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Guess I'm a rationalist now

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#141

Post by shermantanktop »

Avicebron wrote: post #21
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

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..

The meta with these people is “my brilliance comes with an ego that others must cater to.”

I find it sadly hilarious to watch academic types fight over meaningless scraps of recognition like toddlers wrestling for a toy.

That said, I enjoy some of the rationalist blog content and find it thoughtful, up to the point where they bravely allow their chain of reasoning to justify antisocial ideas.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#142

Post by James_K »

t_mann wrote: post #24

> “You’re [X]?! 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?” > “Yes,” I replied, not bothering to correct the “physicist” part. Didn't read much beyond that part. He'll fit right in with the rationalist crowd...

[flagged]

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#143

Post by ummonk »

camgunz wrote: post #76
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

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 I don't know or really care about Rationalism or whatever. But I took Aaronson's advice and read Zvi Mowshowitz' Childhood and Education #9: School is Hell [0], and while I share many of the criticisms (and cards on the table I also had pretty bad school experiences), I would have a hard time jumping onto this bus. One point is that when Mowshowitz is dispelling the argument that abuse rates are much higher for…

> but you can really boil it down to "let smart, wealthy parents homeschool their kids without social media scorn"

The whole reason smart people are engaging in this debate in the first place is that professional educators keep trying to train their sights on smart wealthy parents homeschooling their kids.

By the way, this small fraction of the population is responsible for the driving the bulk of R&D.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#144

Post by IshKebab »

derangedHorse wrote: post #48
junon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the fact that we aren't sure says a lot!

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#145

Post by kragen »

baxtr wrote: post #99
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

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…

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.

Hmm, what epistemological propositions of Popper's do you think they're missing? To the extent that I understand the issues, they're building on Popper's epistemology, but by virtue of having a more rigorous formulation of the issues, they resolve some of the apparent contradictions in his views.

Most of Popper's key points are elaborated on at length in blog posts on LessWrong. Perhaps they got something wrong? Or overlooked something major? If so, what?

(Amusingly, you seem to have avoided making any falsifiable claims in your comment, while implying that you could easily make many of them...)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#146

Post by IshKebab »

ummonk wrote: post #129
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

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…

Rationalists have always rubbed me the wrong way too but your argument against AI doomerism is weird. If you care about first principles, how about the precautionary principle? "Maybe it's actually benign" is not a good argument for moving ahead with potentially world ending technology.

He wasn't saying "maybe it's actually going to be benign" is an argument for moving ahead with potentially world ending technology. He was saying that it might end up being benign and rationalists who say it's definitely going to be the end of the world are wildly overconfident.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#147

Post by XorNot »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #133
ummonk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rationalists have always rubbed me the wrong way too but your argument against AI doomerism is weird. If you care about first principles, how about the precautionary principle? "Maybe it's actually benign" is not a good argument for moving ahead with potentially world ending technology.

I don't think "maybe it's benign" is where anti doomers are coming from, more like, "there are also costs to not doing things". The doomer utilitarian arguments often seem to involve some sort of infinity or really large numbers (much like EAs) which result in various kinds of philosophical mugging. In particular, the doomer plans invariably result in some need for draconian centralised control. Some kind of body or…

It's just the slippery-slope fallacy: if X then obviously Y will follow, and there will be no further decisions, debate or time before it does.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#148

Post by uniqueuid »

kurtis_reed wrote: post #134
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.

So what's the difference between Bayesianism and Popperian epistemology?

Popper requires you to posit null hypotheses to falsify (although there are different schools of thought on what exactly you need to specify in advance [1]).

Bayesianism requires you to assume / formalize your prior belief about the subject under investigation and updates it given some data, resulting in a posterior belief distribution. It thus does not have the clear distinctions of frequentism, but that can also be considered an advantage.

[1] https://web.mit.edu/hackl/www/lab/turkshop/readings/gigerenz...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#149

Post by uniqueuid »

baxtr wrote: post #99
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

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…

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.

The counterpoint here is that in practice, humility is only found in the best of frequentists, whereas the rest succumb to hubris (i.e. the cult of irrelevant precisions).

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#150

Post by philipov »

NoGravitas wrote: post #130
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

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…

I've always seen the breathless Singularitarian worrying about AI Alignment as a smokescreen to distract people from thinking clearly about the more pedestrian hazards of AI that isn't self-improving or superhuman, from algorithmic bias, to policy-washing, to energy costs and acceleration of wealth concentration. It also leads to so-called longtermism - discounting the benefits of solving current real problems and fo…

yep, the biggest threat posed by AI comes from the capitalists who want to own it.
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