I agree that it was not the usage in the Sequences, and that it was therefore not (or at least not always) the usage within the community that coalesced around EY’s blogging. But if “otherwise at the time the Sequences were written” is meant to say more than that—if you’re saying that there was a tendency for “rationalist” to mean something like “person skilled in the art of reason” apart from EY’s preference for using it that way—then I would like to see some evidence. I don’t think I have ever seen the word used in that way in a way that wasn’t clearly causally descended from EY’s usage.
I agree that it was not the usage in the Sequences, and that it was therefore not (or at least not always) the usage within the community that coalesced around EY’s blogging. But if “otherwise at the time the Sequences were written” is meant to say more than that—if you’re saying that there was a tendency for “rationalist” to mean something like “person skilled in the art of reason” apart from EY’s preference for using it that way—then I would like to see some evidence. I don’t think I have ever seen the word used in that way in a way that wasn’t clearly causally descended from EY’s usage.
I was referring to usage here on Less Wrong (and in adjacent/related communities). In other words—
—nope, it is not meant to say more than that.