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I view this as a political constraint, cf. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboat-games-and-backscra... . One's identity as Academic, Democrat, Zionist and so on demands certain sacrifices of you, sometimes of rationality. The worse the failure of empathy and rationality, the better a test of loyalty it is. For epistemic rationality, it would be best to https://paulgraham.com/identity.html , but for instrumental r…
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I'm not a Rationalist, however, nothing you said in your first paragraph is factual and therefore the resultant thesis isn't supported. In fact it ignores nearly 2-3000 years of history and ignores a whole bunch of surrounding context.
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I got to that part, thought it was a joke, and then... it wasn't. Stopped reading thereafter. Nobody speaking like this will have anything I want to hear.
Is it not a joke? I’m pretty sure it was.
*Guess I’m a rationalist now.
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Yes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... 1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://e…
A lot of "rationalists" of this kind are very poorly informed about statistical methodology, a condition they inherit from reading papers written in these pseudoscientific fields about people likewise very poorly informed. This is a pathology that has not really been addressed in the large, anywhere, really. Very few in the applied sciences who understand statistical methodology, "leave their areas" -- and many areas…
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I'm not a Rationalist, however, nothing you said in your first paragraph is factual and therefore the resultant thesis isn't supported. In fact it ignores nearly 2-3000 years of history and ignores a whole bunch of surrounding context.
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>Maybe it's actually going to be rather benign and more boring than expected Maybe, but generally speaking, if I think people are playing around with technology which a lot of smart people think might end humanity as we know it, I would want them to stop until we are really sure it won't. Like, "less than a one in a million chance" sure. Those are big stakes. I would have opposed the Manhattan Project on the same pri…
> I don't hear people dismiss these risks very often as "You've just been reading too many science fiction novels" these days, which would have been the default response back in the 90s or 2000s. I've recently stumbled across the theory that "it's gonna go away, just keep your head down" is the crisis response that has been taught to the generation that lived through the cold war, so that's how they act. That bit was…
I don't buy the marketing angle, because it doesn't actually make sense to me. Fear draws eyeballs, sure, but it just seems otherwise nakedly counterproductive, like a burger chain advertising itself on the brutality of its factory farms.
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Yes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... 1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://e…
Nothing about the article you posted in your first comment seems racist. You could argue that believing in the conclusions of Richard Lynn’s work makes someone racist, but to support that claim, you’d need to show that those who believe it do so out of willful ignorance of evidence that his science is flawed.
Saying in 2025 that the study is still debated is not only racist, but dishonest as well. It's not debated, it's junk
The article made me think deeper about what rubs me the wrong way about the whole movement I think there is some inherent tension btwn being "rational" about things and trying to reason about things from first principle.. And the general absolutist tone of the community. The people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ? They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considere…
rationalism got pretty lame the last 2-3 years. imo the peak was trying to convince me to donate a kidney. post-rationalism is where all the cool kids are and where the best ideas are at right now. the post rationalists consistently have better predictions and the 'rationalists' are stuck arguing whether chickens suffer more getting factory farmed or chickens cause more suffering eating bugs outside. they also let SF…
The article made me think deeper about what rubs me the wrong way about the whole movement I think there is some inherent tension btwn being "rational" about things and trying to reason about things from first principle.. And the general absolutist tone of the community. The people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ? They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considere…
Yeah the "rational" part always seemed a smokescreen for the ability to produce and ingest their own and their associates methane gases. I get it, I enjoyed being told I'm a super genius always right quantum physicist mathematician by the girls at Stanford too. But holy hell man, have some class, maybe consider there's more good to be done in rural Indiana getting some dirt under those nails..