Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Guess I'm a rationalist now

scottaaronson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#211

Post by _9ptr »

parpfish wrote: post #171
js8 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ? Kinda like Mensa?

When I was a kid I wanted to be in Mensa because being smart was a big part of my identity and I was constantly seeking external validation. I’m so glad I didn’t join because being around the types of adults that make being smart their identity surely would have had some corrosive effects

I didn't meet anyone who seemed arrogant.

However I'm always surprised how much some people want to talk about intelligence. I mean, it's the common ground of the group in this case, but still.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#212

Post by kragen »

NoGravitas wrote: post #126

Probably the most useful book ever written about topics adjacent to capital-R Rationalism is "Neoreaction, A Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right" [1], by Elizabeth Sandifer. Though the topic of the book is nominally the Alt-Right, a lot more of it is about the capital-R Rationalist communities and individuals that incubated the neoreactionary movement that is currently dominant in US politics. It's probably…

Thanks for the recommendation! I hadn't heard about the book.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#213

Post by _9ptr »

NoGravitas wrote: post #200
parpfish wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid I wanted to be in Mensa because being smart was a big part of my identity and I was constantly seeking external validation. I’m so glad I didn’t join because being around the types of adults that make being smart their identity surely would have had some corrosive effects

Personally, I subscribe to Densa, the journal of the Low-IQ Society.

This month: Is Brawno really what plants crave?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#215

Post by gausswho »

parpfish wrote: post #166
XorNot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of my many peeves has been the way that people misuse the term “slippery slope” as evidence for their stance. “If X, then surely Y will follow! It’s a slippery slope! We can’t allow X!” They call out the name of the fallacy they are committing BY NAME and think that it somehow supports their conclusion?

I rhetorically agree it's not a good argument, but its use as a cautionary metaphor predates its formalization as a logical fallacy. It's summoning is not proof in and of itself (i.e. the 1st amendment). It suggests a concern rather than demonstrates. It's lazy, and a good habit to rid oneself of. But its presence does not invalidate the argument.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#216

Post by d--b »

pja wrote: post #206
d--b wrote: post #86

Sorry, I haven't followed what is it that these guys call Rationalism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community Fair warning: when you turn over some of the rocks here you find squirming, slithering things that should not be given access to the light.

thanks much

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#217

Post by matusp »

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.

I actually think that their main problem is the belief that they can learn everything about the world by reading stuff on the Web. You can't understand everything by reading blogs and books, in the end, some things are best understood when you are on the ground. Unironically, they should go touch the grass.

One example for all. It was claimed that a great rationalist policy is to distribute treated mosquito nets to 3rd-world-ers to help eradicate malaria. On the ground, the same nets were commonly used for fishing and other activities, polluting the environment with insecticides. Unfortunately, rationalists forgot to ask people that live with mosquitos what they would do with such nets.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#218

Post by pavlov »

nradov wrote: post #183
impossiblefork wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the people developing AI might well not get rich off it. Instead, unless there's a single winner, we will probably see the knowledge on how to train big LLMs and make them perform well diffuse throughout a large pool of AI researchers, with the hardware to train models reasonably close to the SotA becoming more quite accessible. I think the people who will benefit will be the owners of ordinary but h…

When railroads were first being built across the continental USA, those companies also had high valuations (for the time). Most of them ultimately went bankrupt or were purchased for a fraction of their peak valuation. But the tracks remained, and many of those routes are still in use today.

And today the railroad system in the USA sucks compared to other developed countries and even China.

It turns out that boom-and-bust capitalism isn’t great for building something that needs to evolve over centuries.

Perhaps American AI efforts will one day be viewed similarly. “Yeah, they had an early rush, lots of innovation, high valuations, and robber barons competing. Today it’s just stale old infra despite the high-energy start.”

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#219

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

hiddencost wrote: post #202
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't see how this is a response to what I wrote. Can you explain?
Post reply on HN