What's an example of a statement that defines humans more than biology? I still think that we're talking about a contradiction/paradox in the map, not the territory.

I wonder what this post would look like without so many nouns, author names and so on.

I am not 100% sure what paradigm of paradox you ascribe to, but if it is the same as what has been argued elsewhere in this series of posts, it seems to be dialetheism, Honestly, I really do not know where this train of thought stems from, or the cognitive implications of it. My understanding of Weber's work places the word "paradox" within the paradigm of antinomy. The primary purpose of this paradigm of paradoxes is to highlight the fallacy of linguistic construction in its fragmentation of reality through categorization.

Wow. I don't think I understood any of that. Out of curiosity, what is your field of study? I think there is a part of me that has an innate allergy to any text laden with words like "dialetheism" and "antinomy", especially if they're not defined within the text. Then again, that attitude is exactly what you're criticizing in this comment, so maybe I'll Wikipedia those terms and see if I can hammer out a bit of an understanding.

I do have to admit that I'm in a field that uses long, complex terms of its own. These terms convey very specific information to someone else with the same education as me, and hardly any useful information to someone without that education. But I wouldn't get into a conversation with a stranger and use terms like 'hyperbilirubinemia' or 'myelomeningocele' without explaining them first.

Of course I want to talk to you, debates are always interesting.

If you assert this:

saying rationality is a matter of degrees is basically what a paradox does.

and then this:

A paradox is the assertion that there can be multiple equally valid truth's to a situation.

That sounds a lot like the Fallacy of Grey, even if you meant to say something different. Using the word paradox implies that the "multiple equally valid truths" are contradictory in nature, if so you'd end up with the Fallacy of Grey through the Principle of Explosion.

But regardless, you can't just say "It's a paradox." and leave it at that. Feeling that it's a paradox, no matter what paradigm that you're using, shows that you don't have the actual answer. Take antinomy for example, specifically Kant's second antinomy concerning Atomism. It's not actually a paradox, it was just that at the time we had a incomplete theory of how the universe works. Now we know that the universe isn't constructed of individual particles.

You might find this and this useful further reading.

I'm interested in what you see to be the distinction between linear and non-linear rationality, I'm unfamiliar with applying the concept of linearity to rationality.

Something to keep in mind is the "rationality" you see here is very different to traditional rationality, although we use the same name. In fact a lot of what you'll come across here won't be found anywhere else which is why reading a good deal of the sequences is so important. Reading HPMoR is fairly equivalent too though.

I haven't down-voted you simply because I can see where you're coming from, you might be wrong or miscommunicating in certain respects, but you're not being stupid.

Part of the problem is that there's a huge inferential gap between you and most of the people here, as you say, you don't know much mathematics and you're not versed in the word of Eliezer. Similarly the folks here have not (necessarily) studied the social sciences intently, nor are they (necessarily) versed in the words of Weber, Rorty, Dewy or Kant.

Winning in the way we use it, is the best possible course of action to take. It's distinctly different from the notion of winning a game. If losing a game is the best thing you can do then that is winning. The reason the attempt failed is because you didn't understand what it was we meant by winning, and proceeded to say something that was untrue under the definition used on LW.

So yes, I'd like to hear about what a paradox means in your field of study. However you must realise that if you haven't read the sequences, and you don't know the math, there is a lot this community knows that you are ignorant of. By the same token, there is a lot that you know that the community is ignorant of. Neither thing is a bad thing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to remedy it.

Importantly, don't try and mix your knowledge and LW-rationality until you fully understand LW-rationality. No offence meant.