Guess I'm a rationalist now • Hacker News Board

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#681

Post by zahlman » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 3:44 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #512

Veedrac wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If putting up evidence about how people were wrong in their predictions, I suggest actually pointing at predictions that were wrong, rather than on recent predictions about the future that that you disagree over how they will resolve. If putting up evidence about how people make excuses for failing predictions, I suggest actually showing them do so, rather than projecting that they will do so and blaming them for you…

It's been a while since I've engaged in rationalist debates, so I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :) You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form. My point wasn't to nit-pick individual predictions, it was a general explanation of how the game is played. Since Scott Alexander…

> So I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :)

How was it condescending or lecturing?

> You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form.

Why is that not equally condescending or lecturing?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#682

Post by zahlman » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 3:53 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #512

Veedrac wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If putting up evidence about how people were wrong in their predictions, I suggest actually pointing at predictions that were wrong, rather than on recent predictions about the future that that you disagree over how they will resolve. If putting up evidence about how people make excuses for failing predictions, I suggest actually showing them do so, rather than projecting that they will do so and blaming them for you…

It's been a while since I've engaged in rationalist debates, so I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :) You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form. My point wasn't to nit-pick individual predictions, it was a general explanation of how the game is played. Since Scott Alexander…

> it was a general explanation of how the game is played.

You seem to be trying to insinuate that Alexander et. al. are pretending to know how things will turn out and then hiding behind probabilities when they don't turn out that way. This is missing the point completely. The point is that when Alexander assigns an 80% probability to many different outcomes, about 80% of them should occur, and it should not be clear to anyone (including Alexander) ahead of time which 80%.

> He predicted at least $250 million in damages from Black Lives Matter protests.

Many sources estimated damages at $2 billion or more (see https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/22/fac... and links from there), so this did in fact come true.

Edit: I see that the prediction relates to 2021 specificially. In the wake of 2020, I think it was perfectly reasonable to make such a prediction at that confidence level, even if it didn't actually turn out that way.

> He predicted Andrew Yang would win the 2021 NYC mayoral race with 80% certainty (he came in 4th place)

> He gave a 70% chance to Vitamin D being generally recognized as a good COVID treatment

If you make many predictions at 70-80% confidence, as he does, you should expect 20-30% of them not to come true. It would in fact be a failure (underconfidence) if they all came true. You are in fact citing a blog post that is exactly about a self-assessment of those confidence levels.

Also, he gave a 70% chance to Vitamin D not being generally recognized as a good COVID treatment.

> These all get mixed in with a small number of geopolitical, economic, and medical predictions with the net result of bringing his overall accuracy up.

The point is not "overall accuracy", but overall calibration - i.e., whether his assigned probabilities end up making sense and being statistically validated.

You have done nothing to establish that any correlation between the category of prediction and his accuracy on them.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#683

Post by maybelsyrup » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:02 AM UTC

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…

> They remind me of the "Effective Altruism" crowd

Honestly thought they were the same people

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#684

Post by margalabargala » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:04 AM UTC

FeepingCreature wrote: post #313

greener_grass wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is an arbitrage going on where STEM types who lack background in philosophy, literature, history are super impressed by basic ideas from those subjects being presented to them by stealth. Not saying this is you, but these topics have been discussed for thousands of years, so it should at least be surprising that Yudkowsky is breaking new ground.

In AI finetuning, there's a theory that the model already contains the right ideas and skills, and the finetuning just raises them to prominence. Similarly in philosophic pedagogy, there's huge value in taking ideas that are correct but unintuitive and maybe have 30% buy-in and saying "actually, this is obviously correct, also here's an analysis of why you wouldn't believe it anyway and how you have to think to becom…

> And it turns out if you do this, you can discard 90% of philosophy as historical detritus

This is just the story of the history of philosophy. Going back hundreds of years. See Kant and Hegel for notable examples.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#685

Post by throwaway314155 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:06 AM UTC

turtletontine wrote: post #471

samuel wrote: post #67

I'm currently reading Yudkowsky's "Rationality: from AI to zombies". Not my first try, since the book is just a collection of blog posts and I found it a bit hard to swallow due its repetitiveness, so I gave up after the first 50 "chapters" the first time I tried. Now I'm enjoying it way more, probably because I'm more interested in the topic now. For those who haven't delved(ha!) into his work or have been pushed ba…

For example, I recall being in lot of arguments that are purely "semantical" in nature. I believe this is what Wittgenstein called “language games”

