I -- Background.
Last month (I think?) Walter and James suspended their podcast. Their podcast, Rationality: From AI to Zombies Podcast was a project to make the entirety of the book by the same name available as an audio podcast for free. (The book R:FAtZ is a curated collection of Eliezer Yudkowsky's blog posts from 2006-2009.) These posts, commonly called "The Sequences" by fans, formed the payload that initially launched the Rationalist movement/memeplex/community.
Walter and James's podcast was valued by many people who were either already part of the rationalist movement, or interested in it, but who hadn't been exposed to The Sequences as the time they were originally written.
When they quit producing the podcast, they posted this statement:
Dear Rationalists! As some of you will already have guessed, we have decided to end this podcast project.
There has been a trend in the community we have been observing with increasing worry, and it has reached a tipping point. We realised from the beginming that the politics of the rationality-sphere leaned heavily American libertarian. But back when we started, we felt that the community was genuinely interested in better outcomes for everyone and that if we would just sit down together, we could surely come to a sensible agreement.
But recently, the disdain and the antagonism against movements such as feminism and BLM and communities such as transgender and nonbinary people has taken over. Even with people we once looked up to and collaborated with. This has reached a degree that makes us feel not just deeply uncomfortable but also unwelcome.
We have friends and family in these and adjacent movements and communities that we love dearly. We ourselves are part of these movements and communities. There is no us without them.
So we strongly oppose the recasting of them as authoritarian religions and some sort of reverse oppressors, a perspective so antithetical to what we thought the idea of 'rationality' represented that we can no longer watch in silence. We expected more from a community that we joined under the impression that it centered honest thought and compassion for all.
Our own interactions with listeners have been nothing but kind and mutually respectful. For that, we thank you. But we cannot, in good conscience, remain a part of a pipeline towards the rationality-sphere if that is the place it has become.
Do better!
Walter & James
The word "recasting" is linked to my blog post from Feb 23, 2022: I Am A New Atheist, And I Repent. They have stated on more than one occasion that this post was not a primary driver of their decision, nor was it strongly influential. It was merely "the straw that broke the camel's back." The last item that finally pushed the scales over in a long, long list of worries and concerns.
However, it was the one linked in their final signing-off post, which sorta highlights it, and gives it some symbolic significance. So, after some musing, I have considerations of my own on the topic.
II -- My Thoughts
What I'm most struck by is the idea that rationalism is a political movement with an ideology that must be opposed. What my focus keeps returning to is the idea that Walter and James feel they cannot "remain a part of a pipeline towards the rationality-sphere." My interpretation is that this is due to their opposition to that ideology. That this ideology includes "disdain and antagonism against movements such as feminism and BLM and communities such as transgender and nonbinary people."
I have a very different experience. The rationalists I know personally vary from mildly conservative to mildly leftist. The ones I know well online (in the TBC Discord server) range from pretty conservative (believing nationalism is a strength, minors shouldn't be given hormones, society is too decadent) to strongly leftist (capitalism must be overthrown, billionaires should be punished and have their wealth seized, any parents that aren't left-leaning enough are guilty of literal child abuse). Of the rationalists that I am aware of online, they range from reactionaries that want to reinstate absolute monarchy, to classically liberal sex-workers, to very woke social justice crusaders.
I don't have any experience of rationalism as a movement that has any sort of consensus position on the feminism, BLM, transgender, or nonbinary movements. The majority of rationalists I know are neutral or in support of all of these.
This is why I have the view that rationalism is about attempting to improve reasoning, and not about political ideology. The people I meet in rationalist spheres can (usually) speak with each other in productive ways even when they have extremely different viewpoints about the world. I find that very helpful in truth-seeking. I'm glad I can speak with people who view things very differently from me without fearing that I will be berated. I'm glad that I can be confident the conversations will generally be productive and interesting, even when the person I'm speaking to has ridiculous(?) fringe beliefs. They can rationally discuss their reasoning, rather than posturing and signaling.
Personally, I do think that wokism is net-bad for civilization. As per my linked post, I think one of its strengths is that it taps into unfulfilled religious needs that many people have, and that a movement I was a part of helped to deprive people of having those needs fulfilled. I regret that I didn't see that this might happen when I was younger.
If I'm wrong about that, I don't understand how abandoning the tools of rational thought will help anything. The problem, in my opinion, would be with my wrong beliefs, rather than with Rationality. I may have failed at using the tools of rationality, due to a perverse environment (which perhaps I nurtured!) or due to my own failure to use those tools correctly. But I haven't been able to find fault in the tools of rationality themselves.
If I am using those tools incorrectly, I would like to know.
If the tools themselves are faulty, I would like to know.
If neither of these are the case, I don't see how abandoning the tools is helpful. I would also be interested in learning how/why that is the case?
III -- Behind The Scenes
I am (kinda) engaged in a private conversation with Walter and/or James, from which these thoughts have been curated and posted. I don't intend to make that conversation public, it is our own affair. But many of the thoughts and realizations I've come to during that discussion are represented here. I was sorta singled out in a public disavowal, and these are my considered thoughts on the consequences of my words.