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Lumifer comments on Open Thread, Jun. 1 - Jun. 7, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 01 June 2015 12:45AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 01 June 2015 08:31:16AM 5 points [-]

I would strongly recommend to not do anything of this type. The point is, rationality means a set of method that preferably every human being should learn and use. Ideally, it should be part of the school curriculum.

This means Rationalists should not be a separate tribe or subculture with a separate culture and lingo. Anything that unnecessarily sets apart Rationalists from everybody else is a bad idea because it prevents ideas from spreading. Instead of being seen as generally useful ideas, it will be seen as the ideas of "those" people. Some of this is hard to avoid, I really dislike R. being so tied up with transhumanism and AI because then everybody who finds that weird silly and geeky is less interested in learning R. methods. But at least in those cases there are fairly good reasons, as using the methods themselves may lead to those things. So it is a trade-off between making the methods popular and accessible vs. being honest about it leading to some ideas that look a lot like sci-fi geekdom and all the low social status it means.

But at least when there are not so compelling reasons R. should be like everybody else.

Comment author: Lumifer 01 June 2015 04:51:40PM -1 points [-]

The point is, rationality means a set of method that preferably every human being should learn and use.

Don't get hung up on terminology. "Epistemic rationality" is known in the normal world as "science" (or "scientific method"). "Instrumental rationality" is known as "pragmatism".

Comment author: ChristianKl 01 June 2015 05:03:26PM 0 points [-]

I don't think those Rationalist swear words are a case of pragmatism.