Guess I'm a rationalist now • Hacker News Board

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#931

Post by ConspiracyFact » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 12:46 AM UTC

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #311

Certhas wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a valid point. But to some degree both can be true. I often felt when reading some of these type of texts: Wait a second, there is a wealth of thinking on these topics out there; You are not at all situating all your elaborate thinking in a broader context. And there absolutely is willingness to be challenged, and (maybe less so) a willingness to be wrong. But there also is an arrogance that "we are t…

That's a fair point. Speaking only for myself, I think I fail to understand why it's important to situate philosophical discussions in the context of all the previous philosophers who have expressed related ideas, rather than simply discussing the ideas in isolation. I remember as a child coming to the same "if reality is a deception, at least I must exist to be deceived" conclusion that Descartes did, well before I…

There’s definitely a tension between having a low tolerance for crankery and being open to fresh perspectives. If I’m being charitable to the critics of Rationalism (big “r”), I suppose that they have encountered arguments from Rationalists that struck them as wrong specifically in a way that would have been avoided if the person making the argument had read any of the relevant literature.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#932

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 12:47 AM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #421

ajkjk wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What creeps me out is that I have no idea of their theory of power: How will they achieve their aims? Maybe they want to do it in a way I’d consider just: By exercising their rights as individuals in their personal domains and effectively airing their arguments in the public sphere to win elections. But my intuition is they think democracy and personal rights of the non-elect are part of the problem to rationalize ar…

There's a reason technofeudalists like Yarvin are popular in rationalist adjacent circles.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#933

Post by ConspiracyFact » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 12:50 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #347

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point. Speaking only for myself, I think I fail to understand why it's important to situate philosophical discussions in the context of all the previous philosophers who have expressed related ideas, rather than simply discussing the ideas in isolation. I remember as a child coming to the same "if reality is a deception, at least I must exist to be deceived" conclusion that Descartes did, well before I…

It may be easier to imagine someone trying to derive mathematics all by themselves, since it's less abstract. It's not that they won't come up with anything, it's that everything that even a genius can come up with in their lifetime will be something that the whole of humanity has long since come up with, chewed over, simplified, had a rebellion against, had a counter-rebellion against the rebellion, and ultimately p…

Just teasing here, but I presume you’re a social conservative…? ;)

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#934

Post by 77pt77 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 12:54 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 people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ?

The Zizians certainly were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#935

Post by voidhorse » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:05 AM UTC

staunton wrote: post #778

voidhorse wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a nice response but I would say: don't be so lazy. Struggle through the hard stuff. I say this as someone who had the opposite experience: I had a decent humanities education, but an abysmal mathematics education, and now I am tackling abstract mathematics myself. It's hard. I need to read sections of works multiple times. I need to sit down and try to work out the material for myself on paper. Any impressio…

When you've read that passage in the math book twenty times, you eventually come to the conclusion that you understood it (even if in some rare cases you still didn't). When "struggling through" a philosophy book, that doesn't happen in my experience. In fact, if you look up what others thought that passage means, you'll find no agreement among a bunch of people who "specialize" in authors who themselves "specialized…

I agree with the phenomenon you are talking about, but for mathematics, beyond calculation, the situation isn't really different (and no wonder since you'll quickly end up in the philosophy of mathematics).

You can take an entire mathematical theory on faith and learn to perform rote calculations in accordance with the structure of that theory. This might be of some comfort, since, accepting this, you can perform a procedure and see whether or not you got the correct result (but even this is a generous assumption in some sense). When you actually try to understand a theory and go beyond that to foundations, things become less certain. At some point you will accept things, but, unless you have enough time to work out every proof and then prove to yourself that the very idea of a proof calculus is sound, you will be taking something on faith.

I think if people struggle with doing the same thing with literature/philosophy, it's probably just because of a discomfort with ambiguity. In those realms, there is no operational calculus you can turn to to verify that, at least if you accept certain things on faith, other things must work out...expect there is! Logic lords over both domains. I think we just do a horrible job at teaching people how to approach literature logically. Yes, the subtle art of interpretation is always at play, but that's true of mathematics too and it is true of every representational/semiotic effort undertaken by human beings.

As for use, social wit and the ability to see things in new lights (devise new explanatory hypotheses) are both immediate applications of philosophy and literature, just like mathematics has its immediate operational applications in physics et al.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#936

Post by wat10000 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:08 AM UTC

ConspiracyFact wrote: post #929

wat10000 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the argument that we should try to do things that will benefit our theoretical and theoretically multitudinous descendants? Or is it that just taking action to make their existence more likely is a moral good? Because the latter is just brain dead.

Good question. I think it has to be the latter, given the immense time involved. You can make a connection between driving progress in certain areas today and increasing the odds that humanity eventually colonizes the stars. I don’t think you can make any connection with how well off those far-future humans will be.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#937

Post by DrNosferatu » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:20 AM UTC

Viliam1234 wrote: post #925

DrNosferatu wrote: post #825

I cannot falsify the thesis that so-called "Rationalism" and "Effective Altruism" is - in practice - just folklore so that top-percenters don't pay taxes and feel good about themselves. As the least worse solution to maximize Social Utility has long been invented: Democracy and political action.

I have some doubts about the rationality of trying to avoid paying taxes by sending half of their salary to anti-malaria charities, but maybe those people just suck at math which is why they get paid so much. Or maybe you are wrong.

Instead of waving the appeal to authority fallacy, try to do some reading up:

https://ips-dc.org/the-true-cost-of-billionaire-philanthropy...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#938

Post by adastra22 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:20 AM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #874

adastra22 wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

What do you mean? Religion seems like a total nonsequitur here. If anything I would argue the opposite: you would need religion or something like it for moral statements to have any meaning without the existence of sentient beings.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#939

Post by pjscott » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

Bengalilol wrote: post #426

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 very tense about defining oneself as rationalist. For many aspects, I find it too first degree to be of any interest. At all. And I have this narrative ringing in my head as soon as the word pops. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897871 You can search HN with « zizians » for more info and depth.

I remember, from the earliest days, the rationalist movement talking about how cults prey on people and how to recognize it and walk the other way. The Ziz cult checks so many of the boxes that they were warning against back then, years ago—

—And years later, once the Ziz cult started preying on vulnerable people, the response from the mainstream rationalist movement was… to post warnings about avoiding this messed-up cult, to explain exactly how it was manipulating its victims, and how the best thing to do (in the absence of legal remedy) was to stay the hell away from that diseased social scene.

I’m not sure how they could have done better. Any sufficiently large movement attracts crazy people. No matter how well or poorly they may deal with that fact, anybody can do guilt-by-association forever after.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#940

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

Viliam1234 wrote: post #924

tptacek wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes.

[Citation needed]

Tricky to do without giving you an archive link of a post with his last name on it, which I'm disinclined to do. Here, in this community, with this community's norms, I'm happy to oblige him. But here is not the real world.