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
As an outside observer I’ve been curious about this. Does the movement link back to the somewhat traditional definitions of rationalism vs empiricism? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ …
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Replying to @rahshank
tbh i’m not familiar enough to weigh in. my sense is that the rationalist community kinda sidesteps most historical philosophy / doesn’t attempt to integrate itself into their traditions
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Replying to @KevinSimler @rahshank
I think this is right; and also that they’ve repeated many historical mistakes that could have been avoided by reading some history of 20th century rationalism. Especially, the conclusive failure (around 1960) of probabilistic theories of induction.
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in my take of just the LW community, they think they have solved this with solomonoff induction. or that solomonoff induction can be fruitful here. or something. whatever it was in 2012 when I got banned for asking too many questions re: solomonoff induction,kolmorogov complexity
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I think they’ve mostly quietly backed off from that (obviously silly) idea. They are gradually figuring things out. I’m impressed with how far they’ve come over the past five years.
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me too! I hadn't gone back at all since 2012, and went back and lurked a little last year after reading your posts on predicate calculus and such.
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