So, our rationality "to do" lists should be public

Any suggestions as to where we should post them? I tried posting mine to my Drafts, but I cannot access it without being logged in.

If we shouldn't expect evidence in either case then the probability of God's existence is just the prior, right? How could P(God) be above .5? I can't imagine thinking that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being who answers prayers and rewards and punishes the sins of mortals with everlasting joy or eternal punishment was a priori more likely than not.

I wonder what variety of first cause argument he's making. Even if everything must have a cause that does not mean there is a first cause and the existence of a first cause doesn't mean the first cause is God. Aquinas made two arguments of this variety that actually try to prove the existence of God, but they require outdated categories and concepts to even make.

I certainly wasn't generating a dichotomy. I was merely offering two suggestions. I never said that I was certain that it was one of those two.

See my answer here.

The Implications of Saunt Lora's Assertion for Rationalists.

For those who are unfamiliar, Saunt Lora's Assertion comes from the novel Anathem, and expresses the view that there are no genuinely new ideas; every idea has already been thought of.

A lot of purportedly new ideas can be seen as, at best, a slightly new spin on an old idea. The parallels between, Leibniz's views on the nature of possibility and Arnauld's objection, and David Lewis's views on the nature of possibility and Kripke's objection are but one striking example. If there is anything to the claim that we are, to some extent, stuck recycling old ideas, rather than genuinely/interestingly widening the range of views, it seems as though this should have some import for rationalists.

That seems to be a false dichotomy. The first option implicitly condones disconcern for racial balance and implies that gender is not a social construct, the latter assumes that there is widespread sensitivity over the issue of racial balance.

More likely, issues of gender interaction are more salient for members of the community than issues of racial interaction, leading us to focus on the former and overlook the latter.

"And if you generalize a bit further, then building the Art could also be taken to include issues like developing better introductory literature, developing better slogans for public relations, establishing common cause with other Enlightenment subtasks, analyzing and addressing the gender imbalance problem..."

The issue of racial imbalance on Less Wrong has gotten considerably less attention than gender imbalance. Is this because race is largely socially constructed, and thus not considered a meaningful division? Or is the issue of racial imbalance in this community simply too sensitive to touch?

Why not determine publicly to fix it?

Epistemic rationality alone might be well enough for those of us who simply love truth (who love truthseeking, I mean; the truth itself is usually an abomination)

What motivation is there to seek out an abomination? I read the linked comment and I disagree strongly... The curious, persistent rationalist should find the truth seeking process rewarding, but shouldn't it be rewarding because your working toward something wonderful? Worded another way - of what value is truth seeking if you hold the very object you seek in contempt?

If you take the strictly classical, rational view of the world than you lose the ability to say that truth is "beautiful". Not a great loss, considering "beauty" is an ill-defined, subjective term - but if you continue to cut everything our of your life that has no rational value then you very quickly become a psuedo-vulcan.

Truth, at the highest level, has an irrational, indefinable quality. It's this quality that makes it seductive, worthwhile, valuable, desirable. Truth is something you grok. Heinlein was a loony, but I do thank him for that word.

but some of my friends tell me there should be some sort of payoff for all this work of inference. And indeed, there should be: if you know how something works, you might be able to make it work better. Enter epistemic rationality, the art of doing better. We all want to better, and we all believe that we can do better...

I like to think that I seek truth. Others are here to "win" or "be better". Maybe we're all talking about the same thing. Maybe not.

This comment is a bit off-topic from the rest of the post, and quickly becoming dangerously Zen, but I would much appreciate it if somebody more knowledgeable on the subject could offer some disambiguation either here or in a separate post.

The main danger for LW is that it could remain rationalist-porn for daydreamers.

I think this is a bit more accurate.