There's maybe a few dozen people who identify as "postrationalists"? Some congregate in the community @ribbonfarm has created (which is great), but that doesn't seem like a "tribe" to me (and I don't feel a part of it, exactly, although I'm friendly to it).
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Replying to @Meaningness @ribbonfarm
There have been some fights about it on LW and in other places, e.g. the thread starting from nshepperd's comment at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5LP6Jc8ztwcyb296X/outline-of-metarationality-or-much-less-than-you-wanted-to … . I assumed that you were aware of it, since your writings occasionally get cited in those arguments, but I guess I was mistaken.
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Replying to @xuenay @ribbonfarm
Whoa, that looks like an exhausting and frustrating conversation! I’ve only scrolled through it rapidly, and even THAT was exhausting and frustrating! Kudos to you for persisting.
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Replying to @Meaningness @xuenay
From the superficial impression I got, this was pretty much the standard argument-with-stubborn-rationalist that I’ve been having since 1987. I didn’t see in it the tribalism discussion. (But I only scrolled through it rapidly.)
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I totally believe the tribalist discussion exists, and I think I have seen one brief example of it on LW somewhere. It’s true that postrats/metarats (including me) can be irritable and dismissive of rationalists when they get into the sort of argument you had there.
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That seems rather different from tribalism, though; there isn’t a postrat or metarat tribe. LW-style rationalists do identify as a tribe, and I suspect accusations of tribalism stem from projection? “We’re a tribe, they disagree with us, so they must be a tribe too”?
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Replying to @Meaningness @ribbonfarm
We might understand tribalism differently. I was thinking of the way that any group label can potentially become divisive by creating an us vs. them - especially if one of the sides is implied to be superior, regardless of whether that was *meant* to be implied.
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A natural reading of some of your stuff is that it's saying that rationalists are stupid and limited, postrationalism is better, and here are all these snide comments about rationalists, and if you disagree it's just because you're not sophisticated enough yet, but maybe someday.
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Regardless of whether you meant it like that or not, it's not very much of a stretch to get that reading. And then people get dismissive and defensive and get hostile towards anything that smells of post/metarationality.
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Also I think that the perceived pattern is getting (and not even incorrectly) pattern-matched to similar-sounding things, like Val's post on Kensho, which also annoyed several people and felt like woo to them. Which obviously isn't your fault, but still happened.
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Yes, I do think the rationalist’s reflexive response to any criticism is to assume that it’s the same as any other criticism, and that all of them are irrational and can be dismissed. I tried to sort that out in this post, but it probably wasn’t helpful.https://meaningness.com/metablog/rationalism-critiques …
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