Lucy Keer

Agreed. Not obvious that it has to be this way, though: rationality to meta-rationality looks counterintuitive mostly because of how rationality has been traditionally conceived. But some people seem to go to meta-rationality directly. I think most could, with right explanation.

Or maybe I should say that some people seem to learn rationality and meta-rationality in an intertwined way, so that meta-rationality never looks counterintuitive because it's been part of the lesson all along.

An excess focus on rationality, neglecting the meta-rational aspects, looks to me more like something produced by tribal signaling ("our thinking is better than that of emotion-only hippies"), psychological insecurities or autism spectrum traits rather than a logical necessity.

This ties back to what @everytstudies said in the quoted thread - "it would be way easier to absorb [the constructivist lesson] from people who didn't come off as hostile". Meta-rationality wouldn't be so counterintuitive if its ideas weren't associated with a hostile tribe.

Thanks for the replies! Yeah, I've read the first bit of @everytstudies podcast transcript and liked the social constructivist example too (also reminds me I should read some of those people). I agree that the transition could be made easier...

e.g. by showing what's on the other side of pomo ideas. I think the transition would still be fairly difficult even without the hostility though, so maybe we disagree on that.

Maybe? My main grasp of rationalism is LW rationalism, which I realize is slightly different than David's main critique - but still, when I started reading the Sequences, a lot of it felt like a scientific explanation of that pomo stuff my humanities friend talked about.