One reason against rationalist, though not a huge one, is that in philosophy it refers to an adherent of a particular theory of epistemology which is usually held in opposition to empiricism. See Rationalism. Since I’m pretty sure the vast majority of Less Wrong readers stridently oppose rationalist epistemology it could lead to confusion (though obviously only among the relatively small number of people who have studied epistemology).
One reason against rationalist, though not a huge one, is that in philosophy it refers to an adherent of a particular theory of epistemology [...] it could lead to confusion (though obviously only among the relatively small number of people who have studied epistemology).
Since it’s in Philosophy 101 (or so I assume), you don’t need to study that much. The meaning of the term shifted over time, it’s like appealing to the etymology of some normal word in the already pointless definition debate.
I don’t think the outcome of this thread will be to produce an agreed upon name by vote. Its sort of like the French trying to keep their language from being polluted by English words- this just isn’t how things get named.
There seems to be a lot of hesitancy in considering this community a movement with aspirations of anything but improving ourselves. If that’s the case I suspect there will never be a standardized name. People will call themselves different things. If on the other hand this site leads to advocating outside the confounds of lesswrong.com the name we end up adopting will as likely as not be chosen by our opponents. Even if that isn’t the case what we call ourselves will be decided more or less organically. If we people use rationalist a lot maybe that will be it. I’ll likely not use among some of the company I keep.
And to contradict the preceding paragraphs… is there something wrong with Bayesians?
(a) Nobody can actually be Bayesian. Nothing made of quarks can be Bayesian.
(b) This is such a good existing word that I would be afraid of contaminating it if something goes wrong, and others might not take well to anyone trying to “steal” it.
Hmmm… What matters is the structure you can use to represent a hypothesis space for your purposes, not its size in some silly representation. If you can denote 3^^^^3 states as X and get away with it, it doesn’t matter that the number of states is 3^^^^3 and not (horror!) 3^^^3.
This could be the premise for a wicked good hard sci-fi whodunnit!
(The mystery would be revealed by deducing that the murderer would have to have been a perfect Bayesian, thus revealing the one suspect who is not made up of quarks to be guilty.)
The best argument against it is that it isn’t really a unique descriptor such that it can be falsified usefully.
Most posts and comments on LessWrong would work just as well if the authors were frequentist statisticians, old fashioned logical positivists, or even people who couldn’t really do the math. The epistemic viewpoint doesn’t actually hang off of a uniquely Bayesian procedure.
One reason against rationalist, though not a huge one, is that in philosophy it refers to an adherent of a particular theory of epistemology which is usually held in opposition to empiricism. See Rationalism. Since I’m pretty sure the vast majority of Less Wrong readers stridently oppose rationalist epistemology it could lead to confusion (though obviously only among the relatively small number of people who have studied epistemology).
Since it’s in Philosophy 101 (or so I assume), you don’t need to study that much. The meaning of the term shifted over time, it’s like appealing to the etymology of some normal word in the already pointless definition debate.
I agree, but is there a good alternative? I’ve heard a couple of complaints that I agree with, but is rationalist just the least bad term?
You don’t like Less Wrong reader?
Neither do I, really.
I don’t think the outcome of this thread will be to produce an agreed upon name by vote. Its sort of like the French trying to keep their language from being polluted by English words- this just isn’t how things get named.
There seems to be a lot of hesitancy in considering this community a movement with aspirations of anything but improving ourselves. If that’s the case I suspect there will never be a standardized name. People will call themselves different things. If on the other hand this site leads to advocating outside the confounds of lesswrong.com the name we end up adopting will as likely as not be chosen by our opponents. Even if that isn’t the case what we call ourselves will be decided more or less organically. If we people use rationalist a lot maybe that will be it. I’ll likely not use among some of the company I keep.
And to contradict the preceding paragraphs… is there something wrong with Bayesians?
(a) Nobody can actually be Bayesian. Nothing made of quarks can be Bayesian.
(b) This is such a good existing word that I would be afraid of contaminating it if something goes wrong, and others might not take well to anyone trying to “steal” it.
Do you mean that they can’t use Solomonoff’s prior? It’s easy for a computer to be Bayesian about a very simple universe, no?
A sufficiently small, discrete universe with known physics? Yes. But not in real life. All real-world hypothesis spaces are exponential or larger.
Hmmm… What matters is the structure you can use to represent a hypothesis space for your purposes, not its size in some silly representation. If you can denote 3^^^^3 states as X and get away with it, it doesn’t matter that the number of states is 3^^^^3 and not (horror!) 3^^^3.
“Nothing made of quarks can be Bayesian.”
This could be the premise for a wicked good hard sci-fi whodunnit!
(The mystery would be revealed by deducing that the murderer would have to have been a perfect Bayesian, thus revealing the one suspect who is not made up of quarks to be guilty.)
Explain?
The best argument against it is that it isn’t really a unique descriptor such that it can be falsified usefully.
Most posts and comments on LessWrong would work just as well if the authors were frequentist statisticians, old fashioned logical positivists, or even people who couldn’t really do the math. The epistemic viewpoint doesn’t actually hang off of a uniquely Bayesian procedure.