handoflixue comments on Reflections on rationality a year out - Less Wrong

90 [deleted] 31 March 2011 01:35AM

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Comment author: ohwilleke 31 March 2011 02:28:27AM 0 points [-]

FWIW, I am inclined to think that "rationality" is a bad brand identification for a good thing. Rationality conjures up "Spock" (the Star Trek character) not "Spock" (the compassionate and wise child rearing guru). It puts an emphasis on a very inhuman part of the kind of human being you feel you are becoming.

Whatever it means in your context, as a brand to evangelize to others about its benefits, it is lacking. Better, in the sense of offering a positive vision, perhaps than "atheism" or "secularism" but not still not grounded and humane enough. I like "naturalist" better, although it is loaded with the connotation of bird watching, and also "humanist" although the term, without the modifier "secular" can mean little more than someone who gives a damn. "Enlightened" (as in the Enlightenment era) might be a good term if it weren't so damned arrogant in the modern vernacular.

The sense that I think you are trying to capture of something of the sense conveyed by the title to Carl Sagan's book "Demon Haunted World." You want to convey the joys of having exorcised the demons and opening yourself to seeing the world more clearly. But, to sell it to others, I think it is necessary to find a better marketing plan.

Comment author: handoflixue 07 April 2011 10:34:05PM 0 points [-]

I've been using the word "Luminous" to explicitly refer to "LessWrong rationality" (as opposed to "Spock rationality"). It's a bit of a kludge, but the concept has always felt central to what I get out of LessWrong. I'm not sure how true this is for others.

Tongue-in-cheek, I'd also suggest "Illuminati" ;)

Comment author: Alicorn 07 April 2011 10:46:40PM 1 point [-]

Luminosity is already a technical term for a subset of rationality skills. If it's the subset you usually have cause to talk about, there's nothing wrong with that, but calling the entire thing that seems just mistaken.

Comment author: handoflixue 07 April 2011 10:54:35PM 1 point [-]

nods I am aware it's a subset, thus calling it a kludge.

Certainly, I'm open to a better term, but I happen to deal with a lot of "Spock" rationalists, as have many of the people I talk to, so having some way of distinguishing "no I don't mean that idiocy" is important to me, and this is the best-fit that I've found so far.

The chain of thought, if you're curious: On a non-verbal/intuitive level, I feel like the sub-skill of Luminosity is a lot of what distinguishes "LessWrong" rational from "Spock" rational. Since "LessWrong Rationality" is itself fairly awkward phrase (referring as it does to a single specific community), I substituted "Luminous rationality", and that eventually got short-handed back to just "Luminous". English allows for all sorts of weird confusing things where a word refers to both the set and a specific subset (frex, "man" referring to both "humans" and "humans who are male"), so while it's kludgy, it works for me.

I can completely understand this word not working well for others :)