I don’t have great faith in the epistemics of postrats as they exist today. My somewhat limited experience of post-rattish meetups and TPOT is that it’s a mix of people who are either indistinguishable from rats (and indeed lots are just rats), people who are mostly normie-ish and don’t think about epistemics, and totally woo people who are obviously wrong about lots of things (astrology, karma, UFOs) with no epistemic gain.
My guess is what’s happening is that the rationalist frame is 80% correct, and the best alternative is normie epistemics in the remaining 20% of time. The first type of “postrats” just use the rationalist frame. The second type swap in some amount of normie epistemology, but not in a way which correlates with the times they should actually be swapping in normie epistemology. The third type of postrats are swapping a woo/religious frame into the rationalist frame, which seems mostly just worse than the rationalist.
The second and third groups do have better interpersonal skills than rats, but I think this is mostly just regression to the mean.
I also have pretty limited experience with post-rattish meetups and probably mostly see the parts of TPOT I agree with, but I feel like typical post-rats don’t fit into any of these “types,” except maybe the first one.
The kind of post-rat I think is good, and perhaps even common, is something like what’s described in Gordon’s comment. Basically a rationalist who realizes that it is possible to have and act on non-legibilized knowledge, and who knows when to make decisions based on what feels right rather than what they can convincingly argue will maximize their utility function. I think this mindset is valuable and not so common among vanilla rationalists.
I don’t have great faith in the epistemics of postrats as they exist today.
Yeah, you and me both.
I’ve said this elsewhere before, but in hindsight it was a mistake for us to promote terms like “postrationality” and “metarationality” to the point of fixation. They’re exactly the type of words that invite pre/post confusion and allows pre-rats to masquerade as post-rats if there’s insufficient gatekeeping (and there usually is).
And yet, there’s something in the desire of folks like myself to point to a place that says “hey, I think rationalists are doing a lot of things right, but are screwing up in fundamental ways that are contrary to the vibe of rationality, and it’s useful to give that thing a name so we can easily point to it”.
In my ideal world, people would be trained in rationality-as-it-exists-today first, and then be trained in the limits of those methods so they know how to transcend them safely when they break down. Then post-rat would really mean something: one who fully trained as a rationalist, and then used that as the bedrock on which to learn how to handle the situations the methods of rationality are not good at dealing with.
Some people will argue that’s just rationality, and sure maybe it is some ideal version of rationality as proposed in The Sequences, but as I see it, actual rationalists screw up in predictable ways, those ways are related to the rationalist vibe, and thus the internal experience must be to transcend that vibe, whatever we want to label it.
there’s something in the desire of folks like myself to point to a place that says “hey, I think rationalists are doing a lot of things right, but are screwing up in fundamental ways that are contrary to the vibe of rationality, and it’s useful to give that thing a name so we can easily point to it”.
Have you written about this anywhere? I’d be interested in reading it. Especially if it’s pretty direct.
I don’t have great faith in the epistemics of postrats as they exist today. My somewhat limited experience of post-rattish meetups and TPOT is that it’s a mix of people who are either indistinguishable from rats (and indeed lots are just rats), people who are mostly normie-ish and don’t think about epistemics, and totally woo people who are obviously wrong about lots of things (astrology, karma, UFOs) with no epistemic gain.
My guess is what’s happening is that the rationalist frame is 80% correct, and the best alternative is normie epistemics in the remaining 20% of time. The first type of “postrats” just use the rationalist frame. The second type swap in some amount of normie epistemology, but not in a way which correlates with the times they should actually be swapping in normie epistemology. The third type of postrats are swapping a woo/religious frame into the rationalist frame, which seems mostly just worse than the rationalist.
The second and third groups do have better interpersonal skills than rats, but I think this is mostly just regression to the mean.
I also have pretty limited experience with post-rattish meetups and probably mostly see the parts of TPOT I agree with, but I feel like typical post-rats don’t fit into any of these “types,” except maybe the first one.
The kind of post-rat I think is good, and perhaps even common, is something like what’s described in Gordon’s comment. Basically a rationalist who realizes that it is possible to have and act on non-legibilized knowledge, and who knows when to make decisions based on what feels right rather than what they can convincingly argue will maximize their utility function. I think this mindset is valuable and not so common among vanilla rationalists.
Yeah, you and me both.
I’ve said this elsewhere before, but in hindsight it was a mistake for us to promote terms like “postrationality” and “metarationality” to the point of fixation. They’re exactly the type of words that invite pre/post confusion and allows pre-rats to masquerade as post-rats if there’s insufficient gatekeeping (and there usually is).
And yet, there’s something in the desire of folks like myself to point to a place that says “hey, I think rationalists are doing a lot of things right, but are screwing up in fundamental ways that are contrary to the vibe of rationality, and it’s useful to give that thing a name so we can easily point to it”.
In my ideal world, people would be trained in rationality-as-it-exists-today first, and then be trained in the limits of those methods so they know how to transcend them safely when they break down. Then post-rat would really mean something: one who fully trained as a rationalist, and then used that as the bedrock on which to learn how to handle the situations the methods of rationality are not good at dealing with.
Some people will argue that’s just rationality, and sure maybe it is some ideal version of rationality as proposed in The Sequences, but as I see it, actual rationalists screw up in predictable ways, those ways are related to the rationalist vibe, and thus the internal experience must be to transcend that vibe, whatever we want to label it.
Have you written about this anywhere? I’d be interested in reading it. Especially if it’s pretty direct.