4 ms·

Calling yourself rationalists: frames everyone else as irrational. It reminds me Kier Starmers Labour, calling themselves "the adults in the room". Its a chea

by stuaxo 1y ago

Calling yourself rationalists: frames everyone else as irrational. It reminds me Kier Starmers Labour, calling themselves "the adults in the room". Its a cheap framing trick, belying an emptiness on the people using it.

gjm11 1y ago
Pretty much every movement does this sort of thing. Religions: "Catholic" actually means "universal" (implication: all the real Christians are among our number). "Orthodox" means "teaching the right things" (implication: anyone who isn't one of us is wrong). "Sunni" means "following the correct tradition" (implication: anyone who isn't one of us is wrong"). Political parties: "Democratic Party" (anyone who doesn't belong doesn't like democracy). "Republican Party" (anyone who doesn't belong wants kings back). "Liberal Party" (anyone else is against freedom). In the world of software, there's "Agile" (everyone else is sluggish and clumsy). "Free software" (as with the liberals: everything else is opposed to freedom). People who like static typing systems tend to call them "strong" (everyone else is weak). People who like the other sort tend to call them "dynamic" (everyone else is rigid and inflexible). I hate it too, but it's so very very common that I really hope it isn't right to say that everyone who does it is empty-headed or empty-hearted. The charitable way to look at it: often these movements-and-names come about when some group of people picks a thing they particularly care about, tries extra-hard to do that thing, and uses the thing's name as a label. The "Rationalists" are called that because the particular thing they chose to focus on was rationality; maybe they do it well, maybe not, but it's not so much "no one else is rational" as "we are trying really hard to be as rational as we can". (Not always. The term "Catholic" really was a power-grab: "we are the universal church, those other guys are schismatic heretics". In a different direction: the other philosophical group called "Rationalists" weren't saying "we think rationality is really important", they were saying "knowledge comes from first-principles reasoning" as opposed to the "Empiricists" who said "knowledge comes from sense experience". Today's "Rationalists" are actually more Empiricist than Rationalist in that sense, as it happens.)
- swat535 1y ago
  If you examine history, from the Bible you get Judaism. And from Judaism, Christianity as Christ said "Do not think that I am come to break the Law or the Prophets. I am not come to break: but to fulfill." [Matth. v. 17] The Catholic Church follows the Melchisedec order (Heb v. ; vi. ; vii). The term Catholic (καθολικη) was used as early as the first century; it is an adjective which describes Christianity. The oldest record that we have to this day is the Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans Chapter 8 where St. Ignatius writes "ωσπερ οπου αν η Χριστος Ιησους, εκει η καθολικη εκκλησια". (just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.): https://greekdoc.com/DOCUMENTS/early/i-smyrnaeans.html https://greekdoc.com/DOCUMENTS/early/i-smyrnaeans.html The protestors in the 16th c. called themselves Protestants, so that's what everyone calls them. English heretic-schismatics didn't want to share the opprobrium so they called themselves English, hence Anglican. In USA they weren't governed congregationally like the Congregationalists, or by presbyters like the Presbyterians, but by bishops, so they called themselves Bishop-ruled, or Episcopalians. (In fact, Katharine Jefferts-Schori changed the name of the denomination from The Protestant Episcopal Church to The Episcopal Church recently.) The orthodox catholics called themselves Orthodox to distance themselves from the unorthodox of which there were plenty, spawning themselves off in the wake of practically every ecumenical council. Lutherans in the USA name themselves after Father Martin Luther, some Augustinian priest from Saxony who protested against the Church's hypocritical corruption at the time, and the controversy eventually got out of hand and precipitated a schism/heretical revolution, back in the 1500s, but Lutherans back in Germany and Scandinavia call themselves Gospel churches, hence Evangelical. Some USA denominations that go back to Germany and who came over to USA brought that name with them. Pentecostals name themselves after the incident in Acts where the Holy Spirit set fire to the world (cf. Acts 2) on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, q.v., which in Greek was called Fiftieth Day After Passover, hence Pentecosti. What distinguishes Pentecostals is their emphasis on what they call "speaking in tongues", which in my opin...be charitable, kempff...which they see as a continuance of the Holy Spirit's work in the world and in the lives of believers.
  - gjm11 1y ago
