261–270 of 1001 posts
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That's a different definition of rationalism from what is used here.
It is. But the Rationalists, by taking that name as a label, are claiming that they are what the GP said. They want the prestige/respect/audience that the word gets, without actually being that.
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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…
Human ethnic groups are measurably different in genetic terms, as based on single nucleotide polymorphisms and allelic frequency. There are multiple PCA plots of the 1000 Genomes dataset which show clear cluster separation based on ancestry: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plo... We know ethnic groups vary in terms of height, hair color, eye color, melanin, bone density, sprinting ability, la…
Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence, these kinds of statistical trends allow you to justify judging an individual based on their race, because you feel you can credibly claim that race is an acceptable proxy for their genome, is an acceptable proxy for their intelligence.
Or for their trustworthiness, or creativity, or sexuality, or dutifulness, or compassion, or aggressiveness, or alacrity, or humility, etc etc.
When you treat a person like a people, that’s still prejudice.
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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 h…
Nonsense. The US has the largest freight rail system in the world, and is considered to have the most efficient rail system in the world to go along with it.
There isn't much in the way of passenger service, granted, but that's because people in the US aren't, well, poor. They can afford better transportation options.
> It turns out that boom-and-bust capitalism isn’t great for building something that needs to evolve over centuries.
It initially built out the passenger rail just fine, but then evolution saw better options come along. Passenger rail disappeared because it no longer served a purpose. It is not like, say, Japan where the median household income is approaching half that of Mississippi and they hold on to rail because that's what is affordable.
Took me a few years to realize how cultish it all felt and that I am somewhat happy my edgy atheist contrarian personality overwrote my dicks thinking with that crowd.
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The problem with trying to reason everything from first principles is that most things didn’t actually came about that way. Both our biology and other complex human affairs like societies and cultures evolved organically over long periods of time, responding to their environments and their competitors, building bit by bit, sometimes with an explicit goal but often without one. One can learn a lot from unicellular org…
Reducibility is usually a goal of intellectual pursuits? I don't see that as a fault.
Reduce a computer's behavior to its hardware design, state of RAM, and physical laws. All those voltages make no sense until you come up with the idea of stored instructions, division of the bits into some kind of memory space, etc. You may say, you can predict the future of the RAM. And that's true. But if you can't read the messages the computer prints out, then you're still doing circuits, not software.
Is that reductionist approach providing valuable insight? YES! Is it the whole picture? No.
This warning isn't new, and it's very mainstream. https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_differen...
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…
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…
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…
>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…
note, my assumption is not that the bomb would not have been developed. Only that by opposing the manhattan project the USA would not have developed it first.
> “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...
Also... > they gave off some (not all) of the vibes of a cult ...after describing his visit with an atmosphere that sounds extremely cult-like.
For more info, the Behind the Bastards podcast [2] did a pretty good series on how the Zizians sprung up out of the Bay area Rationalist scene. I'd highly recommend giving it a listen if you want a non-rationalist perspective on the Rationalist movement.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians [2]: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
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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.