I’m sad that postrationality/metarationality has, as a movement, started to collapse on itself in terms of doing the thing it started out doing.
What I have in mind is that initially, say 5+ years ago, postrationality was something of a banner for folks who were already in the rationalist or rationalist-adjacent community, saw some ways in which rationalists were failing at their own project, and tried to work on figuring out how to do those things.
Now, much like postmodernism before it, I see postrationality collapsing from a thing only for people who were already rationalists and wanted to go beyond its limitations of the time to a kind of prerationality that rejects instead of builds on the rationalist project.
This kind of dynamic is pretty common (cf. premodern, modern, and postmodern) but it still sucks. On the other hand, I guess the good side of it is that I see lots of signs that the rationality community is better integrating some of the early postrationalist insights such that it feels like there’s less to push back against in the median rationalist viewpoint.
Yeah, it seems like postrationalists should somehow establish their rationalist pedigree before claiming the post- title. IIRC, Chapman endorsed this somewhere on twitter? But I can’t find it now. Maybe it was a different postrat. Also it was years ago.
Are there any specific articles you could point out as good examples of this? I don’t remember reading anything about “postrationality” for a year or so—I actually kinda forgot they exist—so I am curious what I missed.
I had a weird feeling from the beginning, when it seemed that Chapman—a leader of a local religious group, if I understand it correctly—became the key figure of “doing rationality better”. On the other hand, it’s not like Less Wrong avoided the religious woo completely. Seems like somehow it only became a minor topic here, and maybe more central one among the postrationalists? (Perhaps because other competing topics, such as AI, were missing?)
Also, I suppose that defining yourself in opposition to something is not helpful to actually finding the “middle way”. Which is why it was easier for rationalists to accept the good arguments made by postrationalists, than the other way round.
I’m sad that postrationality/metarationality has, as a movement, started to collapse on itself in terms of doing the thing it started out doing.
What I have in mind is that initially, say 5+ years ago, postrationality was something of a banner for folks who were already in the rationalist or rationalist-adjacent community, saw some ways in which rationalists were failing at their own project, and tried to work on figuring out how to do those things.
Now, much like postmodernism before it, I see postrationality collapsing from a thing only for people who were already rationalists and wanted to go beyond its limitations of the time to a kind of prerationality that rejects instead of builds on the rationalist project.
This kind of dynamic is pretty common (cf. premodern, modern, and postmodern) but it still sucks. On the other hand, I guess the good side of it is that I see lots of signs that the rationality community is better integrating some of the early postrationalist insights such that it feels like there’s less to push back against in the median rationalist viewpoint.
Yeah, it seems like postrationalists should somehow establish their rationalist pedigree before claiming the post- title. IIRC, Chapman endorsed this somewhere on twitter? But I can’t find it now. Maybe it was a different postrat. Also it was years ago.
Are there any specific articles you could point out as good examples of this? I don’t remember reading anything about “postrationality” for a year or so—I actually kinda forgot they exist—so I am curious what I missed.
I had a weird feeling from the beginning, when it seemed that Chapman—a leader of a local religious group, if I understand it correctly—became the key figure of “doing rationality better”. On the other hand, it’s not like Less Wrong avoided the religious woo completely. Seems like somehow it only became a minor topic here, and maybe more central one among the postrationalists? (Perhaps because other competing topics, such as AI, were missing?)
Also, I suppose that defining yourself in opposition to something is not helpful to actually finding the “middle way”. Which is why it was easier for rationalists to accept the good arguments made by postrationalists, than the other way round.