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Postrationalism
“”The movement’s defining maxim — according to at least one person familiar with the movement I spoke to — might be a proclamation by writer Sarah Perry: “It is better to be interesting and wrong than it is to be right and boring.”
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—Tara Isabella Burton[1] |
Postrationalism or post-rationalism is a group of writers or way of thinking which responds to the LessWrong movement. Devotees give the impression that they learned about rationalism mainly by reading posts on the Internet, and not from attending the meetups or joining the polycules in Berkeley. Many of them are Twitter personalities, whereas the LessWronger's natural habitat is the mailing list or blog comment section. They are more likely to draw the occasional idea from anthropology or religious studies than a classic LessWronger, and to admit that some of their ideas are mystical, emotional, or religious not PURELY SCIENTIFIC AND LOGICAL. Where LessWrongers are very serious and formal, postrationalists are often snarky and ironic. Whereas Eliezer Yudkowsky promised followers that they could become like gods through the power of rationality, postrationalists are open to the possibility that the way to transcendence might be through a magic circle.
David Chapman (Meaningness, "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution"), Sarah Perry (Every Cradle is a Grave, an antinatalist manifesto), and Venkatesh Rao (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/) are often called influential postrationalists, although rigid taxonomies and boundaries are not the postrationalist style. As of 2025 ribbonfarm has stopped accepting new posts and participants often hint that their movement is shrinking or less vibrant than in the 2010s.
External Links[edit]
- Tara Isabella Burton, "Rational Magic: Why a Silicon Valley culture that was once obsessed with reason is going woo," The New Atlantis, Spring 2023 https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/rational-magic Sympathetic longform account from an outsider
- https://eigenrobot.substack.com/p/a-postrationalist-syllabus by an insider
- https://postrationalism.org/ also by insiders
- https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2Ee5DPBxowTTXZ6zf/rationalists-post-rationalists-and-rationalist-adjacents Another attempt to distinguish between movements within the rationalist sphere