My falling-out with the rationalist community • Hacker News Board

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#111

Post by stackghost » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 3:27 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #77

bigbadfeline wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't change the fact that P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(B). It didn't take long before a strawman got pulled out of nowhere. That's so typical, if one disagrees with the wild conjectures of the rationalists, which they call "axioms", they blame you for rejecting the Pythagorean Theorem or some such. Dishonesty is the defining feature of that "movement"

> It didn't take long before a strawman got pulled out of nowhere. It's not a strawman. It's a central example of what I had in mind when I used the word "axiom". > if one disagrees with the wild conjectures of the rationalists, which they call "axioms" They don't refer to wild conjectures as axioms. > they blame you for rejecting the Pythagorean Theorem or some such. There is no "blame" going on here. Someone said I…

Go back and reread yourself in this thread.

1. Someone says they don't like rationalism

2. You say there's no such thing

3. Someone else suggests your defense of rationalism is materially similar to how scientologists defend their cult

4. You say "nuh-uh because Bayes' theorem is true"???

That's such a weird non-sequitur. Nothing before had anything to do with Bayes. That is just a straw man you constructed to argue with.

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#112

Post by bifrost » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 3:33 AM UTC

Oh man I love this:

"Part of the reason why I hesitated for so long is that the rationalist movement has brilliant marketing: if you speak against the ideology, it sounds like you’re siding with irrationality."

So many "things" where its "we're the good guys club and if you're not in our club you're the bad guy".

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#113

Post by oliculipolicula » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 4:58 AM UTC

pilgrim0 wrote: post #104

jdw64 wrote: post #21

Every community has its biases, and everywhere there's a tendency for complex factors to combine and simplify into attractive patterns. In the end, even I can't escape bias. And when I realize how ignorant I am, I feel like I have no choice but to live face to face with how pathetic I am. Even if I'm aware of my bounded rationality and ignorance, there are still moments when I fail to recognize even that ignorance. I…

The path of virtue requires we recognize and appreciate the grace that lies in being humbled by our own stupidity.

And this is why the difficulty of convincing yourself of who downvoted you was a terrible idea of tptacek's ;)

I'll admit I won't be entirely able to stick to the virtue of only wanting to find out which of downvoters were justified whenever the situation pops up

Nowadays I'll only say that idea was bad BC it's hard (emotionally, at least) to reverse once implemented

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#114

Post by g-b-r » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:15 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #36

g-b-r wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us. That, along with constantly calling yourself rational and being well-intentioned, easily leads to cultish beliefs to be pursued despite how wacky they seem at their face, because it was your superior brains that led you to them. If we add the often good (or enormous) financial resources, it makes for a seriously d…

> It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us. There is not any such conviction. This is just your interpretation of a domain name, which is not intended that way. > That, along with constantly calling yourself rational This is explicitly not what you are supposed to do, and the point is explicitly not to create an identity around it.

Ok, less wrong every day; we have some rationalists here, whether you think yourself as rational or not let's get an idea of how rational you actually are: do you agree with the views of @tenobrus mentioned below (https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850), specifically that humanity should be placed under a dictatorship?

I know he's EA, but let's not pretend that EA is so distinct from the rationalist community.

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#115

Post by nradov » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:33 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #77

bigbadfeline wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't change the fact that P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(B). It didn't take long before a strawman got pulled out of nowhere. That's so typical, if one disagrees with the wild conjectures of the rationalists, which they call "axioms", they blame you for rejecting the Pythagorean Theorem or some such. Dishonesty is the defining feature of that "movement"

> It didn't take long before a strawman got pulled out of nowhere. It's not a strawman. It's a central example of what I had in mind when I used the word "axiom". > if one disagrees with the wild conjectures of the rationalists, which they call "axioms" They don't refer to wild conjectures as axioms. > they blame you for rejecting the Pythagorean Theorem or some such. There is no "blame" going on here. Someone said I…

You're really missing the point. Only moronic cult members believe that the real world can be reduced to conditional probabilities, or that the probabilities of anything important can be calculated to a useful level of precision.

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#116

Post by Tomte » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

bifrost wrote: post #112

Oh man I love this: "Part of the reason why I hesitated for so long is that the rationalist movement has brilliant marketing: if you speak against the ideology, it sounds like you’re siding with irrationality." So many "things" where its "we're the good guys club and if you're not in our club you're the bad guy".

Like "Non-violent communication"

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#117

Post by perching_aix » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:55 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #93

perching_aix wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We probably understand this word very differently, because as far as I'm concerned, rationality (rational behavior) is essentially an exercise in behaving optimally, one that is thus strictly relative to some particular context. It is not just "facts and logic", and it is most certainly not universal, since universal optimality doesn't exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem > The entire point of t…

> We probably understand this word very differently, because as far as I'm concerned, rationality (rational behavior) is essentially an exercise in behaving optimally, one that is thus strictly relative to some particular context. No, that's completely consistent with my understanding. Adopting identity labels doesn't follow from that, however.

The parent comment has been talking about exactly people who have been turning this into an identity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community

If this doesn't apply to you, great, but then we're talking past each other.

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#118

Post by henryaj » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 10:19 AM UTC

Damore wasn't a rationalist but his memo was at least somewhat reasonable, and didn't merit him being cancelled.

> From this, you could argue it’s OK to work for an unethical company if it maximizes your earning potential — and thus, saves more lives through the donations you make. And finally, the harms caused today could be offset by the benefits to generations yet unborn

Do people do this in practice? 80K for example (EA not rat, but EA is the policy arm of rationalism after all) expressly warn against this. Feels like a strawman.

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#119

Post by henryaj » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 10:25 AM UTC

anon-3988 wrote: post #81

> Another source of bias is that rationalists are necessarily selective in the arguments they want to have. In everyday life, they rely on intuition and anecdotes the same as anyone else; but if they want to debate your life choices, they will do so forcibly and under the guise of seeking scientific truth. The behavior is pervasive enough to have its own name: sealioning. So they are not rationalist then? I would hav…

> This is my problem with the classical Consequentialism or Utilitarianism, they always discount emotions. I'm sorry, does emotion exists or not? Is it real? Then it should be brought into discussion

This is not true of rationalists! "Straw Vulcan" as a failure mode was talked about fifteen years ago - https://www.lesswrong.com/w/straw-vulcan

Re: My falling-out with the rationalist community

#120

Post by jhanschoo » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 10:48 AM UTC

Admittedly I'm quite removed from the Bay Area rationalists, but I get the perception that unlike with many other ideological communities, you could always lay out your countervailing opinion with evidence. You could disagree on many things and still be in conversation with the community. Stuff including early stuff like the Sequences are subject to criticism and reevaluation. If my perception is correct, then imo a community that is (in parts) in critical conversation with itself seems more grounded to me than the usual strongly ideological and religious communities.