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Nornagest comments on Beyond Smart and Stupid - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (44)
I was trying to make more of a use/implementation distinction. People around here frequently use the word "rationalist" to refer to the people involved in creating or popularizing the theory of rationality, but it often happens that those people failed to fully internalize their theory, applied it only selectively, or (generously) lived in a cultural environment that limited its full expression.
Your pair also looks like a useful distinction, but I'd break that one down more in terms of conscious awareness of the art. A lot of disciplines demand aspects of instrumental rationality, but producing good results in them isn't necessarily the result of a formalizable process, so I don't think it's proper to speak of every high-level businessman or professional poker player, say, as a master rationalist.
I agree completely. I do not think of them as my pair, they were just a tool to help understand your pair.
I now think I understand the pair you were trying to communicate. When I read great rationalist I think of someone who has successfully applied rationality over a great breadth of their life. So "one who practices rationality" but are not "one who produces results useful to rational decision-making" and those that "one who produces results useful to rational decision-making" but are not "one who practices rationality" have both only implement rationality in a limited breadth of their life and I would not have described either as great rationalists, at least when keeping all other variables equal.
Fair enough, but I'm not trying to establish a definition, only to point out that people here use the word to indicate both components alone as well as their conjunction, and that doing so has the potential to generate confusion.
I offer the following as a data point for calibration: I think you had already communicated effectively that you were not trying to establish a definition.
I also agree.