It would be helpful, I think, if the LW-derived community understood more clearly that “rationalism” isn’t something they invented and own, but has been around for centuries, and is thoroughly worked-out in various other intellectual communities: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ …
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Rationalists are very aware of “rationalism” as a different body of thought from ours that frustratingly has a similar name. I know it’s confusing & I’m sorry! But blame decision science, not us - they chose to use the word rational for utility maximization, & we followed suit
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"they used a name we disagree with, then we chose to use that same name" might not be the paradigm case for "blame [x] [not]... us"
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Idk, if we had invented a new name for a concept that already exists in decision science I feel like ppl would be griping about that too.
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Yes, some people (like me) will always find something to complain about :) Is your conception of “rationality” in fact restricted to that of decision science? My impression is that the community has a broader sense of it (but individuals vary, and yours may be more specific).
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You might find this 2009 LW post by
@ESYudkowsky "What do we mean by rationality?" to be useful:https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RcZCwxFiZzE6X7nsv/what-do-we-mean-by-rationality …1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes -
Replying to @juliagalef @Meaningness and
I never asked Eliezer directly but assume he must have gotten those definitions from the decision science literature (which includes parts of economics, philosophy, psychology and comp sci relevant to modeling normative decision making) bc that's how that literature uses the word
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Replying to @juliagalef @Meaningness and
This article by
@lukeprog cites more of the relevant decision science literature and does a more thorough job of explaining what they mean by rationality:https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hR92kW2ZSvmuca5Nf/improving-human-rationality-through-cognitive-change-intro …1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @juliagalef @Meaningness and
The most relevant phrases to how we talk about rationality are probably "normative rationality," "bounded rationality" and "rational choice theory"
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Replying to @juliagalef @Meaningness and
This passage from Luke's summary is similar to what
@catherineols and I were trying to say earlier today:pic.twitter.com/lZILQAPaS8
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Thank you! I will chew on this overnight… My immediate reaction is “yes, this is familiar mainstream stuff, but I don’t think this is quite what the LW-sphere advocates, even taking into account community diversity”—but I need to think that through carefully before saying so!
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Replying to @Meaningness @PereGrimmer and
Yeah 99% of the work is figuring out how a human, with a messy human brain, can approximate the normative model. What heuristics work well, in what contexts? When is following explicit rules useful vs. just training your intuition through experience? etc. Lots of diff. ideas here
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Replying to @juliagalef @PereGrimmer and
Baron’s distinction between “normative” and “prescriptive” is one I haven’t seen before. That seems useful and maybe key. OTOH, if we’re looking for a disagreement crux, it might be whether a normative theory that can’t be achieved, even in principle, is a good thing.
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