I think the demonym for ‘metacognitive movement’ is ‘metacognizer’; I don’t think ‘meta-thinker’ is similar-looking enough.
I like ‘metacognizer’ enough that I would maybe be happy seeing it spring up now and then. But I don’t think it captures the core thing ‘rationalist’ does. Thinking about thinking is a certain strategy we use to achieve the goals of truth and winning, but we don’t want to get too wedded to that strategy at the expense of the goals. (E.g., maybe rationalists should sometimes deliberate and reflect less, and be more ‘in the moment’ or reflex-oriented; if so, naming ourselves ‘metacognizers’ could make it harder to update.) ‘Rationality’ is nice because ‘systematized accuracy and winning’ is closer to the goals.
I don’t like ‘rats’, but I think ‘cogs’ is probably even worse.
cognitive rationalists / cograts—disambiguates that we’re named after the cognitive-science jargon ‘rationality’, and aren’t e.g. the old philosophy movement
I think referencing Bayes in the name would be a mistake for the same reason as metacognition—it’s a tool, and it’s a law, but it’s not an end and it’s not The Thing.
Maybe if we were “error-reductionists,” we’d call ourselves ducks! I like the term as a fancy spin on Less Wrong, and I think it helps show that we include anything that lets us be less in error, including non-stereotypically “rational” forms of information.
On the other hand, it doesn’t point to action any better than “rationality” or “metacognition.” And it doesn’t suggest what you’d actually do, as a human being, in order to reduce your error more (a flaw in the term “rationality” as well).
Weirdly enough, for seeming like the most passive of the one-word options, “metacognition” is the only one that points to a specific and well-defined set of actionable teaching and learning techniques.
That still doesn’t mean it’s optimal. It might just mean that we’ve failed as a civilization (except at our paradise here on the blog!) to attach a set of actionable strategies to the word “rationality” or “error reduction.” So maybe we just need to correct that.
I imagine “metacogs” might gain more purchase than either “cogs” or “metacognizers” since the former is too short and silly and the latter is a mouthful to say, but “metacogs” strikes a pretty good balance.
I think the demonym for ‘metacognitive movement’ is ‘metacognizer’; I don’t think ‘meta-thinker’ is similar-looking enough.
I like ‘metacognizer’ enough that I would maybe be happy seeing it spring up now and then. But I don’t think it captures the core thing ‘rationalist’ does. Thinking about thinking is a certain strategy we use to achieve the goals of truth and winning, but we don’t want to get too wedded to that strategy at the expense of the goals. (E.g., maybe rationalists should sometimes deliberate and reflect less, and be more ‘in the moment’ or reflex-oriented; if so, naming ourselves ‘metacognizers’ could make it harder to update.) ‘Rationality’ is nice because ‘systematized accuracy and winning’ is closer to the goals.
I don’t like ‘rats’, but I think ‘cogs’ is probably even worse.
Some terms I think get at the Thing better:
rationalists
cognitive rationalists / cograts—disambiguates that we’re named after the cognitive-science jargon ‘rationality’, and aren’t e.g. the old philosophy movement
optimizists
epistemists / epistemicists
aspiring Bayesians
Bayesianists
expected utilitarians
error-reductionists
I think referencing Bayes in the name would be a mistake for the same reason as metacognition—it’s a tool, and it’s a law, but it’s not an end and it’s not The Thing.
Maybe if we were “error-reductionists,” we’d call ourselves ducks! I like the term as a fancy spin on Less Wrong, and I think it helps show that we include anything that lets us be less in error, including non-stereotypically “rational” forms of information.
On the other hand, it doesn’t point to action any better than “rationality” or “metacognition.” And it doesn’t suggest what you’d actually do, as a human being, in order to reduce your error more (a flaw in the term “rationality” as well).
Weirdly enough, for seeming like the most passive of the one-word options, “metacognition” is the only one that points to a specific and well-defined set of actionable teaching and learning techniques.
That still doesn’t mean it’s optimal. It might just mean that we’ve failed as a civilization (except at our paradise here on the blog!) to attach a set of actionable strategies to the word “rationality” or “error reduction.” So maybe we just need to correct that.
I imagine “metacogs” might gain more purchase than either “cogs” or “metacognizers” since the former is too short and silly and the latter is a mouthful to say, but “metacogs” strikes a pretty good balance.