“Observation is the chief source of knowledge” falls under the Empiricism school of thought in epistemology, as opposed to Rationalism, which is perhaps where my misunderstanding came about.
(A minor gripe I have about LW, and EA by extension, is that words with a specific meaning in philosophy are misused and therefore take on a different meaning – take “epistemic status”, which has grown out of its original intended meaning of how confident one is in one’s claim and is now used more to describe someone’s background and raise general caveats and flags for where someone might have blind spots.)
In general, I’d agree that using different tools to help you better understand the world and succeed in life is a good thing; however, my point here is that LW and the Rationality community in general view certain tools and ways of looking at the world as “better” (or are only exposed to these tools and ways of looking at the world, and therefore don’t come across other methods). I have further thoughts on this that I might write a post about in the future, but in short, I think that this leads to the Rationality community (and EA to some extent) to tend to be biased in certain ways that could be mitigated by increasing recognition of the value of other tools and worldviews, and maybe even some reading of academic philosophy (although I recognise not everyone has the time for this).
A minor gripe I have about LW, and EA by extension, is that words with a specific meaning in philosophy are misused and therefore take on a different meaning
The version of “rationalist” you’re talking about is a common usage, but:
The oldest meaning of “rationalist” is about truth, science, inquiry, and good epistemics rather than about “observation matters less than abstract thought”.
Rationalists’ conception of “rationality” isn’t our invention: we’re just using the standard conception from cognitive science.
Lots of groups have called themselves “rationalist” in a LW-like sense prior to LessWrong. It’s one of the more common terms humanists, secularists, atheists, materialists, etc. historically used to distinguish themselves from religionists, purveyors of pseudoscience, and the like.
Also, the rationalist vs. empiricist debate in philosophy is mostly of historical interest; it’s not clear to me that it should matter much to non-historians nowadays.
take “epistemic status”
“Epistemic status” isn’t philosophy jargon, is it?
I took it to be riffing on early LiveJournal posts that began with text like “status: bored” or “current mood: busy”, adding the qualifier “epistemic” as a cute variation.
Epistemic status is 100% philosophy jargon. Hell, the word “epistemic” or the word “epistemology” is itself philosophy jargon. I only ever hear it from LW people/EAs and people in philosophy departments.
The word “epistemic” is philosophy jargon. The phrase “epistemic status” in the link you gave isn’t a separate piece of jargon, it’s just the normal word “status” modified by the word “epistemic”.
The original comment I was replying to said:
“A minor gripe I have about LW, and EA by extension, is that words with a specific meaning in philosophy are misused and therefore take on a different meaning – take “epistemic status”, which has grown out of its original intended meaning of how confident one is in one’s claim and is now used more to describe someone’s background and raise general caveats and flags for where someone might have blind spots.”
If the claim is that rationalists are misusing the word “epistemic”, not some specific unfamiliar-to-me new piece of jargon (“epistemic status”), then the claim is based on a misunderstanding of the word “epistemic”. Epistemic in philosophy means “pertaining to knowledge (belief justification, reliability, accuracy, reasonableness, warrant, etc.)”, not “pertaining to confidence level”.
Someone’s “epistemic status” includes what they believe and how strongly they believe it, but it also includes anything that’s relevant to how justified, reasonable, supported, based-on-reliable-processes, etc. your beliefs are. Like, “epistemic status: I wrote this whole hungry, which often makes people irritable and causes them to have more brain farts, which reduces the expected reliability and justifiedness of the stuff I wrote” is totally legit. And if people have the background knowledge to understand why you might want to flag that you were hungry, it’s completely fine to write “epistemic status: written while hungry” as a shorthand.
(I do think rationalists sometimes put other stuff under “epistemic status” as a joke, but “rationalists joke too much” is a different criticism than “rationalists have their own nonstandard meaning for the word ‘epistemic’”.)
Language is a mess of exaptations build upon ever more exaptations until you find a reference to something physical at the bottom of it all. Consider what “the mouth the river” means if you believe you live in a world where everything is/has a spirit. Definition discussions are useful for communication, but adjusting definitions to make progress is deeply necessary, because new ideas need to build upon old foundations and going for some sort of new word creates more confusion than it is worth.
“Observation is the chief source of knowledge” falls under the Empiricism school of thought in epistemology, as opposed to Rationalism, which is perhaps where my misunderstanding came about.