    The term "catholic", meaning universal, was used very early. It wasn't used to distinguish the entity now often called the Catholic Church from other Christian groups, so far as I know, until much later. I agree that some Christian groups have not-so-tendentious names, including "Protestant", "Anglican", "Episcopalian" and "Lutheran". (Though to my mind "Anglican" carries a certain implication of being the church for English people, and the Episcopalians aren't the only people with bishops any more than the Baptists are the only people who baptize.) "Pentecostal" seems to me to be in (though not a central example of) the applause-light-name category. "We are the ones who are really filled with the Holy Spirit like in the Pentecost story in the Book of Acts". "Gospel" and "Evangelical" are absolutely applause-light names. "Our group, unlike all those others, embodies the Good News" or "Our group, unlike all those others, is faithful to the Gospels". (The terms are kinda ambiguous between those two interpretations but either way these are we-are-the-best-rah-rah-rah names.) Anyway, I didn't mean to claim that literally every movement's name is like this. Only that many many many movements' names are.
viccis 1y ago
I agree 100%, and that's my main issue with them. To build a group with its identity centered around "we form our opinions with logical inquiry from first principles" implies that you think that everyone else is doing something else. In reality, we just end up with a lot of worldviews and arguments that seem suspiciously like they are nothing more than people advocating for their own interests using some sophistry that is compelling enough (to them) to trick themselves into thinking they have other motivations. When ones find themself mentioning Aella as one of the members taking their movement "in new directions," then they should stop and ask whether they are the insightful well rounded person with much to say about all sorts of things, or whether they are just a very gifted computer scientist who is still not well rounded enough to recognize a legitimate dimwit like Aella when they see one. And in general, I do feel like they suffer from "I am a genius at X, so my take on Y should be given special consideration." If you're in a group where everyone's talking about physics and almost none of them are physicists, then run. I'm still surprised at how little consideration these people give philosophy and the centuries of its written thought. Some engineers spend a decade or more building up math and science skills to the point that they can be effective practitioners, but then they think they can hop right into philosophical discussions with no background. Then when they try to analyze a problem philosophically, their brief (or no) experience means that they reason themselves into dead-end positions like philosophical skepticism that were tackled in a variety of ways over the past centuries.
- lechatonnoir 1y ago
  I am sure that there are some people who exhibit the behaviors you're describing, but I really don't think the group as a whole is disinterested in prior work or discussion of philosophy in general: https://www.lesswrong.com/w/epistemology https://www.lesswrong.com/w/epistemology https://www.lesswrong.com/w/priors https://www.lesswrong.com/w/priors https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2x67s6u8oAitNKF73/ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2x67s6u8oAitNKF73/ (a post noting that the foundational problems in mech interp are grounded in philosophical questions about representation ~150 years old) https://www.lesswrong.com/w/consciousness https://www.lesswrong.com/w/consciousness (the page on consciousness first citing the MIT and Stanford encyclopedias, then providing a timeline from Democritus, through Descartes, Hobbes,... all the way to Nagel, Chalmers, Tegmark). There is also sort of a meme of interest in Thomas Kuhn: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcjL8ydHxPezj6wrt/book-review-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcjL8ydHxPezj6wrt/book-revie... See also these attempts to refer and collate prior literature: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qc7P2NwfxQMC3hdgm/rationalism-before-the-sequences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qc7P2NwfxQMC3hdgm/rationalis... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-textbooks-on-every-subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-t... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SXJGSPeQWbACveJhs/the-best-tacit-knowledge-videos-on-every-subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SXJGSPeQWbACveJhs/the-best-t... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLJMyd4ncE3kvjwhe/the-best-reference-works-for-every-subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLJMyd4ncE3kvjwhe/the-best-r... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMmD5qNFKRqKBJnKw/rigorous-political-science https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMmD5qNFKRqKBJnKw/rigorous-p... Now, one may disagree with the particular choices or philosophical positions taken, but it's pretty hard to say these people are ignorant or not trying to be informed about what prior thinkers have done, especially compared to any particular reference culture, except maybe academics. As for the thing about Aella, I feel she's not as much of a thought leader as you've surmised, and I think doesn't claim to be. My personal view is that she does some interesting semi-rigorous surveying that is unlikely to be done elsewhere. She's not a scientist/statistician or a total revolutionary but her stuff is not devoid of informational value either. Some of her claims are hedged adequately, some of them are hedged a bit inadequately. You might have encountered some particularly (irrationally?) ardent fans.

