I get what you're saying about academic jargon, but it's honestly on the level of a term like 'imperative programming', 'darwinism', or 'boolean logic'. Except, it's like 500 years old, so perhaps even more extreme.
I just don't feel like it would be a good start for a bunch of people who wanted to discuss maths to redefine the term 'boolean' to mean being smarter than other people. I equally don't think it's a good start to call yourself a rationalist when you're actually an empiricist. It's not an obscure term. It's the kind of thing you learn in school, if you take a philosophy class at A-level.
When you talk about 'frequent and deep referencing', I would very much hope that they would be aware of philosophical rationalism. It's literally the most influential tradition of thought in the last five centuries. I also can imagine that if you spent enough time reading, you might transition from the sort of person who would identify as a 'rationalist', to somebody who might have interesting comments on philosophical rationalism. I also feel like work is done by building on other people's work. That's as true in philosophy as it is in any field. You won't make interesting work impossible by starting from scratch, but you do make it really unlikely - sort of like trying to build a steam engine using an anvil and tongs.
Nobody who had a basic grounding in philosophy would use a word like rationalist to mean 'very rational' in the same way that nobody who had a basic understanding of physics would use the word gravity to mean 'heavy stuff'. It's literally that bad.
Realistically, if you define a group by a word that sounds good, but displays ignorance, you're going to get a lot of good sounding ignorance. And that's kinda my take on the whole rationalist thing.
But they're not using 'rationalism', which is the specific thing term you mentioned. And lots of other fields, likes economics and decision theory, use 'rational' and that term covers the core interest of the 'rationalist' community.
Naming is hard, it's common for lots of people to make 'mistakes' similar to what you've pointed out, and it seems like a very minor criticism of what is otherwise a great group of people united by an interest in important and useful thinking.
I just don't feel like it would be a good start for a bunch of people who wanted to discuss maths to redefine the term 'boolean' to mean being smarter than other people. I equally don't think it's a good start to call yourself a rationalist when you're actually an empiricist. It's not an obscure term. It's the kind of thing you learn in school, if you take a philosophy class at A-level.
When you talk about 'frequent and deep referencing', I would very much hope that they would be aware of philosophical rationalism. It's literally the most influential tradition of thought in the last five centuries. I also can imagine that if you spent enough time reading, you might transition from the sort of person who would identify as a 'rationalist', to somebody who might have interesting comments on philosophical rationalism. I also feel like work is done by building on other people's work. That's as true in philosophy as it is in any field. You won't make interesting work impossible by starting from scratch, but you do make it really unlikely - sort of like trying to build a steam engine using an anvil and tongs.
Nobody who had a basic grounding in philosophy would use a word like rationalist to mean 'very rational' in the same way that nobody who had a basic understanding of physics would use the word gravity to mean 'heavy stuff'. It's literally that bad.
Realistically, if you define a group by a word that sounds good, but displays ignorance, you're going to get a lot of good sounding ignorance. And that's kinda my take on the whole rationalist thing.