Guess I'm a rationalist now • Hacker News Board

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#321

Post by FeepingCreature » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

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…

If you want a book on the rationalists that's not a smear dictated by a person who is banned from their Wikipedia page for massive npov violations, I hear Chivers' The AI Does Not Hate You and Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy are good.

(Disclaimer: Chivers kinda likes us, so if you like one book you'll probably dislike the other.)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#322

Post by voidhorse » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

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!)

Assuming you do believe that genocide is extremely shitty, wouldn't that imply that defense of (actual) genocide, or the principle of it, is in all likelihood shitter than a false accusation of genocide? Otherwise I think you'd have to claim that a false accusation is somehow worse than the actuality or possibility of mass murder, which seems preposterous if you have even a mote of empathy for your fellow human beings.

As others have pointed out, the fact that you would like to make light of cities being decimated and innocent civilians being murdered at scale in itself suggests a lot about your inability to concretize the reality of human existence beyond yourself (lack of empathy). It's this kind of outright callousness toward actual human beings that I think many of these so called "rationalists" share. I can't fault them too much. After all, when your approach to social problems is highly if not strictly quantitative you are already primed to nullify your own aptitude for empathy, since you view other human beings as nothing more than numerical quantities whenever you attempt to address their problems.

I have seen no defense for what's happening in gaza that anyone who actually values human life, for all humans, would find rational. Recall the root of the word ratio—in proportion. What is happening in this case is quite blatantly a matter of an inproportinate response.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#323

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

Well that was a whole thing. I especially liked the existential threat of Cade Metz. But ultimately, I think the great oracle of Chicago got this whole thing right when he said:

-Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#324

Post by FeepingCreature » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

djoldman wrote: post #210

Just to confirm, this is about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community and not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism right?

Absolutely everybody names it wrong. The movement is called rationality or "LessWrong-style rationality", explicitly to differentiate it from rationalism the philosophy; rationality is actually in the empirical tradition.

But the words are too close together, so this is about as lost a battle as "hacker".

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#325

Post by FeepingCreature » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

thomasjudge wrote: post #290

djoldman wrote: post #210

Just to confirm, this is about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community and not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism right?

Along these lines I am sort of skimming articles/blogs/websites about Lightcone, LessWrong, etc, and I am still struggling with the question...what do they DO?

Twenty years or so ago, Eliezer Yudkowsky, a former proto-accelerationalist, realized that superintelligence was probably coming, was deeply unsafe, and that we should do something about that. Because he had a very hard time convincing people of this to him obvious fact, he first wrote a very good blog about human reason, philosophy and AI, in order to fix whatever was going wrong in people's heads that caused them to not understand that superintelligence was coming and so on. The group of people who read, commented on and contributed to this blog are called the rationalists.

(You're hearing about them now because these days it looks a lot more plausible than in 2007 that Eliezer was right about superintelligence, so the group of people who've beat the drum about this for over a decade now form the natural nexus around which the current iteration of project "we should do something about unsafe superintelligence" is congealing.)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#326

Post by noname120 » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #237

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 remind me of the "Effective Altruism" crowd who get completely wound up in these hypothetical logical thought exercises and end up coming to insane conclusions that they feel trapped in because they got there using pure logic. Not realizing that their initial conditions were highly artificial so any conclusion they reach is only of academic value. There is a term for this. "Getting stuck up your own butt." It wo…

> They remind me of the "Effective Altruism" crowd who get completely wound up in these hypothetical logical thought exercises and end up coming to insane conclusions that they feel trapped in because they got there using pure logic. Not realizing that their initial conditions were highly artificial so any conclusion they reach is only of academic value.

Do you have examples of that? I have a different perception, most of the EAs I've met are very grounded and sharp.

For example the most recent issue of their newsletter: https://us8.campaign-archive.com/?e=7023019c13&u=52b028e7f79...

I'm not sure where there are any “hypothetical logical thought exercises” that “end up coming to insane conclusions” in there.

For the first part where you say “not realizing that their initial conditions were highly artificial so any conclusion they reach is only of academic value” this is quite the opposite of my experience with them. They are very receptive to criticism and reconsider their point of view in reaction to that.

They are generally well-aware of the limits of data-driven initiatives and the dangers of indulging into purely abstract thinking that can lead to conclusions that indeed don't make sense.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#327

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #323

Well that was a whole thing. I especially liked the existential threat of Cade Metz. But ultimately, I think the great oracle of Chicago got this whole thing right when he said: -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the w…

> Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself

There's an -ism for that.

Actually, a few different ones depending on the exact angle you look at the it from: solipsism, narcissism,...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#328

Post by johnfn » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

casey2 wrote: post #257

kragen wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are clearly dismissing his experience without much though. If a park ranger stopped you in the woods and said there was a mountain lion up ahead would you argue that he doesn't have enough information to be sure from such a quick glance? Someone spending a lot of time to build one or multiple skills doesn't make them an expert on everything, but when they start talking like they are an expert on everything becaus…

If a park ranger said "I looked over the first 2% of the park and concluded there's no mountain lions" - that is, made an assessment on the whole from inspection of a narrow segment - I don't think I would take his word on the matter. If OP had more experience to support his statement, he should have included it, rather than writing a shallow, one-sentence dismissal.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#329

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

ashwinsundar wrote: post #249

elt895 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 usua…

I don't have an answer here either, but after suffering through the first few chapters of HPMOR, I've found that Yudk and others tech-bros posing as philosophers are basically like leaky, dumbed-down abstractions for core philosophical ideas. Just go to the source and read about utilitarianism and deontology directly. Yudk is like the Wix of web development - sure you can build websites but you're not gonna be a prop…

I'd like what the original sources would have written if someone had fed them some speak-clearly pills. Yudkowsky and company may have the dumbing-down problem, but the original sources often have a clarity problem. (That's why people are still arguing about what they meant centuries later. Not just whether they were right - though they argue about that too - but what they meant.)

Even better, I'd like some filtering out of the parts that are clearly wrong.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#330

Post by cassepipe » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #237

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 remind me of the "Effective Altruism" crowd who get completely wound up in these hypothetical logical thought exercises and end up coming to insane conclusions that they feel trapped in because they got there using pure logic. Not realizing that their initial conditions were highly artificial so any conclusion they reach is only of academic value. There is a term for this. "Getting stuck up your own butt." It wo…

I read the whole tree of responses under this comment and I could only convince myself that when people have no arguments they try to make you look bad.

Most of criticisms are just "But they think they are better than us !" and the rest is "But sometimes they are wrong !"

I don't know about the community and couldn't care less but their writings have brought me some almost life saving fresh air in how to think about the world. It is very sad to me to read so many falsely elaborate responses from supposedly intelligent people having their ego hurt but in the end it reminds me why I like rationalists and I don't like most people.