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I'm not familiar with a distinction between a more common usage and a more jargony usage of those two words. Is there one? Actually, I don't think I really unde

• AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  With no context, humanism sounds like it's just something pertaining to humans. Also, at least to my perception, the word has a built-in positive valence. But, it has a much more specific meaning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism There's a similar dynamic with rationalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism
  • drdeca 6y ago
    ah, but here "rationalist" isn't being used in that particular way. One of the reasons it is sometimes put in quotes, I think, is to distinguish it from the meaning that you've linked. A rationalist in that sense is someone who holds the philosophical positions described in that article. A rationalist-in-this-other-sense is someone who, uh, generally has beliefs in some other collection of philosophical positions, and is involved in a certain community/social-circle . It is an unfortunate overloading of a term. Some have given a definition of rationalist (or rationalist-adjacent) as : Eliezer Yudkowsky is a rationalist, and anyone who spends a lot of time arguing with rationalists is a rationalist. This is quite a different thing that the sense of the word described in the Wikipedia article. Personally, I'm rather fond of the group, but there are still cases where I find myself using quote marks when describing it.