by stuaxo 1y ago

gjm11 1y ago

Pretty much every movement does this sort of thing. Religions: "Catholic" actually means "universal" (implication: all the real Christians are among our number). "Orthodox" means "teaching the right things" (implication: anyone who isn't one of us is wrong). "Sunni" means "following the correct tradition" (implication: anyone who isn't one of us is wrong"). Political parties: "Democratic Party" (anyone who doesn't belong doesn't like democracy). "Republican Party" (anyone who doesn't belong wants kings back). "Liberal Party" (anyone else is against freedom). In the world of software, there's "Agile" (everyone else is sluggish and clumsy). "Free software" (as with the liberals: everything else is opposed to freedom). People who like static typing systems tend to call them "strong" (everyone else is weak). People who like the other sort tend to call them "dynamic" (everyone else is rigid and inflexible). I hate it too, but it's so very very common that I really hope it isn't right to say that everyone who does it is empty-headed or empty-hearted. The charitable way to look at it: often these movements-and-names come about when some group of people picks a thing they particularly care about, tries extra-hard to do that thing, and uses the thing's name as a label. The "Rationalists" are called that because the particular thing they chose to focus on was rationality; maybe they do it well, maybe not, but it's not so much "no one else is rational" as "we are trying really hard to be as rational as we can". (Not always. The term "Catholic" really was a power-grab: "we are the universal church, those other guys are schismatic heretics". In a different direction: the other philosophical group called "Rationalists" weren't saying "we think rationality is really important", they were saying "knowledge comes from first-principles reasoning" as opposed to the "Empiricists" who said "knowledge comes from sense experience". Today's "Rationalists" are actually more Empiricist than Rationalist in that sense, as it happens.)

swat535 1y ago
If you examine history, from the Bible you get Judaism. And from Judaism, Christianity as Christ said "Do not think that I am come to break the Law or the Prophets. I am not come to break: but to fulfill." [Matth. v. 17] The Catholic Church follows the Melchisedec order (Heb v. ; vi. ; vii). The term Catholic (καθολικη) was used as early as the first century; it is an adjective which describes Christianity. The oldest record that we have to this day is the Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans Chapter 8 where St. Ignatius writes "ωσπερ οπου αν η Χριστος Ιησους, εκει η καθολικη εκκλησια". (just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.): https://greekdoc.com/DOCUMENTS/early/i-smyrnaeans.html https://greekdoc.com/DOCUMENTS/early/i-smyrnaeans.html The protestors in the 16th c. called themselves Protestants, so that's what everyone calls them. English heretic-schismatics didn't want to share the opprobrium so they called themselves English, hence Anglican. In USA they weren't governed congregationally like the Congregationalists, or by presbyters like the Presbyterians, but by bishops, so they called themselves Bishop-ruled, or Episcopalians. (In fact, Katharine Jefferts-Schori changed the name of the denomination from The Protestant Episcopal Church to The Episcopal Church recently.) The orthodox catholics called themselves Orthodox to distance themselves from the unorthodox of which there were plenty, spawning themselves off in the wake of practically every ecumenical council. Lutherans in the USA name themselves after Father Martin Luther, some Augustinian priest from Saxony who protested against the Church's hypocritical corruption at the time, and the controversy eventually got out of hand and precipitated a schism/heretical revolution, back in the 1500s, but Lutherans back in Germany and Scandinavia call themselves Gospel churches, hence Evangelical. Some USA denominations that go back to Germany and who came over to USA brought that name with them. Pentecostals name themselves after the incident in Acts where the Holy Spirit set fire to the world (cf. Acts 2) on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, q.v., which in Greek was called Fiftieth Day After Passover, hence Pentecosti. What distinguishes Pentecostals is their emphasis on what they call "speaking in tongues", which in my opin...be charitable, kempff...which they see as a continuance of the Holy Spirit's work in the world and in the lives of believers.
- gjm11 1y ago
  The term "catholic", meaning universal, was used very early. It wasn't used to distinguish the entity now often called the Catholic Church from other Christian groups, so far as I know, until much later. I agree that some Christian groups have not-so-tendentious names, including "Protestant", "Anglican", "Episcopalian" and "Lutheran". (Though to my mind "Anglican" carries a certain implication of being the church for English people, and the Episcopalians aren't the only people with bishops any more than the Baptists are the only people who baptize.) "Pentecostal" seems to me to be in (though not a central example of) the applause-light-name category. "We are the ones who are really filled with the Holy Spirit like in the Pentecost story in the Book of Acts". "Gospel" and "Evangelical" are absolutely applause-light names. "Our group, unlike all those others, embodies the Good News" or "Our group, unlike all those others, is faithful to the Gospels". (The terms are kinda ambiguous between those two interpretations but either way these are we-are-the-best-rah-rah-rah names.) Anyway, I didn't mean to claim that literally every movement's name is like this. Only that many many many movements' names are.

