Guess I'm a rationalist now

Post by twoodfin » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:36 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #355

cassepipe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's a theory of what's happening, both with you here in this comment section and with the rationalists in general. Humans are generally better at perceiving threats than they are at putting those threats into words. When something seems "dangerous" abstractly, they will come up with words for why---but those words don't necessarily reflect the actual threat, because the threat might be hard to describe. Neverthele…

Post by tasty_freeze » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #224

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…

Cherry-picking friendly studies is one of the go-to moves of the rationalist community. You can convince a lot of people that you've done your homework when the medium is "an extremely blog post with a bunch of studies attached" even if the studies themselves aren't representative of reality.

Post by ummonk » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #186

ummonk wrote: post #129

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Rationalists have always rubbed me the wrong way too but your argument against AI doomerism is weird. If you care about first principles, how about the precautionary principle? "Maybe it's actually benign" is not a good argument for moving ahead with potentially world ending technology.

The precautionary principle is stupid. If people had followed it then we'd still be living in caves.

Post by jandrese » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:44 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #355

cassepipe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's a theory of what's happening, both with you here in this comment section and with the rationalists in general. Humans are generally better at perceiving threats than they are at putting those threats into words. When something seems "dangerous" abstractly, they will come up with words for why---but those words don't necessarily reflect the actual threat, because the threat might be hard to describe. Neverthele…

Post by Seattle3503 » Thu, Jun 19, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #260

Seattle3503 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the rationalists have failed to humanize themselves. They let their thinkpieces define them entirely, but a studiously considered think piece is a narrow view into a person. If rationalists were more publicly vulnerable, people might find them more publicly relatable.

Scott Aaronson is probably the most publicly-vulnerable academic I've ever found, at least outside of authors who write memoirs about childhood trauma. I think a lot of other prominent rationalists also put a lot of vulnerability out there.