(A minor gripe I have about LW, and EA by extension, is that words with a specific meaning in philosophy are misused and therefore take on a different meaning – take “epistemic status”, which has grown out of its original intended meaning of how confident one is in one’s claim and is now used more to describe someone’s background and raise general caveats and flags for where someone might have blind spots.)
In general, I’d agree that using different tools to help you better understand the world and succeed in life is a good thing; however, my point here is that LW and the Rationality community in general view certain tools and ways of looking at the world as “better” (or are only exposed to these tools and ways of looking at the world, and therefore don’t come across other methods). I have further thoughts on this that I might write a post about in the future, but in short, I think that this leads to the Rationality community (and EA to some extent) to tend to be biased in certain ways that could be mitigated by increasing recognition of the value of other tools and worldviews, and maybe even some reading of academic philosophy (although I recognise not everyone has the time for this).
I think lesswrong and EA are gluttonous and appropriative and good at looting the useful stuff from a breadth of academic fields, but excluding continental philosophy is a deeply correct move that we have made and will continue to make.
I think the point is that our subculture’s “rationalism” and a historian of philosophy’s “rationalism” are homonyms.
The version of “rationalist” you’re talking about is a common usage, but:
The oldest meaning of “rationalist” is about truth, science, inquiry, and good epistemics rather than about “observation matters less than abstract thought”.
Rationalists’ conception of “rationality” isn’t our invention: we’re just using the standard conception from cognitive science.
Lots of groups have called themselves “rationalist” in a LW-like sense prior to LessWrong. It’s one of the more common terms humanists, secularists, atheists, materialists, etc. historically used to distinguish themselves from religionists, purveyors of pseudoscience, and the like.
Also, the rationalist vs. empiricist debate in philosophy is mostly of historical interest; it’s not clear to me that it should matter much to non-historians nowadays.
“Epistemic status” isn’t philosophy jargon, is it?
I took it to be riffing on early LiveJournal posts that began with text like “status: bored” or “current mood: busy”, adding the qualifier “epistemic” as a cute variation.
Epistemic status is 100% philosophy jargon. Hell, the word “epistemic” or the word “epistemology” is itself philosophy jargon. I only ever hear it from LW people/EAs and people in philosophy departments.
The word “epistemic” is philosophy jargon. The phrase “epistemic status” in the link you gave isn’t a separate piece of jargon, it’s just the normal word “status” modified by the word “epistemic”.
The original comment I was replying to said:
“A minor gripe I have about LW, and EA by extension, is that words with a specific meaning in philosophy are misused and therefore take on a different meaning – take “epistemic status”, which has grown out of its original intended meaning of how confident one is in one’s claim and is now used more to describe someone’s background and raise general caveats and flags for where someone might have blind spots.”
If the claim is that rationalists are misusing the word “epistemic”, not some specific unfamiliar-to-me new piece of jargon (“epistemic status”), then the claim is based on a misunderstanding of the word “epistemic”. Epistemic in philosophy means “pertaining to knowledge (belief justification, reliability, accuracy, reasonableness, warrant, etc.)”, not “pertaining to confidence level”.
Someone’s “epistemic status” includes what they believe and how strongly they believe it, but it also includes anything that’s relevant to how justified, reasonable, supported, based-on-reliable-processes, etc. your beliefs are. Like, “epistemic status: I wrote this whole hungry, which often makes people irritable and causes them to have more brain farts, which reduces the expected reliability and justifiedness of the stuff I wrote” is totally legit. And if people have the background knowledge to understand why you might want to flag that you were hungry, it’s completely fine to write “epistemic status: written while hungry” as a shorthand.
(I do think rationalists sometimes put other stuff under “epistemic status” as a joke, but “rationalists joke too much” is a different criticism than “rationalists have their own nonstandard meaning for the word ‘epistemic’”.)
Language is a mess of exaptations build upon ever more exaptations until you find a reference to something physical at the bottom of it all. Consider what “the mouth the river” means if you believe you live in a world where everything is/has a spirit. Definition discussions are useful for communication, but adjusting definitions to make progress is deeply necessary, because new ideas need to build upon old foundations and going for some sort of new word creates more confusion than it is worth.
I think you are 100% correct and would be interested in helping you with a post about this if you wanted.