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Guess I'm a rationalist now

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#501

Post by alephnerd »

gjm11 wrote: post #486
alephnerd wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically a secular religion. Substitute God with AI or the concept of rationality and use "first principles"/Bayesianism in an extremely dogmatic manner similar to Catechism and you have the Rationalist/AI Alignment/Effective Altruist movement. Ironically, this is how plenty of religious movements started off - basically as formalizations of philosophy and ethics that fused with what is basically lore and world…

This complaint seems to amount to "They believe something is very important, just like religious people do, therefore they're basically a religion". Which feels to me like rather too broad a notion of "religion".

That's a fairly reductive take of my point. In my experience with the Rationalist movement (who I have the misfortune of being 1-2 people away from), the millenarian threat of AGI remains the primary threat.

Whenever I try to get an answer of HOW (as in the attack path), I keep getting a deus ex machina. Reverting to a deus ex machina in a self purported Rationalist movement is inherently irrational. And that's where I feel the crux of the issue is - it's called a "Rationalist" movement, but rationalism (as in the process of synthesizing information using a heuristic) is secondary to the overarching theme of techno-millenarianism.

This is why I feel rationalism is for all intents and purposes a "secular religion" - it's used by people to scratch an itch that religion often was used as well, and the same Judeo-Christian tropes are basically adopted in an obfuscated manner. Unsurprisingly, Eliezer Yudkowsky is an ex-talmid.

There's nothing wrong with that, but hiding behind the guise of being "rational" is dumb when the core belief is inherently irrational.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#502

Post by gjm11 »

Aurornis wrote: post #474
lukas099 wrote: post #381

This is vibe-based, but I think the Rationalists get more vitriol than they deserve. Upon reflecting, my hypothesis for this is threefold: 1. They are a community —they have an in-group, and if you are not one of them you are by-definition in the out-group. People tend not to like being in other peoples' out-groups. 2. They have unusual opinions and are open about them. People tend not to like people who express opin…

> They are a community—they have an in-group, and if you are not one of them you are by-definition in the out-group. The rationalist community is most definitely not exclusive. You can join it by declaring yourself to be a rationalist, posting blogs with "epistemic status" taglines, and calling yourself a rationalist. The criticisms are not because it's a cool club that won't let people in. > They have unusual opinio…

Lockstep like this? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba... (a post on Less Wrong, karma score currently +442, versus +102 and +230 for the two posts it cites as earlier favourable LW coverage of the lithium claim -- the comments on both of which, by the way, don't look to me any more positive than "skeptical but interested")

The followup post from the same author https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get... is currently at a score of +306, again higher than either of those other pro-lithium-hypothesis posts.

Or maybe this https://substack.com/home/post/p-39247037 (I admit I don't know for sure whether the author considers himself a rationalist, but I found the link via a search for whether Scott Alexander had written anything about the lithium theory, which it looks like he hasn't, which turned this up in the subreddit dedicated to his writing).

Speaking of which, I can't find any sign that they got an ACX grant. I can find https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-grants-the-first-half which is basically "hey, here are some interesting projects we didn't give any money to, with a one-paragraph pitch from each" and one of the things there is "Slime Mold Time Mold" talking about lithium; incidentally, the comments there are also pretty skeptical.

So I'm not really seeing this "gets adopted by the others as fact" thing in this case; it looks to me as if some people proposed this hypothesis, some other people said "eh, doesn't look right to me", and rationalists' attitude was mostly "interesting idea but probably wrong". What am I missing here?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#503

Post by jrflowers »

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…

It seems that you are conflating theoretical rationalists with the actual real-life rationalists that write stuff like

>The quantum physicist who’s always getting into arguments on the Internet, and who’s essentially always right

“Guy Who Is Always Right” as a role in a social group is a terrible target, yet it somehow seems like what rationalists are aiming for every time I read any of their blog posts

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#504

Post by lukas099 »

Aurornis wrote: post #474
lukas099 wrote: post #381

This is vibe-based, but I think the Rationalists get more vitriol than they deserve. Upon reflecting, my hypothesis for this is threefold: 1. They are a community —they have an in-group, and if you are not one of them you are by-definition in the out-group. People tend not to like being in other peoples' out-groups. 2. They have unusual opinions and are open about them. People tend not to like people who express opin…

> They are a community—they have an in-group, and if you are not one of them you are by-definition in the out-group. The rationalist community is most definitely not exclusive. You can join it by declaring yourself to be a rationalist, posting blogs with "epistemic status" taglines, and calling yourself a rationalist. The criticisms are not because it's a cool club that won't let people in. > They have unusual opinio…

> The rationalist community is most definitely not exclusive.

