All of JWP's Comments + Replies

JWP140

Hello, I'm Jennifer.

I'm here to get better at accomplishing my goals. I'd also like to get better at figuring out what my goals are, but I don't know if LW will help with that.

I don't identify as an aspiring rationalist. I try to be rational, but I am generally leery of identifying as much of anything. Labels are a useful layer of abstraction for dealing with people you don't really know well enough to consider as individuals, but I don't see much benefit in internally applying labels to oneself. If you do find it useful to think of yourself as an aspiring... (read more)

JWP170

Identifying as a "rationalist" is encouraged by the welcome post.

We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, what you value, how you came to identify as a rationalist

Edited the most recent welcome post and the post of mine that it linked to.

Does anyone have a 1-syllable synonym for 'aspiring'? It seems like we need to impose better discipline on this for official posts.

4Oscar_Cunningham
And the phrase "how you came to identify as a rationalist" links to the very page where in the comments Robin Hanson suggests not using the term "rationalist", and the alternative "aspiring rationalist" is suggested!
JWP80

when I say "what's the evidence for that?", it's not that I don't trust your rationality (although of course I don't trust your rationality either), but I just can't deduce what evidence you must have observed from your probability declaration alone even if you were fully rational.

Yes. There are reasons to ask for evidence that have nothing to do with disrespect.

  • Even assuming that all parties are perfectly rational and that any disagreement must stem from differing information, it is not always obvious which party has better relevant informa

... (read more)