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Guess I'm a rationalist now

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#761

Post by reducesuffering »

lechatonnoir wrote: post #646
Aurornis wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> es, I do think that these hedging statements make them immune from the specific criticism that I quoted. That's my point: Their rhetorical style is interpreted by the in-group as a sort of weird infallibility. Like they've covered both sides and therefore the work is technically correct in all cases. Once they go through the hedging dance, they can put forth the opinion-based point they're trying to make in a very…

> 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". The type of people that would be embarrassed to not have an opinion on a topic or say "I don't know" edit: my apologies, that was someone else in the thread. I do feel like between the two comments though there is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't". (The original qu…

Haha my thoughts exactly. This HN thread is simultaneously criticizing them for being too assured, not considering other possibilities, and hedging that they may not be right and other plausibilities exist.

“Damned if you do” indeed…

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#762

Post by achenet »

timmytokyo wrote: post #695
Aurornis wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> they do it in tendentious disquisitions that take thousands of wasted words to get.. to.. the.. everloving.. point.

Right, and "actual philosophers" like Sartre and Heidegger _never_ did that. Ever.

"Being and Nothingness" and "Being and Time" are both short enough to fit into a couple tweets, right?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#763

Post by achenet »

nosrepa wrote: post #511
pja wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community Fair warning: when you turn over some of the rocks here you find squirming, slithering things that should not be given access to the light.

And Harry Potter fan fiction.

I think GP already covered that:

> squirming, slithering things that should not be given access to the light.

;)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#764

Post by noname120 »

catgary wrote: post #721
noname120 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No rationalist claims that it's “_definitely_ going to be the end of the world”. In fact they estimate to less than 30% the chance that AI becomes an existential risk by the end of the century.

Adding numbers to your reasoning, when there is no obvious source for these probabilities (we aren’t calculating sports odds or doing climate science), is not really any different than writing a piece of fiction to make your point. It’s the same basic thing that objectivists did, and why I dismiss most “Bayesian reasoning” arguments out of hand.

Which content did you engage with that led you to the conclusion that they base their estimates with “no obvious source for these probabilities”? A link would be appreciated

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#765

Post by JamesBarney »

hiddencost wrote: post #202
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…

They're behind Anthropic and were behind openai being a nonprofit. They're behind the friendly AI movement and effective altruism. They're responsible for funneling huge amounts of funding away from domain experts (effective altruism in practice means "Oxford math PhD writes a book report about a social sciences problem they've only read about and then defunds all the NGOs"). They're responsible for moving all the AI…

What ngo's are the rationalists or effective altruists responseable for killing or defunding?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#766

Post by FeepingCreature »

gjm11 wrote: post #756
FeepingCreature wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's why they famously say they're an "aspiring rationalist." But I don't think there's anything wrong with setting a target, even if it's unreachable.

No, absolutely nothing wrong with setting ambitious and unreachable targets. Reach for the stars and you might at least get to the moon, etc. But if you say "I'm an effective altruist" then you are claiming to actually be effective and if you say "our movement is Rationality" then you are claiming to be paradigmatic examples of actually being rational , and I think that's a bad idea because it should be possible to s…

Oh yeah, I don't think anyone should claim to be effective or rational, per se. Fwiw the original Sequences make it very clear that a rationalist is supposed to be somebody who pursues rationality, rather than possessing it.

So you say it should be possible to avoid making this claim. I agree, and I believe Eliezer tried! Unfortunately, it was attributed to him anyway.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#767

Post by bmacho »

mariusor wrote: post #393
mananaysiempre wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always interpreted "Less Wrong" as word-play on how "being right" is an absolute binary Specifically (AFAIK) a reference to Asimov’s description[1] of the idea: > [W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than…

Cool, I didn't know the quote, nor that it was inspiration for the name. Thank you.

It's not even about the quote, or Asimov.

"Less wrong" is a concept that has a lot of connotations that just automatically appear in your mind and help you. What you wrote "It's very telling that some of them went full "false modesty" by naming sites like "LessWrong", when you just know they actually mean "MoreRight"." isn't bad because of Asimov said so, or because you were unaware of a reference, but because it's just bad.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#768

Post by gjm11 »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #766
gjm11 wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, absolutely nothing wrong with setting ambitious and unreachable targets. Reach for the stars and you might at least get to the moon, etc. But if you say "I'm an effective altruist" then you are claiming to actually be effective and if you say "our movement is Rationality" then you are claiming to be paradigmatic examples of actually being rational , and I think that's a bad idea because it should be possible to s…

Oh yeah, I don't think anyone should claim to be effective or rational, per se. Fwiw the original Sequences make it very clear that a rationalist is supposed to be somebody who pursues rationality, rather than possessing it. So you say it should be possible to avoid making this claim. I agree, and I believe Eliezer tried! Unfortunately, it was attributed to him anyway.

Right. And I think that using "Rationality" as a name for the movement as opposed to its goals does amount to making that claim, which is one reason why (so far as I can see) EY never actually uses the word in quite that way and I don't think others should either.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#769

Post by bmacho »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #535
sixo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the Stem-enlightened mind, the classical understanding and pedagogy of such ideas is underwhelming, vague, and riddled with language-game problems, compared to the precision a mathematically-rooted idea has. They're rederiving all this stuff not out of obstinacy, but because they prefer it. I don't really identify with rationalism per se, but I'm with them on this--the humanities are over-cooked and a humanity edu…

I have kids in high school. We sometimes talk about the difference between the black and white of math or science, and the wishy washy grey of the humanities. You can be right or wrong in math. You have can an opinion in English.

You can be right or wrong in math and philosophy. You have can an opinion in any other sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, medical sciences, history, you name it.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#770

Post by noname120 »

jhbadger wrote: post #497
Veedrac wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems very odd to criticize the group that most reliably and effectively funds global health and malaria prevention for this. What is your alternative? What's your framework that makes you contribute to malaria prevention more or more effectively than EAs do? Or is the claim instead that people should shut down conversation within EA that strays from the EA mode?

The simple answer is you don't need a "framework" -- plain empathy for the less fortunate is good enough. But if the EA's actually want to do something about malaria (although the Gates Foundation does much, much more in that regard than the Centre for Effective Altruism), more power to them. But as Becker notes from his visits to the Centre, things like malaria and malnutrition are not the primary focus of the centr…

EA people gave a total of $817,276,989 to malaria initiatives through GiveWell[1][2].

How much more do they need to give before you will change your mind about whether “EA's actually want to do something about malaria”?

[1] https://www.givewell.org/all-grants-fund

[2] https://airtable.com/appGuFtOIb1eodoBu/shr1EzngorAlEzziP/tbl...

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