I agree, and didn't intend to express otherwise. It's not an exclusive community, but it is a community, and if you aren't in it you are in the out-group.

> The problem isn't differing opinions, the problem is that they disregard actual expertise and try ham-fisted attempts at "first principals" evaluations of a subject while ignoring contradictory evidence

I don't know if this is true or not, but if it is I don't think it's why people scorn them. Maybe I don't give people enough credit and you do, but I don't think most people care how you arrived at an opinion; they merely care about whether you're in their opinion-tribe or not.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#505

Post by freejazz »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #189
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 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…

>Are you sure you're not painting this group with an overly-broad brush?

"Aren't these the people who"...

> And writing essays about the dangers of overconfidence? And measuring how often their predictions turn out wrong? And maintaining webpages titled "list of things I was wrong about"?

What's the value of that if it doesn't appear to be reasonably put to their own ideas. What you described otherwise is just another form of the exact kind of self-congratulation often (reasonably, IMO) lobbed at these "people"

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#506

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

Aurornis wrote: post #463
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…

I grew up with some friends who were deep into the early roots of online rationalism, even slightly before LessWrong came online. I've been around long enough to recognize the rhetorical devices used in rationalist writings: > 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 meas…

Yes, I do think that these hedging statements make them immune from the specific criticism that I quoted.

If you want to say their humility is not genuine, fine. I'm not sure I agree with it, but you are entitled to that view. But to simultaneously be attacking the same community for not ever showing a sense of maybe being wrong or uncertain, and also for expressing it so often it's become an in-group signal, is just too much cognitive dissonance.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#507

Post by jeffhwang »

astrange wrote: post #453
nradov wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense are people in those communities "quite smart"? Stupid is as stupid does. There are plenty of people who get good grades and score highly on standardized tests, but are in fact nothing but pontificating blowhards and useless wankers.

They're members of a religion which says that if you do math in your head the right way you'll be correct about everything, and so they think they're correct about everything. They also secondarily believe everyone has an IQ which is their DBZ power level; they believe anything they see that has math in it, and IQ is math, so they believe anything they see about IQ. So if you avoid trying to find out your own IQ you…

If only I could +1 this more than once! I have learned valuable things occasionally from people in the rationalist community but this overall lack of humility —and strangely blinkered view of humanities and important topics like say history of science relevant to “STEM”—ultimately turned me off to the movement as a whole. And I love science and math! It just shouldn’t belong to people with this (imo) childish model of people, IQ, etc.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#508

Post by janeerie »

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…

One mistake you making is thinking that rationalists care more about people far away than people in their community. The reality is that they set the value of life the same for all.

If children around you are doing of an easily preventable disease, then yes, help them first! If they just need more arts programs, then you help the children dying in another country first.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#509

Post by freejazz »

salynchnew wrote: post #369
bakuninsbart wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly enough, both can be true. I was tangentially involved in EA in the early days, and have some friends who were more involved. Lots of interesting, really cool stuff going on, but there was always latent insecurity paired with overconfidence and elitism as is typical in young nerd circles. When big money got involved, the tone shifted a lot. One phrase that really stuck with me is "exceptional talent". Everyone…

> caring a lot about shrimp welfare (no one else does). Ah. I guess they are working out ecology through first principles, I guess? I feel like a lot of the criticism of EA and rationalism does boil down to some kind of general criticism of naivete and entitlement, which... is probably true when applied to lots of people, regardless of whether they espouse these ideas or not. It's also easier to criticize obviously d…

>I think some criticism of EA or rationalism is also a reaction to a creeping unspoken consensus that "things are only going to get worse" in the future.

I think it's that combined with the EA approach to it which is: let's focus on space flight and shrimp welfare. Not sure which side is more in denial about the impending future?

I have no belief any particular individual can do anything about shrimp welfare more than they can about the intractable problems we do face.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#510

Post by pixodaros »

wffurr wrote: post #19
amarcheschi wrote: post #8

They call themselves rationalist, yet they don't have very rational opinions if you ask them about scientific racism [1] [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-le...

I am not sure precisely it not very rational about that link. Did you have a specific point you were trying to make with it?

In that essay Scott Alexander more or less says "so Richard Lynn made up numbers about how stupid black and brown people are, but we all know he was right if those mean scientists just let us collect the data to prove it." The level of thinking most of us moved past in high school, and he is a MD who sees himself as a Public Intellectual! More evidence that thinking too much about IQ makes people stupid.
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