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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Replying to @KevinSimler
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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Replying to @michael_nielsen @KevinSimler
I think this is incredibly important (as the university system is collapsing) and inspiring. I’d like to contribute, to the extent I can!
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Replying to @Meaningness @michael_nielsen
My vague sense is that para-academic fields suffer from being under-networked. A little too much of the non-joiner, "I'm going my own way" mentality. Not enough people building off each others' work.
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Replying to @KevinSimler @michael_nielsen
I agree… the “weekend salon” we organized a year and a half ago, which you contributed to, was an attempt to address that. I expected to make that a series, but life events intervened… Funding is also a major issue, I think. Not many people can be a full-time para-academic.
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Replying to @Meaningness @michael_nielsen
You and Michael have both helped foster para-academic networks! But yeah, it's hard to sustain without funding/institutional support.
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Replying to @KevinSimler @michael_nielsen
Part of me wants to seek funding and set up institution(s), for this reason. Peter Thiel has been an innovator in this area, obviously. There’s much more that could be done… that NEEDS to be done…
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An inspiring example (h/t
@saul) is Black Mountain College. Not exactly the model I’d go for, but many interesting aspects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mountain_College …2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes -
Whoa, cool, hadn't heard of MBC. What are some features of an alternative approach that you think are interesting?
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I have absolutely NOT thought this through… but I’ve been luck to have been able to participate in several exceptionally productive & creative scenes. Most dramatically the MIT AI Lab and Xerox PARC in the 1980s. So I think in terms of prototypes rather than principles…
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler and
This passage from “upgrade your cargo cult FTW” is a distillation of what seems to work: https://meaningness.com/metablog/upgrade-your-cargo-cult …pic.twitter.com/bNRQvzoYTl
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler and
Maybe the most important thing is just to gather a bunch of smart creative people and get them to interact without a lot of bureaucratic constraints and with enough funding that they don’t have to think about that.
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