Fluidity

Everyday reasonableness is the foundation of technical, formal, and systematic rationality. https://metarationality.com/reasonableness   This is not cognitive science - The Eggplant is neither cognitive nor science, although it seeks a better understanding of some phenomena cognitive science has studied. https://metarationality.com/cognitive-science   The ethnomethodological flip - A dramatic pers...

The conclusion of Part One of In The Cells Of The Eggplant: Taking Rationalism Seriously.   Acting On The Truth   Rationalist theories of action try to deduce optimal choices from true beliefs. This is rarely possible in practice.   https://metarationality.com/action-in-rationalism   Overcoming Post-Rationalist Nihilism   Realizing rationalism is wrong can be devastating. Antidotes to the ensuing...

The probability of green cheese: A thought experiment shows why probability theory and statistics cannot address uncertainty in general.   https://metarationality.com/small-world   Statistics and the replication crisis: The mistaken belief that statistical methods can tell you what to believe drove the science replication crisis.   https://metarationality.com/probabilism-crisis   You can support t...

Probability theory seems an attractive foundation for rationalism—but it is not up to the job. https://metarationality.com/probabilism   Leaving the casino - Probabilistic rationalism encourages you to view the whole world as a gigantic casino—but mostly it is not like that. https://metarationality.com/probabilism-applicability   What probability can't do - If probability theory were an epistemolo...

Three short chapters from In The Cells Of The Eggplant.   What can you believe? - Propositions are whatever sort of thing it is you can believe. Nothing can play that role; so we need a different understanding of belief.   https://metarationality.com/propositions   Where did you get that idea in the first place? - Rationalism does not explain where hypotheses, theories, discoveries, inventions, or...

Rationalist theories assume perception delivers an objective description of the world to rationality. It can't, and doesn't try to. https://metarationality.com/rationalist-perception   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee:   https://www.buymeacoffee.com/...

Rational methods assume objects are objectively separable; but they aren't. How do we use rationality effectively anyway? https://metarationality.com/objective-objects   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold   Orig...

Reference: rationalism's reality problem - The correspondence theory of truth doesn't work by metaphysical magic. We must do the work to make it work—by any means necessary. https://metarationality.com/rational-reference   The National Omelet Registry - Rationalism implicitly or explicitly assumes that every object in the universe has a unique ID number. https://metarationality.com/identity   You...

Approximation is a powerful technique, but is not applicable in all rational work, and so is not a good general theory of nebulosity.   https://metarationality.com/approximation   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:   https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee:   https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mat...

"Shades of gray" is sometimes a good way to think about nebulosity—the world's inherent fuzziness—but not always.   https://metarationality.com/vagueness   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee:   https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold   Original music b...

Formal methods formally require impossibly precise definitions of terms. How do we use them effectively without that?   https://metarationality.com/definition   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:   https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee:   https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold   Original...

Reduction is a powertool of rationality, but reductionism can't work as a general theory; most rationality is not reduction.   https://metarationality.com/reductionism   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:   https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee:   https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold  ...

Formal rationality requires absolute truths, but those are rare in the eggplant-sized world. How do we do rationality without them?   https://metarationality.com/sort-of-truth   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:   https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee:   https://www.buymeacoffee.com/matta...

The world is everything that is the case: Aristotelian logic was mistaken both in details and overall conception, yet its key ideas survive in contemporary rationalism. https://metarationality.com/Aristotelian-logic   Depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is: Formal logic successfully addresses important defects in traditional, Aristotelian logic, but cannot deal with contextuality. https...

Early 20th-century logical positivism was the last serious rationalism. Better understandings of rationality learn from its mistakes. https://metarationality.com/logical-positivism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarno...

Rationalism responds to its failures, in the face of nebulosity, by making more complicated formal theories.   https://metarationality.com/rationalism-responses   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:   https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks   If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold   Original...

The beginning of Part One of In The Cells Of The Eggplant.   The hope that systematic rationality can reliably provide certainty, understanding, and control fails when it encounters nebulosity.   https://metarationality.com/rationalism   Defining the subject matter: rationality, rationalism, reasonableness, and meta-rationality.   https://metarationality.com/rationalism-definitions   You can suppo...

Why meta-rationality matters for progress: leveling up science, technology, and society, even as they are unraveling.   https://metarationality.com/credibility-post-truth   A structural overview of the meta-rationality book In The Cells Of The Eggplant.   https://metarationality.com/structure   You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:   https://www.patr...

Here's the second half of the interview with David Chapman in which we announced Fluidity Forum 2023 .   In the first half, we discussed Fluidity Forum, a gathering we're planning for 2023 about metamodernity, sense-making, rationalism, metarationality, thinking-about-thinking, a metarationality curriculum, civilizational redesign, internal family systems, developmental theory, erisology, social m...

Rationality And Refrigerators: This book offers more sophisticated understanding of truth than both rationalist absolutism and postmodernist relativism.   https://metarationality.com/refrigerator   Clouds and eggplants: The relationship between nebulosity—the inherent fuzziness of the world—and rationality is a central concern of meta-rationality.   https://metarationality.com/nebulosity   You can...

Welcome to the first episode of narrating "In The Cells Of The Eggplant" by David Chapman. This begins season 2 of the Fluidity Audiobooks podcast. Is this book for you? How meta-rationality can level up your work in science, technology, and engineering. https://metarationality.com/introduction You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreo...

In this interview with David Chapman, we discuss Fluidity Forum, a gathering we're planning for 2023. FluidityForum.org We'll also discuss two new events I've attended recently: Critical Rationalism Weekend in Philadelphia, and Vibecamp in Austin. The conversations that have started to excite me the most are intermediate scales between the individual & the world: - not-for-profit projects, activit...

Here we are, listeners. We have concluded "Meaningness". These episodes have been narrating sections of Meaningness which were written during the narration of Meaningness And Time. The remainder of Meaningness has already aired. If you are new to the podcast, it picks up from here at the episode aired on Aug 4, 2021, titled "The Complete Stance". On our next episode, we will begin "In The Cells Of...

This concludes the section on the varieties of nihilistic special meaning. Thanks to Sarah Elkins and Bruce Webber for performing roles in this episode's scripted section! No meaning without proof - A stubborn nihilist can always just refuse to admit that anything is meaningful. https://meaningness.com/no-proof-of-meaning   Scientific rationality has proven: everything is meaningless - An event ev...

No meaning without justification - The rationalist theory of justified action leads to nihilism. Understand your activity as a vivid, variegated landscape instead. https://meaningness.com/no-meaning-without-justification No meaning of life as a whole - Misunderstanding "a life" as an object leads to the complaint that, although meanings exist, life is meaningless overall. https://meaningness.com/n...