Rationalism is the belief that reason is the primary path to knowledge, as opposed to, say, the observation that is championed by empiricism. It's a belief system that prioritises imposing its tenets on reality rather than asking reality what reality's tenets are. From the outset, it's inherently cult-like.

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handoflixue 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

Rationalists, in this case, refers specifically to the community clustered around LessWrong, which explicitly and repeatedly emphasizes points like "you can't claim to have a well grounded belief if you don't actually have empirical evidence for it" (https://www.lesswrong.com/w/evidence for a quick overview of some of the basic posts on that topic)

To quote one of the core foundational articles: "Before you try mapping an unseen territory, pour some water into a cup at room temperature and wait until it spontaneously freezes before proceeding. That way you can be sure the general trick—ignoring infinitesimally tiny probabilities of success—is working properly." (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eY45uCCX7DdwJ4Jha/no-one-can...)

One can argue how well the community absorbs the lesson, but this certainly seems to be a much higher standard than average.

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Ifkaluva 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is the definition of “rationalism” as proposed by philosophers like Descartes and Kant, but I don’t think that is an accurate representation of the type of “rationalism” this article describes.

This article describes “rationalism” as described in LessWrong and the sequences by Eliezer Yudkowsky. A good amount of it based on empirical findings from psychology behavior science. It’s called “rationalism” because it seeks to correct common reasoning heuristics that are purported to lead to incorrect reasoning, not in contrast to empiricism.

	▲	glenstein 8 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Agreed, I appreciate that there's a conceptual distinction between the philosophical versions of rationalism and empiricism, but what's being talked about here is a conception that (again, at least notionally) is interested in and compatible with both. I am pretty sure many of the LessWrong posts are about how to understand the meaning of different types of data and are very much about examining, developing, criticizing a rich variety of empirical attitudes.
	▲	FergusArgyll 8 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I was going to write a similar comment as op, so permit me to defend it: Many of their "beliefs" - Super-duper intelligence, doom - are clearly not believed by the market; Observing the market is a kind of empiricism and it's completely discounted by the lw-ers

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gethly 8 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But you cannot have reason without substantial proof of how things behave by observing them in the first place. Reason is simply a logical approach to yes and no questions where you factually know, from observation of past events, how things work. And therefore you can simulate an outcome by the exercise of reasoning applied onto a situation that you have not yet observed and come to a logical outcome, given the set of rules and presumptions.