From the point of view of someone who doesn’t buy into them, I think it’s only incidental that those specific positions are advocated as a logical consequence of more rational thinking and not others. Had the founders not been American programmers, the “natural and obvious” consequences of their rationalism would have looked highly different. My point being that these practices are not at all more rational than the alternatives and very likely less so. But yeah, if these ideas gain rationalist adherents, then obviously some of the advocacy for them is going to take a rationalist-friendly form, with rationalist lingo and emphasized connections to rationalism.
Yes—atheism. And by extension disbelief in the supernatural. It’s the first consequence of acquiring better thinking practices. However, it is not as if atheism in itself forms a good secondary basis for discussion in a rationalist community, since most of the activity would necessarily take the form of “ha ha, look how stupid these people are!”. I would know; been there, done that. But it gets very old very quickly, and besides isn’t of much use except for novice apostates who need social validation of their new identities. From that point of view I regard atheism as a solved problem and therefore uninteresting.
Nothing else seems to spring to mind, though—or at least no positive rather than negative positions on ideological questions. “Don’t be a fanatic”, “don’t buy snake oil”, “don’t join cults”, “check the prevailing scientific paradigms before denying things left and right [evolution, moon landing, the Holocaust, global warming etc.]”… critical thinking 101. Mostly all other beliefs and practices that seem to go hand in hand with rationalism seem to be explainable by membership of this particular cluster of Silicon Valley culture.
From the point of view of someone who doesn’t buy into them, I think it’s only incidental that those specific positions are advocated as a logical consequence of more rational thinking and not others. Had the founders not been American programmers, the “natural and obvious” consequences of their rationalism would have looked highly different. My point being that these practices are not at all more rational than the alternatives and very likely less so. But yeah, if these ideas gain rationalist adherents, then obviously some of the advocacy for them is going to take a rationalist-friendly form, with rationalist lingo and emphasized connections to rationalism.
Just curious, are there any positions which you you regard as “a logical consequence of more rational thinking”?
Yes—atheism. And by extension disbelief in the supernatural. It’s the first consequence of acquiring better thinking practices. However, it is not as if atheism in itself forms a good secondary basis for discussion in a rationalist community, since most of the activity would necessarily take the form of “ha ha, look how stupid these people are!”. I would know; been there, done that. But it gets very old very quickly, and besides isn’t of much use except for novice apostates who need social validation of their new identities. From that point of view I regard atheism as a solved problem and therefore uninteresting.
Nothing else seems to spring to mind, though—or at least no positive rather than negative positions on ideological questions. “Don’t be a fanatic”, “don’t buy snake oil”, “don’t join cults”, “check the prevailing scientific paradigms before denying things left and right [evolution, moon landing, the Holocaust, global warming etc.]”… critical thinking 101. Mostly all other beliefs and practices that seem to go hand in hand with rationalism seem to be explainable by membership of this particular cluster of Silicon Valley culture.
Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.