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Guess I'm a rationalist now

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#201

Post by bilbo0s »

dkarl wrote: post #160
Avicebron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

It's a conflict as old as time. What do you do when an argument leads to an unexpected conclusion? I think there are two good responses: "There's something going on here, so let's dig into it," or, "There's something going on here, but I'm not going to make time to dig into it." Both equally valid. In real life, the conversation too often ends up being, "This has to be wrong, and you're an obnoxious nerd for botherin…

Might kind of point to real life people having too much of what is now called, "rationality", and very little of what used to be called "wisdom"?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#202

Post by hiddencost »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #189
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…

> They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considered all angles to it, maybe I'm wrong - but here it is". Aren't these the people who started the trend of writing things like " epistemic status: mostly speculation " on their blog posts? And writing essays about the dangers of overconfidence? And measuring how often their predictions turn out wrong? And maintaining webpages tit…

They're behind Anthropic and were behind openai being a nonprofit. They're behind the friendly AI movement and effective altruism.

They're responsible for funneling huge amounts of funding away from domain experts (effective altruism in practice means "Oxford math PhD writes a book report about a social sciences problem they've only read about and then defunds all the NGOs").

They're responsible for moving all the AI safety funding away from disparate impact measures to "save us from skynet" fantasies.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#203

Post by eth0up »

mathattack wrote: post #182

Logic is an awesome tool that took us from Greek philosophers to the gates on our computers. The challenge with pure rationalism is checking the first principles that the thinking comes from. Logic can lead you astray if the principles are wrong, or you miss the complexity along the way. On the missing first principles, look at Aristotle. One of the history's greatest logicians came to many false conclusions. On miss…

>provisional humility.

I hope this becomes the first ever meme with some value. We need a cult... of Provisional Humility.

Must. Increase. The. pH

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#204

Post by iNic »

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…

Every community has a long list of etiquettes, rules and shared knowledge that is assumed and generally not spelled out explicitly. One of the core assumptions of the rationalist community is that every statement has uncertainty unless you explicitly spell out that you are certain! This came about as a matter of practicality, as it would be inconvenient to preempt every other sentence with "I'm uncertain about this". Many discussions you will see have the flavor of "strong opinions, lightly held" for this reason.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#205

Post by JohnMakin »

kragen wrote: post #175
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...

Why would you comment on the post if you stopped reading near its beginning? How could your comments on it conceivably be of any value? It sounds like you're engaging in precisely the kind of shallow dismissal the site guidelines prohibit.

Aren't you doing the same thing?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#207

Post by kragen »

JohnMakin wrote: post #205
kragen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you comment on the post if you stopped reading near its beginning? How could your comments on it conceivably be of any value? It sounds like you're engaging in precisely the kind of shallow dismissal the site guidelines prohibit.

Aren't you doing the same thing?

No, I read the comment in full, analyzed its reasoning quality, elaborated on the self-undermining epistemological implications of its content, and then related that to the epistemic and discourse norms we aspire to here. My dismissal of it is anything but shallow, though I am of course open to hearing counterarguments, which you have fallen short of offering.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#208

Post by genewitch »

verall wrote: post #199
genewitch wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is LMSW (not CPS!) and sees ~5 people a day. 153,922 population in the metro area. Mind you, this is adults, but they're all mandated to show up. there's only ~3300 counties in the USA. i'll let you extrapolate how CPS can handle "4000/day". Like, 800 people with my wife's qualifications and caseload is equivalent to 4000/day. there's ~5000 caseworkers in the US per statistia: > In 2022, there were about 5,03…

37% of children obviously do not experience a CPS investigation before age 18.

not what i am speaking to. I don't know the number, and neither do you. you'd have to call those 5000 CPS caseworkers and ask them what their caseload is (it's 69 per caseworker on average across the US. that's a third of a million cases, in aggregate across all caseworkers)

my wife's caseload (adults) "floats around fifty."

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#209

Post by HDThoreaun »

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.

Rationalism largely rejects continental philosophy in favor of a more analytic approach. Yes these ideas are not new, but they’re not really the mainstream stuff you’d see in philosophy, literature, or history studies. You’d have to seek out these classes specifically to find them.
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