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

691–700 of 1001 posts

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#691

Post by tptacek »

amarcheschi wrote: post #31
wffurr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... 1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://e…

The Lynn IQ data isn't so much "flawed" as it is "fraudulent". There has never been a global comparative study of IQ; Lynn exploited the fact that IQ is a common diagnostic tool, even in places that don't fund a lot of social science research and thus don't conduct their own internal cross-sectional studies, and so ended up comparing diagnostic tests done at hospitals in the developing world with research studies done of volunteers in the developed world.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#692

Post by tptacek »

exoverito wrote: post #190
amarcheschi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... 1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://e…

Human ethnic groups are measurably different in genetic terms, as based on single nucleotide polymorphisms and allelic frequency. There are multiple PCA plots of the 1000 Genomes dataset which show clear cluster separation based on ancestry: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plo... We know ethnic groups vary in terms of height, hair color, eye color, melanin, bone density, sprinting ability, la…

GWAS results are so inhospitable to race/IQ talking points that race/IQ people have for the last several years been slagging GWAS, and molecular genomics more generally, and saying the twin studies work was the right approach all along. It's a whole thing.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#693

Post by j_timberlake »

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…

I think these are all true and relevant, but the main problem is that their thesis that "ASI alignment will be extremely difficult" can only really be proven in hindsight.

It's like they're crying wolf but can't prove there's actually a wolf, only vague signs of one, but if the wolf ever becomes visible it will be way too late to do anything. Obviously no one is going to respect a group like that and many people will despise them.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#694

Post by timmytokyo »

toasterlovin wrote: post #319
radicalbyte wrote: post #22

* 20 somethings who are clearly on spectrum * Group are "special" * Centered around a charismatic leader * Weird sex stuff Guys we have a cult!

Also: * Communal living * Sacred texts & knowledge * Doomsday predictions * Guru/prophet lives on the largesse of followers It's rich for a group that claims to reason based on priors to completely ignore that they possess all the major defining characteristics of a cult.

Below is a list of cult markers I posted here the last time this came up. It recaps some of the bullet points above.

1. Apocalyptic world view.

2. Charismatic and/or exploitative leader.

3. Insularity.

4. Esoteric jargon.

5. Lack of transparency or accountability (often about finances or governance).

6. Communal living arrangements.

7. Sexual mores outside social norms, especially around the leader.

8. Schismatic offshoots.

9. Outsized appeal and/or outreach to the socially vulnerable.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#695

Post by timmytokyo »

Aurornis wrote: post #581
scoofy wrote: post #365

It's weird that "being interested in philosophy" is like... a movement. My background is in philosophy, but the rationalist vs nonrationalist debate seems like an undergraduate class dispute. My old roommate worked for Open Phil, and was obsessed with AI Safety and really into Bitcoin. I never was. We still had interesting arguments about it all the time. Most of the time we just argued until we got to the axioms we…

> It's weird that "being interested in philosophy" is like... a movement. My background is in philosophy, but the rationalist vs nonrationalist debate seems like an undergraduate class dispute. Bring up the rationalist community within academic philosophy circles and you'll get a lot of groans. The fun part about rationalists is that they like to go back to first principles and rediscover basics. The less fun part is…

Rationalists are constantly falling into ditches that actual philosophers crawled out of centuries ago. But what's even more exasperating is that they do it in tendentious disquisitions that take thousands of wasted words to get.. to.. the.. everloving.. point.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#696

Post by sandspar »

johnfn wrote: post #461
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…

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…

Fittingly enough, the Rationalist community talks about this a lot. The canonical article is here ("I can tolerate anything except the outgroup").*

The gist is that if people are really different from us then we tend to be cool with them. But if they're close to us - but not quite the same - then they tend to annoy us. Hacker News people are close enough to Rationalists that HN people find them annoying.

It's the same reason why e.g. Hitler-style Neo Nazis can have a beer with Black Nationalists, but they tend to despise Klan-style Neo Nazis. Or why Sunni and Shia Muslims have issues with each other but neither group really cares about Indigenous American religions or whatever.

