Last night I tried to describe the rationalist community to a friend who had never heard of it. I struggled, but finally settled on describing it as "A school of philosophy that arose on the internet rather than in the academy."
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How would you describe the rationalist community (to fresh ears)? And (while I have your attention) what are some other examples of fields born on the internet?
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Crypto, alt right, Soylent, lean startups, keto, open source, basic income — so many!
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Not to take anything away from the internet (which is AMAZING), but most of these have the feel of movements rather than fields of study. In other words, they're (mostly) not the kind of thing the academy is particularly jealous of.
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"It's like if some amateur optometrists tried to unmake optical illusions. But for thought instead of vision."
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lol this is great
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In general, I love the idea of para-academic communities - the notion that serious research communities can now arise completely in parallel to standard academia. But there's not a lot of examples I know of - most are connected to LW in some way.
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"para-academic communities" <— well put, this is what i'm wondering about
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I'd probably go over the "pillars" as it were: - morality: utilitarianism - metaphysics: reductionism - epistemology: propabilistic - free will: deterministic Etc etc
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oh yeah it’s good to get concrete (or as concrete as this abstraction-prone endeavor allows us ;)
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hardcore extropianism/futurism studies? not sure if this qualifies, but many discussions on extropians list were of very high quality (many low quality as well). more specific subset of that would be studies of anthropic reasoning
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thank you, yes, that has the right feel to it
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