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thomblake comments on The rational rationalist's guide to rationally using "rational" in rational post titles - Less Wrong Discussion

64 Post author: Vaniver 27 May 2012 07:13PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2012 04:19:23PM 7 points [-]

I strongly dislike the word rational / rationality as labels for what we try to do here, because of its unfortunate Straw Vulcan connotations. Strangely, it seems to me that despite the very similar etymology, those connotations are much weaker in the words reasonable and reason. (For example, I would never think of telling someone I'm giving advice about romance “the most rational thing for you to do is [bla]”, but I have no problem with saying “the most reasonable thing” or “the thing that would make most sense”.)

I'd suggest to replace the last word in LessWrong's tagline from rationality to reason; would that have any drawbacks I can't think of?

Comment author: thomblake 29 May 2012 06:10:08PM 1 point [-]

"Reason" and related words also have unfortunate connotations. I actually feel much better about "rationality" than "reason".

Comment author: [deleted] 29 May 2012 06:35:30PM 1 point [-]

Downvoted because without specifying what those unfortunate connotations are (as khafra did), that comment isn't very informative.

Comment author: thomblake 29 May 2012 06:42:37PM 1 point [-]

I was actually going to mention khafra's comment first, then thought it was redundant. I just wanted to voice my objection so I didn't end up in a silent majority.