Related on OB: Taboo Your Words
I realize this seems odd on a blog about rationality, but I'd like to strongly suggest that commenters make an effort to avoid using the words "rational," "rationality," or "rationalist" when other phrases will do. I think we've been stretching the words to cover too much meaning, and it's starting to show.
Here are some suggested substitutions to start you off.
Rationality:
- truth-seeking
- probability updates under bayes rule
- the "winning way"
Rationalist:
- one who reliably wins
- one who can reliably be expected to speak truth
Are there any others?
This point does not seem to degrade the comment.
Rationalization is the standard method of generating explanations - first, one acts, then one comes up with a set of reasons why that happened, which are not necessarily causally related to the action. Wish I had a link to the relevant studies handy.
it's ridiculous to expect a comment to even mention the controversy around the Singularity and the 'anthropic argument'. If you don't know what they are, then you can look them up in all their controversial glory. If you do, then you already know they're controversial. And if something is 'nearly off-topic' then by the definition of 'nearly' it's not off-topic, so I'm not sure what your point is there. And to find a singularity-fan in this crowd should not be a surprise to you; it's another perspective from which to approach the question, and it's clear that this is the perspective of the poster.