the interesting part is that a "properly practiced" EY rationalism is pretty equivalent to an explicitly steelmanned postrationalism
this is bc most people, even in the rat community, are not very good at thinking clearly, and get too dogmatic about rationalist principles
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RT @eigenrobot
yud griping about the existence of postrationality every few months is a W for us
"what even is postrationality what does this even mean"
eliezer…
https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1462141498909093888
the "hidden community of rats" EY is talking about is this vast iceberg of people who have read rat writing, liked it, have tried to apply it in their own lives (poorly), suffered for it, and then abandoned it (wisely), decrying rationalism in the process (unwisely)
they're real
you don't see them bc they're by definition on the fringes as they don't produce original rat thought or writing, hence are more or less invisible
many of these people find "postrationalism" more palatable bc its structure lends itself much better to being applied by most people
you don't need to understand Bayesian reasoning or wtf a prior is, you can just follow the vibes
game theory? nah man just don't be a dick and let people live
isn't AI risk kind of dorky? and AGI probably isn't real anyway, let's focus on trauma instead
if one were to attempt to distill and rigorously define the principles of postrationalism (do not do this, very unwise), I'm fairly confident they'd turn out to be intuitionistic versions of many preexisting rat principles
just, you know, easier to understand and apply
I understand EYs frustration (which I personally share) regarding people burned by rationalism who now decry it a bit too loudly
just bc you've personally moved on from it doesn't mean it no longer has merit
but I also think he may be expecting something no one wants to do
we can have both rats and postrats and then many more people who are neither but talk about both, it's fine, we don't need to fight
I mean if you're into that go right ahead I guess just keep that behind closed doors
but we don't need to conjure up drama out of thin air for fun
a rigorous takedown of rationalist principles establishing a new school of thought is a much more rat than postrat thing to do
it's just a very different style of discourse and epistemic norms, which doesn't abide by the rules of the community from which it sprung
and that's ok