Mostly silly alternatives to the word ‘rationalist’
Like many others I don’t care much for the word ‘rationalist’, since it comes with lots of preexisting negative connotations. I think we’re most likely stuck with the term, but to amuse myself, I came up a list of alternative terms. The Seattle LW group enjoyed the word ‘cognomancy’.
I don’t claim any of these are original to me; I know I’ve lifted a couple of them.
cognomancer
optimancer
orthomancer
ratiomancer
logimancer
utilimancer
mentamancer
metamancer
economancer
psychomancer
bayesian empiramancer (really you could add ‘bayesian to most of these’)
mathamancer
cognitive engineer
optimization engineer
neuromancer
cognologist
cognician
optimician
utilitician
ratician
orthocognician
economician
mentician
empirician
I really like the suffix -mancy; it’s really fun to think of yourself as doing any kind of -mancy.
I’d love to hear other funny alternatives to ‘rationalist’ and other related terms.
The -mancy suffix is from Greek manteia, meaning divination or prophecy. It is attached almost entirely to superstitious methods of divination, e.g. cartomancy (card reading); geomancy (reading of patterns of thrown rocks or sand); chiromancy (palmistry); and so forth. The exception is necromancy, which today largely does not mean divination by means of the dead, but rather any magickal practice purporting to deal with death or the dead.
If you need fancy Greek roots to play with, may I recommend logos (word, symbol), gnosis (knowledge), noos (mind), or the cluster of menthere (to care) / manthanein (to learn) / mathema (science) / mathematikos — ultimately related to ancient Proto-Indo-European roots meaning “awareness”? ¹
Do be aware that the Latin/Greek fusion “scientology” is already taken.
I’m reminded of the amusing sidebar in the RPG Unknown Armies, which uses the -mancy suffix for all of its magical schools.
(And yes, Pornomancy is pretty much what it sounds like. For maximum weirdness, see also pages 14-15 of this preview PDF. Unknown Armies is awesome.)
I’m saddened by their use of “should,” or maybe “technically.”
Etymology is not meaning. In modern English, “mancy” means magic, Greek root be damned.
Cool roots.
Monnike
Noomandros
Apparently, egeiro means awake in Greek, so:
Noogerio
I am the king of noogies! I am Noogerio!
You’ve been reading Erfworld haven’t you?
I’ve seen Bayesjutsu. I don’t know how you’d refer to a practitioner.
Bayesjutsuka.
As of this post, I got five karma for referencing a name someone else thought of. Why do I get karma for that?
I’m the one who wrote the article you linked to, and I don’t mind you getting karma for the link (at least, as long as mine stays over 20). :)
Because people like the name, and you introduced the name to this conversation. Why should the rest of us care whether you invented the name yourself or brought it in from somewhere else?
Bay-es-jutsu? Or Bayes-jutsu? The key is in the pronunciation methinks.
Bayes is one syllable, so I’d assume bayes-jutsu.
So it is.
I don’t really think there is ANY word that wouldn’t suck, but these are fun so I’ll make some anyway.
Cognitor
Bayesian Disciple
Seer of Mind
Timeless (grammar: “He is not only a timeless, but a master of the timeless”)
Decider
Rational (As in, saying “I am a Rational.” instead of saying “I am a Ratioanlist”)
Lwer (pronounced “Elver”)
Wielder of the Light Arts
Enlightened
Postsane
One solution might be to use titles that have high correlation to what we mean by a rationalist but isn’t exactly the same:
Bayesian
Timeless Decision Theorist
Keeper of Secrets Man Was Never Meant To Know
Inter-universal Broker
Welder of Basilisks
Co-saviour of The Future Lighcone
Correct Contrarian Cluster Cardholder
:p
Probability Wizard!
I like metamancy a lot in that the word conjures an image of thinking about general methods to divine the future (predictions yay!)
I have actually seen “metamancer” used for things like metamagic.
Fun!
I like a lot of the -mancers too (and apparently the letter n), like cognomancer, and optimancer (mostly because it’s so close to optimizer). I think my favorite on your list is cognician.
To throw in some more...
(From the Greek “Nike” for Victory (or, winning):
nikosopher
nikomancer
nikologist
From Aletheia (Greek for Truth):
aletheisopher
alethologer
From Veritas (Latin for Truth):
veritician
veritosopher
veritimancer
veritologer
From ingenium:
ingenian
wingeneer
And others:
noomancer
noocian
neostoic
I also apparently like the letter n.
You made me think of: win-gineer.
I must say that given that i choose to have my last name be aletheia i so prefer the aletheia based ones :)
I prefer every one of those to ‘rationalist’.
I thought of “awesomeology” a while ago, and someone else in the NY group independently proposed the same, so it must have some appeal...
(Someone else mentioned that “scientology” would actually be a decent possibility if it weren’t already taken.)
I’d like “cognician”, if not for the fact that it would sound identical to “cognition” when spoken aloud.
The general problem with coming up with a really cool word for something is that other people might notice that it sounds cool and will try to steal its connotations for unrelated concepts.
“Cartographer.” Or, better yet, nothing at all.
What about psychonomer? Scientiatrist?
existential watchdog Bayesian Metaman Metamaximizer Super Rationalist Perfectioneer Supersatisficer intelligence guardian
Mentat Trainee ;)
My suggestions are here.
I can’t read this. Is it blank?
Yes. Apparently, one can no longer delete one’s owns comments—even if no one has replied to it—but one can edit it down to nothing.
I guessed it was an allusion to the twelfth of Eliezer’s Twelve Virtues of Rationality.
Just edit it to say “This comment has been deleted.”
… which brings us back to the way it was originally done, but with more effort.
No, difference is you can still see WHO said somehting bad. The largest part of a secret is that a secret exists and so on.
I kind of like that. A term that starts out with some negative connotations is less likely to be co-opted or overloaded.
twat