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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Ok, then I am incorrectly interpreting the term rationalism.

You are not the first one to point this out, rationalism is a terrible name for the movement. Mostly because rationalism already exists as a philosophical system, partially defined as opposition to empiricism. This form of rationalism is the belief, that the basis of all eternal truth comes from reason alone. Hence Descartes argument of cogito ergo sum which comes from total critique of validity of senses. Which is exactly the opposite to what Yud/Alexander "rationalists" espouse. Rationalists are really empiricists in this way.

Not as I intended to use it. I was using the term "rationally" to mean logically extended from your moral principles - whatever those are.

First, this is silly. Rationalists were not the first ones to invent logic, this is too broad a definition. On practical level famoust rationalists are obsessed with movements like Effective Altruism, which is rabidly utilitarian. Scott Alexander described himself as consequentialist utilitarian. Alexander described also Robin Hanson as total utilitaian. Yudkowsky is not very clear writer on this, he often espouses consequentialist and utilitarian thinking, but he complicates stuff. I find this short tweet as a very good summary:

Go three-quarters of the way from deontology to utilitarianism and then stop. You are now in the right place. Stay there at least until you have become a god.

So 2 and a half or two and three quarters for three are team utilitarianism. So I do not think I misjudged that.