzists” or something else inscrutable. Another is that, as described in the virtue of the void, we don’t know exactly what the name is for what we want; we’re trying to move toward that which cannot be named. If we give our current best-guess a proper noun like the Debiasers or the Bayesian Conspiracy, then we might be stuck with that even after we shift to a better understanding, or worse yet, we might think we’ve found the ultimate answer and become stuck to it through the name.
I ~agree with this comment. If we do ever want a noun, I’ve proposed error-reductionism. Or maybe we want something more Anglophone… lessening-of-mistake-ism, or something......
As a note on terminology, I don’t think that (Yudkowskian) rationalists use the word “rationalism” to describe our worldview/practice. It’s a natural modification of “rationalist”, and I’ve seen a few people outside the rationalist community use it to refer to our worldview, but e.g. no one ever comes up to me at a party and says, “Have any thoughts about rationalism lately?” We tend to just say “rationality” or “the art of rationality”.
I’d also strongly advocate that we not start using the word “rationalism” for it. Mostly this is because I share your grumble about how the word “rationalist” already has a well-defined meaning to the rest of the world, and I don’t want to extend that overloading and inevitable confusion by using the word “rationalism” alongside it.
I’m tempted to try to come up with better names for our worldview, but there are actually some advantages to not having a clear proper-noun-type name. One is that everyone immediately gets the gist of what “rationalists” are about. Stereotypes aside, it’s an advantage over being called “the Frobnitzists” or something else inscrutable. Another is that, as described in the virtue of the void, we don’t know exactly what the name is for what we want; we’re trying to move toward that which cannot be named. If we give our current best-guess a proper noun like the Debiasers or the Bayesian Conspiracy, then we might be stuck with that even after we shift to a better understanding, or worse yet, we might think we’ve found the ultimate answer and become stuck to it through the name.
I ~agree with this comment. If we do ever want a noun, I’ve proposed error-reductionism. Or maybe we want something more Anglophone… lessening-of-mistake-ism, or something......