It's a strange spectacle to see how much the community around skeptical inquirer cares about issues of little relevance to culture or power structures
Some people defend this kind of rationalist ideology by talking about, say, anti-superstition activists in India, but those people are admirable for the specific reason that they are undermining hierarchical power structures
A Western skeptic getting angry about Americans venerating ghosts with offerings --- that's not subversive, and it's worthy of contempt!
So there’s this community called the rationalist community, which is an outgrowth of the rationalist movement. Common traits of rationalists include watch as all the rationalists I know come yell at me :
Thinking Eliezer Yudowsky is the greatest person ever
Liking this one specific Harry Potter fanfic (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is incidentally very good)
Being very concerned that AIs are going to destroy the world
Thinking/worrying a lot about epistemology
Being preference utilitarians
Not liking religions that believe in a god or gods
Using Bayesian statistics
Being autistic
Doing things that are very cult-like while talking about how much they are Not A Cult
this is a totally unfair characterization but will probably work to a first approximation
(To be clear, I am not saying that specific traits on this list are good or bad.)
Rationalist Tumblr is the rationalist community, but specifically on Tumblr.
…what is rationalist Tumblr?