* https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#697

Post by autarch »

tptacek wrote: post #629
Aurornis wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I especially liked the existential threat of Cade Metz. I am perpetually fascinated by the way rationalists love to dismiss critics by pointing out that they met some people in person and they seemed nice. It's such a bizarre meme. Curtis Yarvin went to one of the "Vibecamp" rationalist gatherings, was nice to some prominent Twitter rationalists, and now they are ardent defenders of him on Twitter. Their entire arg…

I'm hyperfixated on the idea that they're angry at Metz for "outing" Scott Alexander, who published some of his best-known posts under his own name.

Isn't "Scott Alexander" his first and middle name? Did he actually use his last name on his blog before the NYT published that piece?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#698

Post by swagmoney1606 »

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…

When I was 15-18, in around 2017, I got extremely into Elizer Yud, "the sequences", lesswrong, and the rationalist community. I don't think many people realize how it appeals to vulnerable people in the same way that Atlas Shrugged, Christianity, The furry community (/jk), the self-help world, andrew tate and "manosphere content", does.

It provides answers, a framework, AND the underpinnings of "logic", luckily, this phase only lasted around 6 months for me, during a very hard and dangerous time in my life.

I basically read "from AI to zombies", and then, moved into lesswrong and the "community". It was joining the community that immediately turned me off.

- I thought Roko's basilisk was mind numbingly stupid (does anyone else that had a brief stint in the rationalist space think it's fucking INSANE that grimes and elon musk "bonded" over Roko's basilisk? Fucking depressing world we live in) - Elizer Yud's fanboys once stalked and harassed someone all over the internet, and, when confronted about it, Elizer told him he'd only tell them to stop after he issued a very specific formal apology, including a LARGE DISCLAIMER on his personal website with the apology... - Eugenics, eugenics, eugenics, eugenics, eugenics - YOU MUST DONATE TO MIRI, OTHERWISE I, ELIZER (having published no useful research), WON'T SOLVE THE ALIGNMENT PROBLEM FIRST AND THEN WE WILL ALL DIE. GIVE ALL OF YOUR MONEY TO MIRI NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

It's an absolutely wild place, and honestly, I think I would say, it is difficult to define "rational" when it comes to a human being and their actions, especially in an absolute sense, and, the rationalist community is basically very similar to any other religion, or perhaps light-cult. I do not think it would be fair to say "the average rationalist is a better decision maker than the average human", especially considering most important decisions that we have to make are emotional decisions.

Also yes I agree, you hit the nail on the head. What good is rational/logical reasoning if rational and logical reasoning typically requires first principles / a formal system / axioms / priors / whatever. That kind of thing doesn't exist in the real world. It's okay to apply ideas from rationality to your life, but it isn't okay to apply ideas from rationality to "what is human existence", "what is the most important thing to do next" / whatever.

Kinda rambling so I apologize. Seeing the rationalist community seemingly underpin some of the more disgusting developments of the last few years has left me feeling a bit disturbed, and I've always wanted to talk about it but nobody irl has any idea what any of this is.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#699

Post by int_19h »

bilbo0s wrote: post #197
parpfish wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the propagandists that use it

They won't be allowed to use it unless they serve the capitalists who own it. It's not social media. It's a model the capitalists train and own. Best the rest of us will have access to are open source ones. It's like the difference between trying to go into court backed by google searches as opposed to Lexis/Nexis. You're gonna have a bad day with the judge. Here's hoping the open source stuff gets trained on quality…

Looking at Grok especially, it doesn't feel like a given that you can have a true SOTA model that is properly brainwashed.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#700

Post by sunshowers »

Retric wrote: post #531
mettamage wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> no free will That always seemed like a meaningless argument to me. To an outside observer free will is indistinguishable from a random process over some range of possibilities. You aren’t going to randomly go to sleep with your hand in a fire, there’s some hard coded biology preventing that choice but that only means human behavior isn’t completely random, hardly a groundbreaking discovery. At the other end we have…

I have much less patience for C++ than I would in a world with free will.

Since there's no free will, outcomes are determined by luck, and what matters is how lucky we can make people through pit-of-success environments. Rust makes people luckier than C++ does.

I also have much less patience for blame than I do in a world with free will. I believe, for example, that blameless postmortems lead to much better outcomes than trying to pretend people had free will to make mistakes, and therefore blaming them for those mistakes.

You can get to these positions through means other than rejection of free will, but the most robust grounds for them are fundamentally deterministic.

Post reply on HN