The eventual success of rationalists will result in the death of the label “rationalists.” Take “liberalism” as an example. In the eighteenth century, liberals were a specific political group that opposed absolute monarchy (I’m oversimplifying a bit). Now, mostly everyone opposes absolute monarchy. The “liberal” label has come to refer to left-wing instead. Similarly, if rationalist thought becomes mainstream in 200 years (assuming we all haven’t died), it won’t be called rationalism anymore. The stuff in the Sequences will just be obvious thinking habits.
So if we want to make less people hate rationalism and effective altruism, then we might have to ditch the labels. There’s a lot of mainstream animosity toward rationalists and EAs because news outlets like to portray them as crazy San Francisco doomer polycule vegans, not as a group of people who possess new but reasonable tenets of thinking. By “tenets of thinking” I don’t mean AI doomerism—I just mean things like “you should donate to effective charities” and “you should make beliefs pay rent.” It should be easier for people to accept these tenets without subscribing to stereotypical rationalist/EA beliefs on AI, animal welfare, etc. LessWrong isn’t optimal from this perspective, since it’s sort of an echo chamber, and it may overwhelm new users.
It will be a good day when some famous politician, perhaps from New York, publicly discusses how they form beliefs without mentioning the word “rationalism” once.
The eventual success of rationalists will result in the death of the label “rationalists.” Take “liberalism” as an example. In the eighteenth century, liberals were a specific political group that opposed absolute monarchy (I’m oversimplifying a bit). Now, mostly everyone opposes absolute monarchy. The “liberal” label has come to refer to left-wing instead. Similarly, if rationalist thought becomes mainstream in 200 years (assuming we all haven’t died), it won’t be called rationalism anymore. The stuff in the Sequences will just be obvious thinking habits.
So if we want to make less people hate rationalism and effective altruism, then we might have to ditch the labels. There’s a lot of mainstream animosity toward rationalists and EAs because news outlets like to portray them as crazy San Francisco doomer polycule vegans, not as a group of people who possess new but reasonable tenets of thinking. By “tenets of thinking” I don’t mean AI doomerism—I just mean things like “you should donate to effective charities” and “you should make beliefs pay rent.” It should be easier for people to accept these tenets without subscribing to stereotypical rationalist/EA beliefs on AI, animal welfare, etc. LessWrong isn’t optimal from this perspective, since it’s sort of an echo chamber, and it may overwhelm new users.
It will be a good day when some famous politician, perhaps from New York, publicly discusses how they form beliefs without mentioning the word “rationalism” once.