I have always considered Scott Aaronson the least bad of the big-name rationalists. Which makes it slightly funny that he didn't realize he was one until Scott Siskind told him he was.

Reminds me of Simone de Beauvoir and feminism. She wrote the book on (early) feminism, yet didn't consider herself a feminist until much later.

Upvote for the play link - that's interesting and I hadn't heard of it before. Worthy of a top-level post IMO.

I heard of the play originally from Chapter 10 of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder:

https://archive.org/details/on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-t...

Which I did post top-level here on November 7th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071791

Unfortunately it didn't a lot of traction and dang told me that there wasn't a way to re-up or "second chance" the post due to the HN policy on posts "correlated with political conflict".

Ah, I guess I see his point; I can't see the discussion being about use of metaphor in political fiction rather than whose team is worst.

Still, I'm glad I now know the reference.

«What's the difference between a "rationalist" and "rationalizer"? Only the incentives.»

Bad joke? That phrase should be framed in big print.