[palmstroem]

It is not postmodernism for techies, but hermeneutics for nerds.

I think Chapman is acutely aware that postmodernism poisoned the well of the humanities and largely killed them. Now, the stem nerds have to repeat history, by reinventing and reimporting hermeneutics into their intellectual canon. It is happening largely outside academia, and somehow the inevitable next step after Bayesianist epistemology infused rationalism has reaped the low-hanging fruits and lost most of its steam. Postrationalism marks the return of the narrative in nerd intellectualism. Those few folks that are still alive and sufficiently versed in the scholastic canon of the prepostmodern humanities may scoff at it, but I think Chapman is serious, has high intellectual integrity and may gain serious cultural impact. Thanks to Kegan and Caplan, he also found a bunch of sufficiently original starting points to make it worth wile following his explorations.

[networked]

I think that's a great way to characterize Chapman's writing.

As an Internet phenomenon postrationalism currently resembles Bayesian rationalism before LW. Meaningness might be its Overcoming Bias. Do you know if anyone is building a LW-style discussion hub for it?

[IsaacL]

I went down this same rabbithole - Bayesian rationality to 'postrationality'.

('post' implies 'better than', but literally means 'not'. Still, Chapman knows a lot more about AI than Eliezer, and has an interesting write-up of his research into AI based on Heidegger's philosophy).

I was saved by Ayn Rand - yes, the person analytical, continental and other philosophers all agree to dismiss - specifically her epistemology and theory of concepts. (The Rand to read is "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". Or click around here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/book/conceptual.html)