Getting to the history of it, it really starts in my mind in Berkeley, around 2014-2015. … At one of these parties there was this extended conversation that started between myself, Malcolm Ocean, and Ethan Ashkii.… From there we formed something like a philosophical circle. We had nominally a book club—that was the official structure of it—but it was mostly just an excuse to get together every two to three weeks and talk about whatever we had been reading in this space of how do we be rationalist but actually win.
I think this is the seed of it. …
I don’t predict we fundamentally disagree or anything, just thought to register my knee-jerk reaction to this part of your oral history was “what about Scott’s 2014 map?” which had already featured David Chapman, the Ribbonfarm scene which I used to be a fan of, Kevin Simler who unfortunately hasn’t updated Melting Asphalt in years, and A Wizard’s Word (which I’d honestly forgotten about):
But anyway, as a result of this map, a lot of people have been asking: what is postrationality? I think Will Newsome or Steve Rayhawk invented the term, but I sort of redefined it, and it’s probably my fault that it’s come to refer to this cluster in blogspace. So I figured I would do a series of posts explaining my definition.
You say
So maybe one day we will get the postrationalist version of Eliezer. Someone will do this. You could maybe argue that David Chapman is this, but I don’t think it’s quite there yet. I don’t think it’s 100% working. The machine isn’t working quite that way.
While I do think of Chapman as being the most Eliezer-like-but-not-quite postrat solo figure with what he’s doing at Meaningness, Venkat Rao seems like by far the more successful intellectual scene-creator to me, although he’s definitely not postrat-Eliezer-esque at all.
Oh, yes, I forgot about Kevin’s blog! I also forgot about the ToC! I’m unfortunately not the best person to be writing an accurate history, as I tend to forget details that were once quite important. I guess that’s why I promised an oral history, both because it was a talk and because you should treat this as a data point from which one might construct a complete history.
I don’t predict we fundamentally disagree or anything, just thought to register my knee-jerk reaction to this part of your oral history was “what about Scott’s 2014 map?” which had already featured David Chapman, the Ribbonfarm scene which I used to be a fan of, Kevin Simler who unfortunately hasn’t updated Melting Asphalt in years, and A Wizard’s Word (which I’d honestly forgotten about):
I also vaguely recalled Darcey Riley’s 2014 post Postrationality, Table of Contents in which they claimed
You say
While I do think of Chapman as being the most Eliezer-like-but-not-quite postrat solo figure with what he’s doing at Meaningness, Venkat Rao seems like by far the more successful intellectual scene-creator to me, although he’s definitely not postrat-Eliezer-esque at all.
Oh, yes, I forgot about Kevin’s blog! I also forgot about the ToC! I’m unfortunately not the best person to be writing an accurate history, as I tend to forget details that were once quite important. I guess that’s why I promised an oral history, both because it was a talk and because you should treat this as a data point from which one might construct a complete history.