I don't think this essay is anti-intellectual at all. I think it is an exploration of the longstanding philosophical problem of trying to rationally design a wo

I don't think this essay is anti-intellectual at all. I think it is an exploration of the longstanding philosophical problem of trying to rationally design a world for irrational beings. The excerpt from Dillow on consequentialism brings to mind an idea from James Scott: that elites control policy discussions by limiting the accepted terms of the argument to legible, rationalizable factors - generally economic and technocratic variables visible from a top-down view. This can place serious limits on our access to the store of human knowledge embedded in emotion and practice. What we consider "irrational" impulses are sometimes the products of generations of evolutionary tuning that would seem to be feats of engineering brilliance if they came with the proper documentation. Meta-rationality includes exploring the bounds and the weaknesses of the tools in our contemporary rationalist arsenal, as well as searching under the couch cushions of irrationality for the occasional bit of value.