flâneur

Rationalism before the Sequences - by Eric S. Raymond

lesswrong.substack.com · 3,171 words · saved by 1 readers

I'm here to tell you a story about what it was like to be a rationalist decades before the Sequences and the formation of the modern rationalist community.

I'm here to tell you a story about what it was like to be a rationalist decades before the Sequences and the formation of the modern rationalist community. It is not the only story that could be told, but it is one that runs parallel to and has important connections to Eliezer Yudkowsky's and how his ideas developed. My goal in writing this essay is to give the LW community a sense of the prehistory of their movement. It is not intended to be "where Eliezer got his ideas"; that would be stupidly reductive. I aim more to exhibit where the drive and spirit of the Yudkowskian reform came from,…

related reading