Max: "When I talk about rationalism I mean a commitment to reason, evidence, and logic rather than to acquiring knowledge through authority, emotion, tradition, revelation, or faith."
As we've discussed before, you use the latter words, to some extent, in ways that are different than how I use them. I hope you won't mind if I include here a link to my explanation of the difference. Beyond that, I'll just say that if I understood those words as you understand them, I would probably reject them too.
To be rational is to use reason, or thought, to attempt to solve some sort of problem. Human beings are obliged to be rational in this sense as they go about their lives from moment to moment (including as they decide how to dance). It is certainly possible to reason more efficiently or less efficiently (and, therefore, to study and advocate efficient rationality). But it seems both arbitrary and, ultimately, incoherent to assert that above some alleged level of reasoning efficiency we are “rational” and below some alleged level we are “irrational”. https://jclester.substack.com/p/rationality-a-libertarian-viewpoint
You hit the nail on its knucklehead—anyone who criticized transhumanism or the particular perspective of Extropy as too rationalist focused.
Great post! For more on this topic, I recommend people to check out our conversation together where we discussed Karl Popper's ideas 😉: https://youtu.be/Ak9NsM61Xg0?si=aeWdHvh4ep27OP7-
Max: "When I talk about rationalism I mean a commitment to reason, evidence, and logic rather than to acquiring knowledge through authority, emotion, tradition, revelation, or faith."
As we've discussed before, you use the latter words, to some extent, in ways that are different than how I use them. I hope you won't mind if I include here a link to my explanation of the difference. Beyond that, I'll just say that if I understood those words as you understand them, I would probably reject them too.
https://lincoln.metacannon.net/2011/10/dynamic-faith-in-pancritical.html
this "125% better life partner trade-up" spreadsheet morality stuff is just a way of self-reporting an anxiety disorder, see: https://twitter.com/kanzure/status/1754951822723170720
To be rational is to use reason, or thought, to attempt to solve some sort of problem. Human beings are obliged to be rational in this sense as they go about their lives from moment to moment (including as they decide how to dance). It is certainly possible to reason more efficiently or less efficiently (and, therefore, to study and advocate efficient rationality). But it seems both arbitrary and, ultimately, incoherent to assert that above some alleged level of reasoning efficiency we are “rational” and below some alleged level we are “irrational”. https://jclester.substack.com/p/rationality-a-libertarian-viewpoint