Thread by @Meaningness

“Rationalism”: whenever I use the word on twitter, I get replies—often but not always angry ones—from people who think I’m talking about a particular tiny, recent subculture.

Rationalism has existed for 2600+ years and is one of the two dominant Western ideologies.

So, I thought, wow, maybe this tiny subculture has been amazingly effective at marketing itself? So now everyone thinks “rationalism” means them, not the Western cultural mainstream?

That would be a remarkable achievement.

So I did a google search for “rationalism.”

In its first ten pages of results, zero concerned the LessWrong/Berkeley subculture.

(N.b. google gives you results it thinks will be personally relevant, so if you have any connection to that subculture, your results may vary.)

So I tried “rationalist” as an alternative.

The first subculture hit was on the third result page: its own self-description. wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationali…

The sixth result page had one semi-relevant link.

It’s the self-description of a *different* “rationalist” subculture: rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rationali…

Page eight has two maybe-vaguely-relevant posts. One is @robinhanson critiquing “rationalists” in general, in 2014, although given history I suspect he had the LW subculture in mind as an example: overcomingbias.com/2014/06/you-ca…

@robinhanson The other vaguely-relevant hit on page 8 is my critique of “rationalist eternalism,” featuring Rene Descartes, who is… not actually a member of the LessWrong subculture.

I did vaguely have that subculture in mind when writing this, because it’s so noisy meaningness.com/rationalist-et…

@robinhanson And then nothing relevant on pages 9 or 10.

So maybe google hates LessWrong…

Or maybe it’s a tiny twitter subculture. Which is great, I love those!

@robinhanson Perhaps if LessWrong enthusiasts recognized that nearly no one outside their subculture thinks “rationalism” means them,

it might deflate their self-important insistence on “correcting” me every time I use the word “rationalism” though.

@robinhanson I really *like* the LessWrong folks. I do also find them significantly misguided, often silly, and occasionally annoying. Narcissism of small differences.