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Guess I'm a rationalist now

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#541

Post by the_af »

mariusor wrote: post #394
the_af wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not affiliated with the rationalist community, but I always interpreted "Less Wrong" as word-play on how "being right" is an absolute binary: you can either be right, nor not be right, while "being wrong" can cover a very large gradient. I know that's what they mean at the surface level, but you just know it comes with a high degree of smugness and false modesty. "I only know that I know nothing" -- maybe, but…

Sometimes people enjoy being clever not because they want to rub it in your face that you're not, but because it's fun. I usually try not to take it personally when I don't get the joke and strive to do better next time.

That's mildly insulting of you.

I do get the joke; I think it's an instance of their feelings of "rational" superiority.

Assuming the other person didn't get the joke is very... irrational of you.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#542

Post by lxe »

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…

The rationalist movement is an idealist demagogue movement in which the majority of thinkers don't really posses the domain knowledge or practical experience in the subjects they thinktank about. They do address this head on, however, and they are self-aware.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#543

Post by aspenmayer »

bena wrote: post #496
troyastorino wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Technically "long-termism" should lead them straight to nihilism. Because, eventually, everything will end. One way or another. The odds are just 1. At some point, there are no more future humans. The number of humans are zero. Also, due to the nature of the infinite, any finite thing is essentially a rounding error and not worth concerning oneself with. I get the feeling these people often want to seem smarter than…

> Technically "long-termism" should lead them straight to nihilism. Because, eventually, everything will end. One way or another. The odds are just 1. At some point, there are no more future humans. The number of humans are zero. Also, due to the nature of the infinite, any finite thing is essentially a rounding error and not worth concerning oneself with.

The current sums invested and donated in altruist causes are rounding errors themselves compared to GDPs of countries, so the revealed preferences of those investing and donating to altruist causes is to care about the future and the present also.

Are you saying that they should give a greater preference to help those who already exist rather than those who may exist in the future?

I see a lot of Peter Singer’s ideas in modern “effective” altruism, but I get the sense from your comment that you don’t think that they have good reasons for doing what they do, or that their reason leads them to support well-meaning but ineffective solutions. I am trying to understand your position without misrepresenting your point or goals. Are you naysaying or do you have an alternative?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#544

Post by throwaway314155 »

foldr wrote: post #538
johnfn wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN judges rationality quite severely. I mean, look at this thread about Mr. Beast[1], who it's safe to say is a controversial figure, and notice how all the top comments are all pretty charitable. It's pretty funny to take the conversation there and then compare the comments to this article. Scott Aaronson - in theory someone HN should be a huge fan of, from all reports a super nice and extremely intelligent guy who…

Most people are trying to be rational (to be sure, with varying degrees of success), and people who aren't even trying aren't really worth having abstract intellectual discussions with. I'm reminded of CS Lewis's quip in a different context that "you might just as well expect to be congratulated because, whenever you do a sum, you try to get it quite right."

Being rational and rationalist are not the same thing. Funnily this sort of false equivalence that relies on being "technically correct" is at the core of what makes them...difficult.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#545

Post by the_af »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #382
the_af wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not affiliated with the rationalist community, but I always interpreted "Less Wrong" as word-play on how "being right" is an absolute binary: you can either be right, nor not be right, while "being wrong" can cover a very large gradient. I know that's what they mean at the surface level, but you just know it comes with a high degree of smugness and false modesty. "I only know that I know nothing" -- maybe, but…

So much projection.

I don't think I'm more clever than the average person, nor have I made this my identity or created a whole tribe around it, nor do I attend nor host conferences around my cleverness, rationality, or weird sexual fetishes.

In other words: no.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#546

Post by PoignardAzur »

As someone who likes both the Rationalist community and the Rust community, it's fascinating to see the parallels in how the Hacker News crowd treats both.

The contempt, the general lack of curiosity and the violence of the bold sweeping statements people will make here are mind-boggling.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#547

Post by sebzim4500 »

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…

That seems pretty silly to me. If you believe that there's a 70% chance that AI will kill everyone it makes more sense to go on about that (and about how you think you/your readers can decrease that number) than worry about the 30% chance that everyting will be fine.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#548

Post by cassepipe »

smus wrote: post #448
TeMPOraL wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bashir: Even when they're neither? Garak: Especially when they're neither.

The comment I replied to conceded wrongness and smugness but is still somehow confused why otherwise intelligent ppl dislike the movement. I was hoping to clear it up for them Extra points for that comment's author implying that people who don't like the wrong and smug movement are unintelligent and protecting their egos, thus personally proving its smugness

I only conceded it insofar as everyone can be wrong sometimes, but at least those people seem to have a protocol to deal with it.Most people don't, and are fine with it. I stand on the side of those who care and are trying.

As for smugness, it is subjective. Are those people smug ? Or are they talking passionately about some issue with the confidence of someone who feel what they are talking about and are expecting for it to resonate ? It's the eye of the beholder I guess.

For example what you call my smugness is what I would a slightly depressed attitude fueled by the fact that it's sometimes hard to relate to other people feelings and behavior.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#549

Post by wat10000 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #500
cycomanic wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironically paperclip-maximizing-robots are exactly the thing that the rationalists are so worried about. They are a group of people who missed, and then disavowed, and now advocate disavowing, this "personal" morality, and unsurprisingly they view the world in a lens that doesn't include personality morality, which means mostly being worried about problems of the same sort. But it provokes a strong negative reactio…

I don't read these rationalist essays either, but you don't need to be a deep thinker to understand why any rational person would be afraid of AI and the singularity. The AI will do what its programmed to do, but its programmers morality may not match my own. What more scary is that it may be developed with the morality of a corporation rather than a person. (That is to say, no morals at all.) I think its perfectly j…

Those corporations are already superhuman entities with morals that don’t match ours. They do cause a lot of problems. Maybe it’s better to figure out how to fix that real, current problem rather than hypothetical future ones.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#550

Post by noosphr »

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…

Incidentally a good book on logic is the best antidote to that type of thinking. Once you learn the difference between a valid and a sound argument and then realize just how ambiguous every English sentence is the idea that just because you have a logical argument you have something useful in everyday life becomes laughable rather quickly.

I also think the ambiguity of meaning in natural language is why statistical llms are so popular with this crowd. You don't need to think about meaning and parsing. Whatever the llm assumes is the meaning is whatever the meaning is.

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