Thread by @Meaningness

Praise be unto Elua, @slatestarcodex is BACK astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-weyl-…

@slatestarcodex .@glenweyl’s “Why I Am Not A Technocrat” is also very good and worth reading if you haven’t already.

I think there is much less disagreement here than it may seem. Both essays are quite complicated, so sorting this out point-by-point would be difficult, but…

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl Both essays take what I would call a meta-systematic, meta-rational position (which is why I admire both of them). They seem to agree on a core understanding (one that is, I think, very important and NOT widely recognized):

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl Systematic social institutions are absolutely necessary for large-scale civilizations, and can be improved via rational and empirical reason,

AND

are blind to factors their models overlook, depend on unmodeled human judgement to function, and are brittle to context changes

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl SO it’s critical to continually consider alternatives, search for blind spots, examine the concrete details of effects, investigate how judgements are made and according to what purposes, consider possible failure modes as circumstances change—

these are meta-rational activities

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl These quotes both roughly acknowledge that the disagreement is a matter of emphasis: is it more important to say “rationality is SO GOOD” (which it is) or to say “but it is limited and can fail catastrophically” (which it is and does)?

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl Better to consider who you are talking to (as Scott discusses in the “bravery debate” essay).

If someone is not yet rational, YAY RATIONALITY is the right message.

If someone is firmly ensconced in rationalism, RATIONALISM IS FALSE AND HARMFUL is the right message.

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl There are two entirely different critiques of rationalism, the Romantic and the meta-rational. These are rarely clearly distinguished, which contributes to confusion in this pair of essays.

metarationality.com/rationalism-de…

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl I take Glen’s critique to be mainly meta-rational, but his invocation of “humanities, continental philosophy, or humanistic social sciences” could be taken as Romantic—and Scott seized on that, suggesting that Glen was recommending them as a replacement, rather than supplement:

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl When self-described rationalists object to my critique, they universally misinterpret it as Romantic and therefore anti-rational; none of them has ever addressed the meta-rational critique at all.*

So I’m more sympathetic by predilection to Glen’s argument than Scott’s,

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl (* “addressed” in the sense of “argued against”; some rationalists who have read The-Eggplant-So-Far have said “oh! NOW I get it… this seems right.” Which I’m glad of, of course…)

@slatestarcodex @glenweyl OTOH, with 40% of America in the grip of QAnon, any criticism of rationality seems dangerous and missing the point!

Rationalism is false and harmful, but it is a hell of a lot LessWrong than the new cultural mainstream… so I’m more sympathetic to Scott’s argument by necessity.