Guess I'm a rationalist now • Hacker News Board

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#871

Post by Viliam1234 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 5:57 PM 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…

I am surprised that the highest upvoted comment (but also many other comments here) describes almost the opposite of the rationality community as I know it.

Now of course I don't claim to know every rationalist all over the planet, so maybe you met a different kind than I did. Or maybe this is just an internet stereotype, based on presumed similarity to other groups (such as Mensa) that most people are more familiar with.

For starters, it seems inevitable in discussions like this, that someone will mention "rationalism vs empiricism" as the One True Meaning of the word "rationalist". Because, apparently, each word has exactly one meaning over the entire history... and people at Wikipedia are foolish for having created a disambiguation page for this word. You don't have to worry; the idea of reasoning about things from the first principles is completely unrelated to the rationality community.

In my experience, rationality community was the first place where I met intelligent people willing to admit that they didn't know something, or even to put a probability estimate on their beliefs. That's something I don't see often even on HN, which is one of the smartest places on internet. Somewhere else in this thread, people are mocking Scott Alexander for predicting something with probability 30%, because that thing didn't happen. Well, yes, that's the point; probability 30% literally means that the thing is more likely to not happen than to happen. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, though. If the weather forecast predicts 30% probability of rain, I will take an umbrella, while still believing that no rain is more likely than rain. Is that foolish?

You complain about lack of humility and lack of acknowledgment that someone doesn't fully understand something. Well, how would you rate your own comment, from this perspective? How would Hacker News audience rate it? Oh, I don't have to guess, because it is already the highest rated comment in this thread. What does that prove? Should I now forever remember you as "the guy who was wrong" and HN as "the community that upvoted the guy who was wrong"? Or should I shrug and say "people make mistakes all the time... in best case, they are able to admit the mistake and learn"? Which is a healthier approach? Would I or my community get similar courtesy in a similar situation?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#872

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

throwaway314155 wrote: post #685

turtletontine wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#873

Post by Viliam1234 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #751

astrange wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're members of a religion which says that if you do math in your head the right way you'll be correct about everything, and so they think they're correct about everything. They also secondarily believe everyone has an IQ which is their DBZ power level; they believe anything they see that has math in it, and IQ is math, so they believe anything they see about IQ. So if you avoid trying to find out your own IQ you…

According to rationalists, humans don't work together, so you can't add up their individual intelligence to get more intelligence. Meanwhile building a single giant super AI is technologically feasible, so they weigh the intelligence of a single person vs all AIs operating as a collective hivemind.

> According to rationalists, humans don't work together, so you can't add up their individual intelligence to get more intelligence.

An actual argument would be that intelligence doesn't work like that. Two people with IQ 100 cooperating together does not produce an IQ 200 solution.

There is the "wisdom of crowds". If a random member of a group is more than 50% likely to be correct, the average of the group is more likely to be correct than its members individually. But that has a few assumptions, for example that each member tries to figure out things independently (as opposed to everyone waiting for the highest-status member to express their opinion, and then agreeing with it -- in that case the entire group is only as smart as the highest-status member).

But you cannot leverage this to simply invite 1000 random people in your group and ask them to invent a Theory of Everything; because the assumption that each member is more than 50% likely to be correct does not apply in this case. So that is one of the limits of people working together.

(And this already conveniently ignores many other problems found in real life, such as conflict of interests, etc.)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#874

Post by bayarearefugee » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #722

bayarearefugee wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"net positive" requires a human being existing to judge.

> "net positive" requires a human being existing to judge.

This is effectively a religious belief you are espousing.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#875

Post by bayarearefugee » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #607

bayarearefugee wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A net positive for whom?

Everything. of which humanity is a miniscule part.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#876

Post by Viliam1234 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #726

ineptech wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the seductive-but-wrong part of EA? As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the opposition to it boils down to "Maybe you shouldn't donate money to pet shelters when people are dying of preventable diseases" vs "But donating money to pet shelters feels better!"

