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Guess I'm a rationalist now

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#111

Post by NoGravitas »

gooseus wrote: post #39

I've never thought ill of Scott Aaronson and have often admired him and his work when I stumble across it. However, reading this article about all these people at their "Galt's Gultch", I thought — "oh, I guess he's a rhinoceros now" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_(play) Here's a bad joke for you all — What's the difference between a "rationalist" and "rationalizer"? Only the incentives.

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.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#112

Post by aosaigh »

> “You’re Scott Aaronson?! The quantum physicist who’s always getting into arguments on the Internet, and who’s essentially always right, but who sustains an unreasonable amount of psychic damage in the process?”

Give me strength. So much hubris with these guys (and they’re almost always guys).

I would have assumed that a rationalist would look for truth and not correctness.

Oh wait, it’s all just a smokescreen for know-it-alls to show you how smart they are.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#113

Post by pixl97 »

loose-cannon wrote: post #64
colordrops wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the person you are replying to is saying that some things are not reducible, i.e. the the vast array of complexity and detail is all relevant.

That's a really hard belief to justify. And what implications would that position have? Should biologists give up?

How reducible is the question. If some particular events require a minimum amount of complexity, how to do you reduce it below that?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#114

Post by baxtr »

agos wrote: post #106
baxtr wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main problem with the movement is their emphasis on Bayesianism in conjunction with an almost total neglect of Popperian epistemology. In my opinion, there can’t be a meaningful distinction made between rational and irrational without Popper. Popper injects an epistemic humility that Bayesianism, taken alone, can miss. I think that aligns well with your observation.

is epidemiology a typo for epistemology or am I missing something?

Yes, thx, fixed it.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#115

Post by noworriesnate »

tome wrote: post #69
voidhorse wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

But that's not my question. My question was between defence of genocide and false accusations of genocide. (Of course actual genocide is "shittier" -- in fact that's a breathtaking understatement!)

Wouldn’t it be better to spend the time understanding the reality of the situation in Gaza from multiple angles rather than philosophizing on abstract concepts? I.e. there are different degrees of genocide, but that doesn’t matter in this context because what’s happening in Gaza is not abstract or theoretical.

In other words, your question ignores so much nuance that it’s a red herring IMO.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#116

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

samuel wrote: post #67

I'm currently reading Yudkowsky's "Rationality: from AI to zombies". Not my first try, since the book is just a collection of blog posts and I found it a bit hard to swallow due its repetitiveness, so I gave up after the first 50 "chapters" the first time I tried. Now I'm enjoying it way more, probably because I'm more interested in the topic now. For those who haven't delved(ha!) into his work or have been pushed ba…

If you're in it just to figure out the core argument for why artificial intelligence is dangerous, please consider reading the first few chapters of Nick Bostom's Superintelligence instead. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck that way.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#117

Post by api »

aosaigh wrote: post #112

> “You’re Scott Aaronson?! The quantum physicist who’s always getting into arguments on the Internet, and who’s essentially always right, but who sustains an unreasonable amount of psychic damage in the process?” Give me strength. So much hubris with these guys (and they’re almost always guys). I would have assumed that a rationalist would look for truth and not correctness. Oh wait, it’s all just a smokescreen for k…

That's exactly what Rationalism(tm) is.

The basic trope is showing off how smart you are and what I like to call "intellectual edgelording." The latter is basically a fetish for contrarianism. The big flex is to take a very contrarian position -- according to what one imagines is the prevailing view -- and then defend it in the most creative way possible.

Intellectual edgelording gives us shit like neoreaction ("monarchy is good actually" -- what a contrarian flex!), timeless decision theory, and wild-ass shit like the Zizians, effective altruists thinking running a crypto scam is the best path to maximizing their utility, etc.

Whether an idea is contrarian or not is unrelated to whether it's a good idea or not. I think the fetish for contrarianism might have started with VCs playing public intellectual, since as a VC you make the big bucks when you make a contrarian bet that pays off. But I think this is an out-of-context misapplication of a lesson from investing to the sphere of scientific and philosophical truth. Believing a lot of shitty ideas in the hopes of finding gems is a good way to drive yourself bonkers. "So I believe in the flat Earth, vaccines cause autism, and loop quantum gravity, so I figure one big win this portfolio makes me a genius!"

Then there's the cults. I think this stuff is to Silicon Valley and tech what Scientology is to Hollywood and the film and music industries.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#118

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

loose-cannon wrote: post #64
colordrops wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the person you are replying to is saying that some things are not reducible, i.e. the the vast array of complexity and detail is all relevant.

That's a really hard belief to justify. And what implications would that position have? Should biologists give up?

I think that chemistry, physics, and mathematics, are engaged in a program of understanding their subject in terms of the sort of first principles that Descartes was after. Reduction of the subject to a set of simpler thoughts that are outside of it.

Biologists stand out because they have already given up on that idea. They may still seek to simplify complex things by refining principles of some kind, but it's a "whatever stories work best" approach. More Feyerabend, less Popper. Instead of axioms they have these patterns that one notices after failing to find axioms for a while.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#119

Post by elt895 »

greener_grass wrote: post #75
samuel wrote: post #67

I'm currently reading Yudkowsky's "Rationality: from AI to zombies". Not my first try, since the book is just a collection of blog posts and I found it a bit hard to swallow due its repetitiveness, so I gave up after the first 50 "chapters" the first time I tried. Now I'm enjoying it way more, probably because I'm more interested in the topic now. For those who haven't delved(ha!) into his work or have been pushed ba…

I think there is an arbitrage going on where STEM types who lack background in philosophy, literature, history are super impressed by basic ideas from those subjects being presented to them by stealth. Not saying this is you, but these topics have been discussed for thousands of years, so it should at least be surprising that Yudkowsky is breaking new ground.

Are there other philosophy- or history-grounded sources that are comparable? If so, I’d love some recommendations. Yudkowsky and others have their problems, but their texts have an interesting points, are relatively easy to read and understand, and you can clearly see which real issues they’re addressing. From my experience, alternatives tend to fall into two categories: 1. Genuine classical philosophy, which is usually incredibly hard to read and after 50 pages I have no idea what the author is even talking about anymore. 2. Basically self help books that take one or very few idea and repeat them ad nouseam for 200 pages.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#120

Post by gilleain »

js8 wrote: post #108
jltsiren wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reductionist" is usually used as an insult. Many people engaged in intellectual pursuits believe that reductionism is not a useful approach to studying various topics. You may argue otherwise, but then you are on a slippery slope towards politics and culture wars.

I would not be so sure. There are many fields where reductionism was applied in practice and it yielded useful results, thanks to computers. Examples that come to mind: statistical modelling (reduction to nonparametric models), protein folding (reduction to quantum chemistry), climate/weather prediction (reduction to fluid physics), human language translation (reduction to neural networks). Reductionism is not that u…

> protein folding (reduction to quantum chemistry),

I am not sure in what sense folding simulations are reducable to quantum chemistry. There are interesting 'hybrid' approaches where some (limited) quantum calculations are done for a small part of the structure - usually the active site I suppose - and the rest is done using more standard molecular mechanics/molecular dynamics approaches.

Perhaps things have progressed a lot since I worked in protein bioinformatics. As far as I know, even extremely short simulations at the quantum level were not possible for systems with more than a few atoms.

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