viccis 1y ago

I agree 100%, and that's my main issue with them. To build a group with its identity centered around "we form our opinions with logical inquiry from first principles" implies that you think that everyone else is doing something else. In reality, we just end up with a lot of worldviews and arguments that seem suspiciously like they are nothing more than people advocating for their own interests using some sophistry that is compelling enough (to them) to trick themselves into thinking they have other motivations. When ones find themself mentioning Aella as one of the members taking their movement "in new directions," then they should stop and ask whether they are the insightful well rounded person with much to say about all sorts of things, or whether they are just a very gifted computer scientist who is still not well rounded enough to recognize a legitimate dimwit like Aella when they see one. And in general, I do feel like they suffer from "I am a genius at X, so my take on Y should be given special consideration." If you're in a group where everyone's talking about physics and almost none of them are physicists, then run. I'm still surprised at how little consideration these people give philosophy and the centuries of its written thought. Some engineers spend a decade or more building up math and science skills to the point that they can be effective practitioners, but then they think they can hop right into philosophical discussions with no background. Then when they try to analyze a problem philosophically, their brief (or no) experience means that they reason themselves into dead-end positions like philosophical skepticism that were tackled in a variety of ways over the past centuries.

lechatonnoir 1y ago
I am sure that there are some people who exhibit the behaviors you're describing, but I really don't think the group as a whole is disinterested in prior work or discussion of philosophy in general: https://www.lesswrong.com/w/epistemology https://www.lesswrong.com/w/epistemology https://www.lesswrong.com/w/priors https://www.lesswrong.com/w/priors https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2x67s6u8oAitNKF73/ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2x67s6u8oAitNKF73/ (a post noting that the foundational problems in mech interp are grounded in philosophical questions about representation ~150 years old) https://www.lesswrong.com/w/consciousness https://www.lesswrong.com/w/consciousness (the page on consciousness first citing the MIT and Stanford encyclopedias, then providing a timeline from Democritus, through Descartes, Hobbes,... all the way to Nagel, Chalmers, Tegmark). There is also sort of a meme of interest in Thomas Kuhn: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcjL8ydHxPezj6wrt/book-review-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HcjL8ydHxPezj6wrt/book-revie... See also these attempts to refer and collate prior literature: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qc7P2NwfxQMC3hdgm/rationalism-before-the-sequences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qc7P2NwfxQMC3hdgm/rationalis... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-textbooks-on-every-subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-t... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SXJGSPeQWbACveJhs/the-best-tacit-knowledge-videos-on-every-subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SXJGSPeQWbACveJhs/the-best-t... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLJMyd4ncE3kvjwhe/the-best-reference-works-for-every-subject https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLJMyd4ncE3kvjwhe/the-best-r... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMmD5qNFKRqKBJnKw/rigorous-political-science https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bMmD5qNFKRqKBJnKw/rigorous-p... Now, one may disagree with the particular choices or philosophical positions taken, but it's pretty hard to say these people are ignorant or not trying to be informed about what prior thinkers have done, especially compared to any particular reference culture, except maybe academics. As for the thing about Aella, I feel she's not as much of a thought leader as you've surmised, and I think doesn't claim to be. My personal view is that she does some interesting semi-rigorous surveying that is unlikely to be done elsewhere. She's not a scientist/statistician or a total revolutionary but her stuff is not devoid of informational value either. Some of her claims are hedged adequately, some of them are hedged a bit inadequately. You might have encountered some particularly (irrationally?) ardent fans.