Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Guess I'm a rationalist now

scottaaronson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 1001 posts

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#551

Post by bayarearefugee »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #374
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…

> 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…

That's only one flaw in the theory.

There are others, such as the unproven, narcissistic and frankly unlikely-to-be-true assumption that humanity continuing to exist is a net positive in the long run.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#552

Post by lisper »

munksbeer wrote: post #539
lisper wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one can levy a much more specific critique of rationalism: rationalism is in some sense self-defeating. If you are rational you will necessarily conclude that the fundamental dynamic that drives the (interesting parts of) the universe is Darwinian evolution, which is not rational. It blindly selects for reproductive fitness at the expense of all else. If you are a gene, you can probably produce more offspring…

I hesitate to nitpick, but Darwinism (as far as I know) is not really the term to use because Darwin's theory was limited to life on earth. Only later was the concept generalised into "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest". I'm not sure I entirely understand what you're arguing here, but I absolutely do agree that the most powerful force in the universe is natural selection.

The term "Darwinian evolution" applies to any process that comprises iterated replication with random mutation followed selection for some quality metric. Darwin himself would not have defined it that way, but he still deserves the credit for being the first to recognize and document the power of this simple process.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#553

Post by etblg »

impossiblefork wrote: post #288
pavlov wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And today the railroad system in the USA sucks compared to other developed countries and even China. It turns out that boom-and-bust capitalism isn’t great for building something that needs to evolve over centuries. Perhaps American AI efforts will one day be viewed similarly. “Yeah, they had an early rush, lots of innovation, high valuations, and robber barons competing. Today it’s just stale old infra despite the h…

I think it's unlikely that AI efforts will go as railroads have. I think being an AI foundation model company is more like being an airplane builder than like a railway company, since you develop your technology.

Plenty of those that similarly went bankrupt over the years, and now the USA mostly has Boeing that's reached a set of continual crises and being propped up by the government.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#554

Post by wat10000 »

sfblah wrote: post #460
jhbadger wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Adam Becker shows in his book, EAs started out being reasonable "give to charity as much as you can, and research which charities do the most good" but have gotten into absurdities like "it is more important to fund rockets than help starving people or prevent malaria because maybe an asteroid will hit the Earth, killing everyone, starving or not".

How do they escape the reality that the Earth will one day be destroyed, and that it's almost certainly impossible to ever colonize another planetary system? Just suicide out?

If you value maximizing the number of human lives that are lived, then even “almost certainly impossible” is enough to justify focusing a huge amount of effort on that. Maybe interstellar colonization is a one in a million shot, but it would multiply the number of human lives by billions or trillions or more.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#555

Post by eth0up »

zahlman wrote: post #406
eth0up wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>provisional humility. I hope this becomes the first ever meme with some value. We need a cult... of Provisional Humility. Must. Increase. The. pH

> Must. Increase. The. pH Those who do so would be... based?

Basically.

The level of humility in most subjects is low enough to consume glass. We would all benefit from practicing it more arduously.

I was merely adding support to what I thought was fine advice. And it is.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#556

Post by Bjartr »

zahlman wrote: post #411
Bjartr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the whole community side to rationality is, at best, questionable. But the tools of thought that the literature describes are invaluable with one very important caveat . The moment you think something like "I am more correct than this other person because I am a rationalist" is the moment you fail as a rationalist. It is an incredibly easy mistake to make. To make effective use of the tools, you need to become…

> The moment you think something like "I am more correct than this other person because I am a rationalist" is the moment you fail as a rationalist. Well said. Rationalism is about doing rationalism, not about being a rationalist. Paul Graham was on the right track about that, though seemingly for different reasons (referring to "Keep Your Identity Small"). > If you're saying "well actually, I'm right" more often tha…

> success is supposed to look exactly like actually being right more often.

