“—but if one hundred thousand [normies] can turn up, to show their support for the [rationalist] community, why can’t you?”
I said wearily, “Because every time I hear the word community, I know I’m being manipulated. If there is such a thing as the [rationalist] community, I’m certainly not a part of it. As it happens, I don’t want to spend my life watching [rationalist and effective altruist] television channels, using [rationalist and effective altruist] news systems … or going to [rationalist and effective altruist] street parades. It’s all so … proprietary. You’d think there was a multinational corporation who had the franchise rights on [truth and goodness]. And if you don’t market the product their way, you’re some kind of second-class, inferior, bootleg, unauthorized [nerd].”
I don’t think this applies to rationalism. it’s not an ideology, or an ethical theory. Rationalism (at least to me as an outside party to all this drama) is exigent to people’s beliefs, and this community is just refining how to describe, and use better objective principles of reality. Edit: I agree with the general idea that psychospheres and the words related to them can act as meaningful keys of meaning, even in rationalist circles. Respect to Zack in this case.
Aside, I also think you’ve suffered what I call the aesthetic death. Too much to explain in a comment section. However, I’ll briefly say; it’s getting yourself wound up in a narrative psychosphere in which you serve archetypes like ‘hero’ and ‘martyr’. I think this serves a purpose when it comes to achieving some greater goal, and helping you with morale. I do not think this post serves some greater goal (if it does, like many others in this comment section, I am confused.) this bit’s been retracted after reading the below comment.
I do not think this post serves some greater goal (if it does, like many others in this comment section, I am confused)
(I’ll try to explain as best I understand, but some of it may not be exactly right)
The goal of this post is to tell the story of Zack’s project (which also serves the project). The goal of Zack’s project is best described by the title of his previous post—he’s creating a Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning.
Rationalists strive to be consistent, take ideas seriously, and propagate our beliefs, which means a fundamental belief about the meaning of words will affect everything we think about, and if it’s wrong, then it will eventually make us be wrong about many things.
Zack saw Scott and Eliezer, the two highest status people in this group/community, plus many others, make such a mistake. With Eliezer it was “you’re not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning.”. With Scott it was “I ought to accept an unexpected [X] or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered [Y] if it’ll save someone’s life.”.
This was relevant to questions about trans, which Zack cares a lot about, so he made a bunch of posts arguing against these propositions. The reason it didn’t remain a mere philosophy of language debate, is that it bumped into the politics of the trans debate. Seeing the political influence made Zack lose faith with the rationalist community, and warranted a post about people instead of just about ideas.
I don’t think this applies to rationalism. it’s not an ideology, or an ethical theory. Rationalism (at least to me as an outside party to all this drama) is exigent to people’s beliefs, and this community is just refining how to describe, and use better objective principles of reality. Edit: I agree with the general idea that psychospheres and the words related to them can act as meaningful keys of meaning, even in rationalist circles. Respect to Zack in this case.
Aside, I also think you’ve suffered what I call the aesthetic death. Too much to explain in a comment section. However, I’ll briefly say; it’s getting yourself wound up in a narrative psychosphere in which you serve archetypes like ‘hero’ and ‘martyr’. I think this serves a purpose when it comes to achieving some greater goal, and helping you with morale.
I do not think this post serves some greater goal (if it does, like many others in this comment section, I am confused.)this bit’s been retracted after reading the below comment.(I’ll try to explain as best I understand, but some of it may not be exactly right)
The goal of this post is to tell the story of Zack’s project (which also serves the project). The goal of Zack’s project is best described by the title of his previous post—he’s creating a Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning.
Rationalists strive to be consistent, take ideas seriously, and propagate our beliefs, which means a fundamental belief about the meaning of words will affect everything we think about, and if it’s wrong, then it will eventually make us be wrong about many things.
Zack saw Scott and Eliezer, the two highest status people in this group/community, plus many others, make such a mistake. With Eliezer it was “you’re not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning.”. With Scott it was “I ought to accept an unexpected [X] or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered [Y] if it’ll save someone’s life.”.
This was relevant to questions about trans, which Zack cares a lot about, so he made a bunch of posts arguing against these propositions. The reason it didn’t remain a mere philosophy of language debate, is that it bumped into the politics of the trans debate. Seeing the political influence made Zack lose faith with the rationalist community, and warranted a post about people instead of just about ideas.
Thank you so much for this explanation. Through this lens, this post makes a lot more sense; a meaningful aesthetic death then.
I don’t know what you mean by aesthetic death, but I’m glad to help :)