It's amphetamine. All of these people are constantly tweaking. They're annoying people to begin with, but they're all constantly yakked up and won't stop babbling. It's really obvious, I don't know why it isn't highlighted more in all these post Ziz articles.
Why are there so many rationalist cults?
231–240 of 947 posts
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#232One of a few issues I have with groups like these, is that they often confidently and aggressively spew a set of beliefs that on their face logically follow from one another, until you realize they are built on a set of axioms that are either entirely untested or outright nonsense. This is common everywhere, but I feel especially pronounced in communities like this. It also involves quite a bit of navel gazing that m…
There should be an extremist cult of people who are certain only that uncertainty is the only certain thing
My favourite bumper sticker, "Militant Agnostic. I don't know, and neither do you."
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#233One of a few issues I have with groups like these, is that they often confidently and aggressively spew a set of beliefs that on their face logically follow from one another, until you realize they are built on a set of axioms that are either entirely untested or outright nonsense. This is common everywhere, but I feel especially pronounced in communities like this. It also involves quite a bit of navel gazing that m…
There should be an extremist cult of people who are certain only that uncertainty is the only certain thing
A Wonderful Phrase by Gandhi
I do dimly perceive
that while everything around me is ever-changing,
ever-dying there is,
underlying all that change,
a living power
that is changeless,
that holds all together,
that creates,
dissolves,
and recreatesRe: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#234One of a few issues I have with groups like these, is that they often confidently and aggressively spew a set of beliefs that on their face logically follow from one another, until you realize they are built on a set of axioms that are either entirely untested or outright nonsense. This is common everywhere, but I feel especially pronounced in communities like this. It also involves quite a bit of navel gazing that m…
I don’t think it’s just (or even particularly) bad axioms, I think it’s that people tend to build up “logical” conclusions where they think each step is a watertight necessity that follows inevitably from its antecedents, but actually each step is a little bit leaky, leading to runaway growth in false confidence. Not that non-rationalists are any better at reasoning, but non-rationalists do at least benefit from some…
> I don’t think it’s just (or even particularly) bad axioms, I think it’s that people tend to build up “logical” conclusions where they think each step is a watertight necessity that follows inevitably from its antecedents, but actually each step is a little bit leaky, leading to runaway growth in false confidence.
I really like your way of putting it. It’s a fundamental fallacy to assume certainty when trying to predict the future. Because, as you say, uncertainty compounds over time, all prediction models are chaotic. It’s usually associated with some form of Dunning-Kruger, where people know just enough to have ideas but not enough to understand where they might fail (thus vastly underestimating uncertainty at each step), or just lacking imagination.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#235> Many of them also expect that, without heroic effort, AGI development will lead to human extinction.
Odd to me. Not biological warfare? Global warming? All-out nuclear war?
I guess The Terminator was a formative experience for them. (For me perhaps it was The Andromeda Strain.)
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#236One of a few issues I have with groups like these, is that they often confidently and aggressively spew a set of beliefs that on their face logically follow from one another, until you realize they are built on a set of axioms that are either entirely untested or outright nonsense. This is common everywhere, but I feel especially pronounced in communities like this. It also involves quite a bit of navel gazing that m…
You're describing the impressions I had of MENSA back in the 70's.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#237I keep thinking about the first Avengers movie, when Loki is standing above everyone going "See, is this not your natural state?". There's some perverse security in not getting a choice, and these rationalist frameworks, based in logic, can lead in all kinds of crazy arbitrary directions - powered by nothing more than a refusal to suffer any kind of ambiguity.
Humans are not chickens, but we sure do seem to love having a pecking order.
I think it is more simple in that we love tribalism. A long time ago being part of a tribe had such huge benefits over going it alone that it was always worth any tradeoffs. We have a much better ability to go it alone now but we still love to belong to a group. Too often we pick a group based on a single shared belief and don't recognize all the baggage that comes along. Life is also too complicated today. It is difficult for someone to be knowledgeable in one topic let alone the 1000s that make up our society.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#238One of a few issues I have with groups like these, is that they often confidently and aggressively spew a set of beliefs that on their face logically follow from one another, until you realize they are built on a set of axioms that are either entirely untested or outright nonsense. This is common everywhere, but I feel especially pronounced in communities like this. It also involves quite a bit of navel gazing that m…
I find Yudowsky-style rationalists morbidly fascinating in the same way as Scientologists and other cults. Probably because they seem to genuinely believe they're living in a sci-fi story. I read a lot of their stuff, probably too much, even though I find it mostly ridiculous. The biggest nonsense axiom I see in the AI-cult rationalist world is recursive self-improvement. It's the classic reason superintelligence tak…
An interesting point you make there — one would assume that if recursive self-improvement were a thing, Nature would have already lead humans into that "hall of mirrors".
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s always been like this, have you read the Bible? Or the Koran? It’s insane. Ours is just our flavor of crazy. Every generation has some. When you dig at it, there’s always a religion.
Without speaking for religions I'm not familiar with, I grew up Catholic, and one of the most important Catholic beliefs is that during Mass, the bread (i.e. "communion" wafers) and wine quite literally transform into the body and blood of Jesus, and that eating and drinking it is a necessary ritual to get into heaven[1], which was a source of controversy even back as far as the Protestant Reformation, with some sect…
I've recently started attending an Episcopal church. We have some people who lean heavy on transubstantiation, but our priest says, "look, something holy happens during communion, exactly what, we don't know."
See also: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/real-presence/?
"Belief in the real presence does not imply a claim to know how Christ is present in the eucharistic elements. Belief in the real presence does not imply belief that the consecrated eucharistic elements cease to be bread and wine."
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#240I find it ironic that the question is asked unempirically. Where is the data stating there are many more than before? Start there, then go down the rabbit hole. Otherwise, you're concluding on something that may not be true, and trying to rationalize the answer, just as a cultist does.