That hasn't defined EA for at least 10 years or so. EA started with "you should donate to NGOs distributing mosquito nets instead of the local pet shelter". It then moved into "you should work a soulless investment banking job so you can give more". More recently it was "you should excise all expensive fun things from your life, and give 100% of your disposable income to a weird poly sex cult and/or their fraudulent…

> That hasn't defined EA for at least 10 years or so.

Meanwhile, on an actual EA website: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

* Medicine to prevent malaria

* Nets to prevent malaria

* Supplements to prevent vitamin A deficiency

* Cash incentives for routine childhood vaccines

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#877

Post by Viliam1234 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:21 PM UTC

DowsingSpoon wrote: post #660

ineptech wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the seductive-but-wrong part of EA? As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the opposition to it boils down to "Maybe you shouldn't donate money to pet shelters when people are dying of preventable diseases" vs "But donating money to pet shelters feels better!"

It might be the parts that lead a person to commit large scale fraud with the idea that the good they can do with the stolen money outweighs all the negatives. Or, at least, that’s the popular idea of what happened to Sam Bankman-Fried. I have no idea what was actually going through that man’s mind. In any case, EA smells strongly of “the ends justify the means” which most popular moral philosophies reject with stron…

> there are no “ends.” The path itself is the goal.

How does this apply to actual charity? "Curing malaria is not the goal. Our experiences during voluntourism are the true goal."

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#878

Post by Viliam1234 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #849

bena wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But they treat those issues as if they'll work out in the wash. there's something pathologically, virally sick about wealth accumulation's primary function being the further accumulation of wealth. for a movement rooted in "rationalism," EA seems pretty irrationally focused on excusing antisocial behavior.

> wealth accumulation's primary function being the further accumulation of wealth

Then we are lucky that EA promotes giving more to charity as the primary function of accumulation of wealth.

> EA seems pretty irrationally focused on excusing antisocial behavior.

Is a guy getting a well-paid job at Microsoft and donating half of his salary to African charities really your best example of antisocial behavior?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#879

Post by Viliam1234 » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #755

bena wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's essentially a grift. An excuse to do nothing while looking like you care and reaping rewards. If they wanted to help, they should be focused on the now. Global poverty, climate change, despotic world leaders. They should be aligning themselves against such things. But instead what we see is essentially not that. Effective altruism is a lot like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a bit of a misnom…

They have aligned themselves in favor of global poverty, climate change and despotic world leaders. A lot of them argue that poor countries essentially don't matter. Climate change is not an extinction event and there should an authoritarian world government to prevent nuclear conflict to minimize the risk of nuclear extinction. >In his dissertation On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future (2013), sup…

Meanwhile, on an actual EA website: https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#880

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, Jun 20, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #355

cassepipe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the whole tree of responses under this comment and I could only convince myself that when people have no arguments they try to make you look bad. Most of criticisms are just "But they think they are better than us !" and the rest is "But sometimes they are wrong !" I don't know about the community and couldn't care less but their writings have brought me some almost life saving fresh air in how to think about…

Here's a theory of what's happening, both with you here in this comment section and with the rationalists in general. Humans are generally better at perceiving threats than they are at putting those threats into words. When something seems "dangerous" abstractly, they will come up with words for why---but those words don't necessarily reflect the actual threat, because the threat might be hard to describe. Neverthele…

This is a fantastic comment, but it also underscores the thing I really dislike about most internet conversations about philosophy: a lack of reading prior art. Utilitarian morality certainly isn't a new concept though the rationalists today are some of its strongest standard bearers. But around the time when utilitarianism was starting to take hold, rigorous philosophical thinking had exactly the debates that come up here.

Part of the reason I enjoy rationalist discourse more is because, even if they are unabashedly utilitarian, they try to rigorously derive philosophy. Most internet discourse on philosophy is, as you say, just vaguely derived around gut feelings. But philosophy can and has been thought of rigorously. Virtue ethics and continental morality are both schools of thought that reject utilitarian ethics but are much more meaty than the sort of internet "no but my neighbors" intuition that you see in full force, and the weird insistence that these internet commenters continue to use their vague moral intuition without being rigorous about their own thoughts.