Last week I gave an invited talk as part of the Integral Altruism speaker series. A recording of the talk and the extensive Q&A is up on YouTube; it's close to 90 minutes long. If you’d rather read than watch/listen, I had Claude convert the transcript into something more like essay form.

In the talk I try to cover roughly how the postrationalist scene got started and how it later merged with other scenes thinking along similar lines but with different intellectual starting points. If it contains any errors (because you were there and remember it differently than me!), please let me know in the comments.

A Short History of Postrationality

Opening Presentation

Thanks for having me. This is exciting to get to talk about this stuff. I occasionally grab people at conferences and they’ll ask me questions about this or we’ll just get on this topic. It's [...]

---

Outline:

(00:46) A Short History of Postrationality

(00:51) Opening Presentation

(02:27) The Berkeley Origins (2014-2015)

(05:49) The Reading Group and Foundational Texts

(14:31) The Movement Fragments

(18:07) Q&A Section

---

First published:
October 22nd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oq46pqQNxaL5MMbL7/postrationality-an-oral-history-1

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Postrationality: An Oral History” by Gordon Seidoh Worley

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Postrationality: An Oral History” by Gordon Seidoh Worley