I agree with this, and I don't think it's at odds with what I said. The point is to never stop sincerely believing you could be wrong. That you are right more often is exactly why it's such an easy trap to fall into. The tools of rationality only help as long as you are actively applying them, which requires a certain amount of humility, even in the face of success.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#557

Post by sapphicsnail »

astrange wrote: post #470
jcranmer wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The podcast Behind the Bastards described Rationalism not as a cult but as the fertile soil which is perfect for growing cults, leading to the development of cults like the Zizians (who both the Rationalists and Zizians are at pains to emphasize their mutual hostility to one another, but if you're not part of either movement, it's pretty clear how Rationalism can lead to something like the Zizians).

I don't think that podcast has very in-depth observations. It's just another iteration of east coast culture media people who used to be on Twitter a lot, isn't it? > the fertile soil which is perfect for growing cults This is true but it's not rationalism, it's just that they're from Berkeley. As far as I can tell if you live in Berkeley you just end up joining a cult.

I lived in Berkeley for a decade and there weren't many people I would say were in a cult. It's actually quite the opposite. There's way more willingness to be weird and do your own thing there.

Most of the rationalists I met in the Bay Area moved there specifically to be closer to the community.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#558

Post by lisper »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #516
lisper wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one can levy a much more specific critique of rationalism: rationalism is in some sense self-defeating. If you are rational you will necessarily conclude that the fundamental dynamic that drives the (interesting parts of) the universe is Darwinian evolution, which is not rational. It blindly selects for reproductive fitness at the expense of all else. If you are a gene, you can probably produce more offspring…

To the contrary, here's a series of essays on the subject of evolutionary game theory, the incentives created by competition, and its consequences for human wellbeing: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/kNANcHLNtJt5qeuSS "Moloch hasn't won" is a lengthy critique of the argument you are making here.

That doesn't seem to be on point to me. I'm not talking about being "caught in bad equilibria". My assertion is that rationalism itself is not stable, that the (apparent) triumph of rationalism since the Enlightenment was a transient, not an equilibrium. And one of the reasons it was a transient is that self-styled rationalists believed (and apparently still believe) that rationalism will inevitably triumph because it is rational, because it is in more intimate contact with reality than religion and superstition. But this is wrong because it overlooks the fact that what triumphs in the long run is simply reproductive fitness. Being in contact with reality can be actively harmful to reproductive fitness if it leads you to, say, decide not to have kids because you are pessimistic about the future.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#559

Post by munksbeer »

dmurray wrote: post #517
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…

The other weird direction it leads is space travel. If you assume we eventually figure out long distance space travel and humanity spreads across the galaxy, there could in the future be quadrillions of people, growing at some kind of exponential rate. So accelerating the space race by even an hour is equivalent to bringing billions of new souls into existence.

I don't see how bringing new souls (whatever those are) into existence should naturally qualify as a good thing?

Perhaps you're arguing as an illustration of the way this group of people think, in which case I understand your point.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#560

Post by lisper »

mettamage wrote: post #514
lisper wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one can levy a much more specific critique of rationalism: rationalism is in some sense self-defeating. If you are rational you will necessarily conclude that the fundamental dynamic that drives the (interesting parts of) the universe is Darwinian evolution, which is not rational. It blindly selects for reproductive fitness at the expense of all else. If you are a gene, you can probably produce more offspring…

I always liken this to that we’re all asteroids floating in space. There’s no free will and everything is determined. We just see the whole thing unfold from one conscious perspective. Emotionally I don’t subscribe to this view. Rationally I do. My critique for rational people is that they don’t seem to fully take experience into account. It’s assumptions + rationality + experience/data + whatever strong inclinations…

If you get down to the quantum level there is no such thing as objective reality. Our perception that the world is made of classical objects that actually exist at particular places at particular times and have continuity of identity is an illusion. But it's a really compelling illusion, and you won't go far wrong treating it as if it were the truth in 99% of real-world situations. Likewise, free will is an illusion, nothing more than a reflection of our ignorance of how our brains work. But it is a really compelling illusion, and you won't go far wrong treating it as if it were the truth, at least some of the time.
Post reply on HN