Rational is about how you think, not how you got there. There have been many rational people throughout history who have read approximately none of that.
I am mostly talking about epistemic rationality, not instrumental rationality. With that in mind, I wouldn’t consider anyone from a hundred years ago or earlier to be up to my epistemic standards because they simply did not have access to the requisite information, ie. cognitive science and Bayesian epistemology. There are people that figured it out in certain domains (like figuring out that the labels in your mind are not the actual things that they represent), but those people are very exceptional and I doubt that I will meet people that are capable of the pioneering, original work that these exceptional people did.
What I want are people who know about cognitive biases, understand why they are very important, and have actively tried to reduce the effects of those biases on themselves. I want people who explicitly understand the map and territory distinction. I want people who are aware of truth-seeking versus status arguments. I want people who don’t step on philosophical landmines and don’t get mindkilled. I would not expect someone to have all of these without having at least read some of Lesswrong or the above material. They might have collected some of these beliefs and mental algorithms on their own, but it is highly unlikely that they came across all of them.
Is that too much to ask? Are my standards too high? I hope not.
Eh, without adopting particularly unconventional (for this site) standards, you could reasonably say that there have been very few rational people throughout history (or none.)
There’s a reason people on this site use the phrase “I’m an aspiring rationalist.”
Rational is about how you think, not how you got there. There have been many rational people throughout history who have read approximately none of that.
I am mostly talking about epistemic rationality, not instrumental rationality. With that in mind, I wouldn’t consider anyone from a hundred years ago or earlier to be up to my epistemic standards because they simply did not have access to the requisite information, ie. cognitive science and Bayesian epistemology. There are people that figured it out in certain domains (like figuring out that the labels in your mind are not the actual things that they represent), but those people are very exceptional and I doubt that I will meet people that are capable of the pioneering, original work that these exceptional people did.
What I want are people who know about cognitive biases, understand why they are very important, and have actively tried to reduce the effects of those biases on themselves. I want people who explicitly understand the map and territory distinction. I want people who are aware of truth-seeking versus status arguments. I want people who don’t step on philosophical landmines and don’t get mindkilled. I would not expect someone to have all of these without having at least read some of Lesswrong or the above material. They might have collected some of these beliefs and mental algorithms on their own, but it is highly unlikely that they came across all of them.
Is that too much to ask? Are my standards too high? I hope not.
Eh, without adopting particularly unconventional (for this site) standards, you could reasonably say that there have been very few rational people throughout history (or none.)
There’s a reason people on this site use the phrase “I’m an aspiring rationalist.”