For this substack I wanted to give people very polished pieces but I’ve only put one out so far and I got a request to give you ‘shitposts but with more room to breathe’ so, instead, we’re doing that.
One of the most fascinating examples of the disembodied vibe is Roko's LW post on Ugh Fields – which is overall a great post about how we subconsciously flinch from painful and scary things. What is astounding is that Roko writes the entire post without talking about the body AT ALL! Even though "ugh" is itself an act of bodily revulsion! (he didn't come up with the phrase himself though, which explains that).
Post-rat is a term that has been horrendously diluted, and this does not help. It is not about vibes, it is not an objection to vibes. Fundamentally, it is just a skepticism of all exhaustive, formal accounts of epistemology - in this case, Yud's "rationalism."
In that sense it is just a microcosm of the modernist/postmodernist gap.
Yeah, I'm definitely in the hat-trick club of "firmly against vibe, and philosophical and political content", but see a lot of value in having reckoned with and incorporated (at least some of) the concepts of rationality as a programme.
I'm just gonna throw out haunted as another term. It makes for easy discursive applications of identifying and producing a typology of "haunts" examples: "they're pointing in the right direction but they're being thrown off by their teleological haunts". "Still haunted by rat-think". Love their work, careful to generalise though, it's got a rural arid haunt, this wouldn't relate to working class adaptive practices in tropical societies etc.
"Disembodied" seems absurdly wrong. Have you read Feeling Rational? What about Yehuda on his website? You're describing the idea of cold rationality a la Spock, which Eliezer has explicitly disavowed in several places.
In science as attire, EY says "The part that scares me is wondering how many people, especially in the media, understand science only as a literary genre." If you continue to analyze only the literary manifestations of rationality, you're not going to get a good idea of what it's for or why it uniquely draws people.
> If you continue to analyze only the literary manifestations of rationality, you're not going to get a good idea of what it's for or why it uniquely draws people.
> Have you read Feeling Rational
> Yehuda on his website?
> science as attire
> explicitly disavowed
Methinks doth lady etc etc - I care not about what they say, I care about how they act/feel. This comes from interacting irl and is evidently the case. People who exist above their necks, behind their eyes.
Strong +1. Having escaped the disassociation, I agree with you, but would have similarly to @zaj rejected the "disembodied" label about myself until I had realized what it was referring to. The realization, ironically, made it not apply anymore.
This seems kind of true but focusing on the wrong vibers imo. EY's work has content and vibe and MANY 'rats' dislike his vibe and style of writing but agree with the content. In contrast post-rationality is mostly about sik vibes.
Someone called me a “postrat” today and i didnt know what it meant so I duckduckgo’d it and this post was the first result.
1. congrats on that
2. now we are friends. subbed.
One of the most fascinating examples of the disembodied vibe is Roko's LW post on Ugh Fields – which is overall a great post about how we subconsciously flinch from painful and scary things. What is astounding is that Roko writes the entire post without talking about the body AT ALL! Even though "ugh" is itself an act of bodily revulsion! (he didn't come up with the phrase himself though, which explains that).
Post-rat is a term that has been horrendously diluted, and this does not help. It is not about vibes, it is not an objection to vibes. Fundamentally, it is just a skepticism of all exhaustive, formal accounts of epistemology - in this case, Yud's "rationalism."
In that sense it is just a microcosm of the modernist/postmodernist gap.
Yeah, I'm definitely in the hat-trick club of "firmly against vibe, and philosophical and political content", but see a lot of value in having reckoned with and incorporated (at least some of) the concepts of rationality as a programme.
I'm just gonna throw out haunted as another term. It makes for easy discursive applications of identifying and producing a typology of "haunts" examples: "they're pointing in the right direction but they're being thrown off by their teleological haunts". "Still haunted by rat-think". Love their work, careful to generalise though, it's got a rural arid haunt, this wouldn't relate to working class adaptive practices in tropical societies etc.
"Disembodied" seems absurdly wrong. Have you read Feeling Rational? What about Yehuda on his website? You're describing the idea of cold rationality a la Spock, which Eliezer has explicitly disavowed in several places.
In science as attire, EY says "The part that scares me is wondering how many people, especially in the media, understand science only as a literary genre." If you continue to analyze only the literary manifestations of rationality, you're not going to get a good idea of what it's for or why it uniquely draws people.
> If you continue to analyze only the literary manifestations of rationality, you're not going to get a good idea of what it's for or why it uniquely draws people.
> Have you read Feeling Rational
> Yehuda on his website?
> science as attire
> explicitly disavowed
Methinks doth lady etc etc - I care not about what they say, I care about how they act/feel. This comes from interacting irl and is evidently the case. People who exist above their necks, behind their eyes.
Strong +1. Having escaped the disassociation, I agree with you, but would have similarly to @zaj rejected the "disembodied" label about myself until I had realized what it was referring to. The realization, ironically, made it not apply anymore.
This seems kind of true but focusing on the wrong vibers imo. EY's work has content and vibe and MANY 'rats' dislike his vibe and style of writing but agree with the content. In contrast post-rationality is mostly about sik vibes.