In spirit of playing said game, I believe you can just use the word "pedantic" these days.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#686

Post by chandlerswift » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:08 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #512

Veedrac wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If putting up evidence about how people were wrong in their predictions, I suggest actually pointing at predictions that were wrong, rather than on recent predictions about the future that that you disagree over how they will resolve. If putting up evidence about how people make excuses for failing predictions, I suggest actually showing them do so, rather than projecting that they will do so and blaming them for you…

It's been a while since I've engaged in rationalist debates, so I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :) You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form. My point wasn't to nit-pick individual predictions, it was a general explanation of how the game is played. Since Scott Alexander…

Am I reading all of these backwards? You say

> He predicted at least $250 million in damages from Black Lives Matter protests.

He says

> 5. At least $250 million in damage from BLM protests this year: 30%

which, by my reading means he assigns it greater-than-even odds that _less_ than $250 million dollars in damages happened (I have no understanding of whether or not this result is the case, but my reading of your post suggests that you believe that this was indeed the outcome).

You say > He gave a 70% chance to Vitamin D being generally recognized as a good COVID treatment

while he says > Vitamin D is _not_ generally recognized (eg NICE, UpToDate) as effective COVID treatment: 70% (emphasis mine)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#687

Post by margalabargala » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:12 AM UTC

FeepingCreature wrote: post #313

greener_grass wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is an arbitrage going on where STEM types who lack background in philosophy, literature, history are super impressed by basic ideas from those subjects being presented to them by stealth. Not saying this is you, but these topics have been discussed for thousands of years, so it should at least be surprising that Yudkowsky is breaking new ground.

In AI finetuning, there's a theory that the model already contains the right ideas and skills, and the finetuning just raises them to prominence. Similarly in philosophic pedagogy, there's huge value in taking ideas that are correct but unintuitive and maybe have 30% buy-in and saying "actually, this is obviously correct, also here's an analysis of why you wouldn't believe it anyway and how you have to think to becom…

Additional note: compatibilism is only obviously correct if you accept that "free will" actually just means "the experienced perception/illusion of free will" as described by Schopenhauer.

Using a slightly different definition of free will, suddenly Compatibilism becomes obviously incorrect.

And now it's been reduced to quibbling over definitions, thereby reinventing much of the history of philosophy.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#688

Post by tptacek » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:14 AM UTC

FeepingCreature wrote: post #336

mock-possum wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…but that just sounds like scientific racism. Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence, these kinds of statistical trends allow you to justify judging an individual based on their race, because you feel you can credibly claim that race is an acceptable proxy for their genome, is an acceptable proxy for their intelligence. Or for their trustworthiness, or creativity, or sexuality, or dutifulness,…

Well, the rational thing is obviously to be scared of what ideas sound like. > Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence Actual intelligence is hard to know! However, lots of factors allow you to make a rapid initial estimate of their actual intelligence, which you can then refine as required. (When the factors include apparent genetic heritage, this is called "racism" and society doesn't like it…

We do allow IQ tests for hiring. That we don't is a super-pernicious online myth. Some of the largest companies in America, with extremely deep pockets for employment law plaintiffs attorneys to come after, do in fact use IQ tests. Most companies don't, though, because they don't work.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#689

Post by throwanem » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:15 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #484

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chapter 67. https://www.readthesequences.com/Knowing-About-Biases-Can-Hu... (And since it's in the book, and people know about it, obviously they're not doing it themselves.)

Also that the Art needs to be about something else than itself, and a dozen different things. This failure mode is well known in the community; Eliezer wrote about it to death, and so did others.

To no avail, alas. But this is why we now see a thought leader publish a piece to say this is a thing it's now permissible not to be, indeed never to have been at all.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#690

Post by drdaeman » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 4:18 AM UTC

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 type of people that would be embarrassed to not have an opinion on a topic or say "I don't know"

Is it really a rationality when folks are sort of out of touch with reality, replacing it with models that lack life's endless nuances, exceptions and gotchas? Being principled is a good thing, but if I correctly understand what you're talking about - surely ignoring something just because it doesn't fit some arbitrarily selected set of principles is different.

I'm no rationalist (I don't have any meaningful self-identification, although I like the idea of approaching things logically) but I've had enough episodes of being guilty of something like this - having an opinion on something, lacking the depth, but pretending it's fine because my simple mental model is based on some ideas I like and can bring order to the chaos. So maybe it's not rationalism at all, but something else masquerading as it, like probably being afraid of mismatching the expectations?