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Guess I'm a rationalist now

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#371

Post by salynchnew »

thom wrote: post #223
NoGravitas wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Singularitarians were breathlessly worrying 20+ years ago, when AI was absolute dogshit - Eliezer once stated that Doug Lenat was incautious in launching Eurisko because it could've gone through a hard takeoff. I don't think it's just an act to launder their evil plans, none of which at the time worked.

Yeah, people were generally terrified of this stuff back before you could make money off of it.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#372

Post by megaman821 »

kypro wrote: post #231
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…

There are few things I hold strong opinions on, but where I do if they're also out of step with what most people think I am very vocal about them. I see this in rationalist spaces too – it doesn't really make sense for people to talk about things that they believe in strongly but that 95%+ of the public also believe in (like the existence of air), or that they don't have a strong opinion on. I am a very vocal doomer…

How confident should other people be that random people in conversation or commentors on the internet are at accurately predicting the future? I strongly believe that nearly 100% are wrong in both major and minor ways.

Also, when you say you have a strong belief, does that mean you have emptied you retirement accounts and you are enjoying all you can in the moment until the end comes?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#373

Post by smus »

cassepipe wrote: post #330
jandrese wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Feels like "they are wrong and smug" is enough reason to dislike the movement

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#374

Post by AnthonyMouse »

troyastorino wrote: post #276
jandrese wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The overlap between the Effective Altruism community and the Rationalist community is extremely high. They’re largely the same people. Effective Altruism gained a lot of early attention on LessWrong, and the pessimistic focus on AI existential risk largely stems from an EA desire to avoid “temporal-discounting” bias. The reasoning is something like: if you accept that future people count just as much as current peopl…

> Therefore, nothing can produce greater positive expected value than preventing existential risks—so working to reduce these risks becomes the highest priority.

Incidentally, the flaw in this theory is in thinking you understand what all the existential risks are.

Suppose you clock "malicious AI" as a huge risk and then hamper AI, but it turns out the bigger risk is not doing space exploration, which AI would have accelerated, because something catastrophic yet already-inevitable is going to happen to the Earth in a few hundred years and if we're not sustainably multi-planetary by then it's all over.

The thing evolution teaches us is that diversity is a group survival trait. Anybody insisting "nobody anywhere should do X" is more likely to cause an ELE than prevent one.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#375

Post by ajkjk »

resters wrote: post #159
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…

Not meaning to be too direct, but you are misinterpreting a lot about rationalists. In my view, rationalists are often "Bayesian" in that they are constantly looking for updates to their model. Consider that the default approach for most humans is to believe a variety of things and to feel indignant if someone holds differing views (the adage never discuss religion or politics ). If one adopts the perspective that th…

not to be too cynical here, but I would say that the most-apt description of the rationalists is that they are people who would say they are constantly looking for updates to their models. But that they are not necessarily doing it appreciably more than anyone else is. They will do it freely on unimportant things---they tend to be smart people who view the world intellectually and so they are free to toss or keep factual beliefs about things, of which they have many, with little fanfare, and sure, they get points for that. But they are as rooted in their moral beliefs as anybody else is. Maybe more than other people since they have such a strong intellectual edifice that justifies not changing their minds, because they believe that their beliefs follow from nearly irrefutable calculations.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#376

Post by trod1234 »

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…

Except with Effective Altruism (EA), its not pure logic.

Logic requires properties of metaphysical objectivity.

If you use the true meaning of words it would be called irrationality, delusion, sophism, or fallacy when such things are claimed true when in fact they are false.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#377

Post by nyeah »

voidhorse wrote: post #348
Certhas wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a valid point. But to some degree both can be true. I often felt when reading some of these type of texts: Wait a second, there is a wealth of thinking on these topics out there; You are not at all situating all your elaborate thinking in a broader context. And there absolutely is willingness to be challenged, and (maybe less so) a willingness to be wrong. But there also is an arrogance that "we are t…

You're spot on here, and I think this is probably also why they appeal to programmers and people in software. I find a lot of people in software have an insufferable tendency to simply ignore entire bodies of prior art, prior research, etc. outside of maybe computer science (and even that can be rare), and yet they act as though they are the most studied participants in the subject, proudly proclaiming their "genius…

Yeah, though I think you may be exaggerating how often the "genius insights" rise to the level of correct restatements of basic facts. That happens, but it's not the rule.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#378

Post by jcranmer »

cubefox wrote: post #358
ARandumGuy wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ziz did leave the rationalist movement, but to imply there's no link is simply dishonest. Ziz spent a lot of time in the Bay area Rationalist scene, and a lot of her belief system has clear Rationalist origins (such as timeless decision theory and the general obsession with an all-powerful AI). Ziz did not come up with this stuff in a vacuum, she got it from being a rationalist. Also, I'm not sure if you did this int…

Just because there is some weak relation to rationalism doesn't justify guilt-by-association. You could have pointed equally out that most of the Zizians identified as MtF transexuals and vegans, and then blamed the latter groups for being allegedly extreme. Which would be no less absurd. > She may have done some awful shit Murdering several people is slightly worse than "awful shit".

It's not just some weak relation.

The Behind the Bastards podcast works by having the podcaster invite a guest on the show and tell the story of an individual (or movement, like the Zizians) to provide a live reaction. And in the discussion about the Zizians, the light-bulb moment for the guest, the point where they made the connection "oh, now I can see how this story is going to end up with dead people," happens well before Ziz breaks with the Rationalists.

She ultimately breaks with the Rationalists because they don't view animal welfare as important as a priority as she does. But it's from the Rationalists that she picks up on the notion that some people are net negatives to society... and that if you're a net negative to society, then perhaps you're better off dead. It's not that far a leap to go from there to "it's okay for me to kill people if they are a net negative to society [i.e., they disagree with me]."

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#379

Post by camgunz »

ummonk wrote: post #143
camgunz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, I'm fine addressing Tabarrok's argument head on: I think there's far more to gain helping the millions of kids/adults who are functionally illiterate than helping the small number of gifted kids the educational system is underserving. His argument is essentially "these kids will raise the tide and lift all boats", but it's clear that although the tide has been rising for generations (advances in the last 60-70 years are truly breathtaking) more kids are being left behind, not fewer. There's no reason to expect this dynamic to change unless we tackle it directly.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#380

Post by trod1234 »

cassepipe wrote: post #330
jandrese wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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