> One way that thinking for yourself goes wrong is that you realize your society is wrong about something, don’t realize that you can’t outperform it, and wind up even wronger. many such cases
indeed
see: bitcoin
Why are there so many rationalist cults?
311–320 of 947 posts
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#312Purity Spirals + Cheap Talk = irrational rationalists
Eliezer Yudkowsky, shows little interest in running one. He has consistently been distant from and uninvolved in rationalist community-building efforts, from Benton House (the first rationalist group house) to today’s Lightcone Infrastructure (which hosts LessWrong, an online forum, and Lighthaven, a conference center). He surrounds himself with people who disagree with him, discourages social isolation.
Ummm, EY literally has a semi-permanent office in Lighthouse (at least until recently) and routinely blocks people on Twitter as a matter of course.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "longtermism" idea never made sense to me: So we should sacrifice the present to save the future. Alright. But then those future descendants would also have to sacrifice their present to save their future, etc. So by that logic, there could never be a time that was not full of misery. So then why do all of that stuff?
At some point in the future, there won't be more people who will live in the future than live in the present, at which point you are allowed to improve conditions today. Of course, by that point the human race is nearly finished, but hey. That said, if they really thought hard about this problem, they would have come to a different conclusion: https://theconversation.com/solve-suffering-by-blowing-up-th...
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Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#314> 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 .)
That's what was so strange with EA and rationalist movements. A highly theoretical model that AGI could wipe us all out vs the very real issue of global warming and pretty much all emphasis was on AGI.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel this way about some of the more extreme effective altruists. There is no room for uncertainty or recognition of the way that errors compound. - "We should focus our charitable endeavors on the problems that are most impactful, like eradicating preventable diseases in poor countries." Cool, I'm on board. - "I should do the job that makes the absolute most amount of money possible, like starting a crypto exchang…
The "longtermism" idea never made sense to me: So we should sacrifice the present to save the future. Alright. But then those future descendants would also have to sacrifice their present to save their future, etc. So by that logic, there could never be a time that was not full of misery. So then why do all of that stuff?
To me it is disguised way of saying the ends justify the means. Sure, we murder a few people today but think of the utopian paradise we are building for the future.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "longtermism" idea never made sense to me: So we should sacrifice the present to save the future. Alright. But then those future descendants would also have to sacrifice their present to save their future, etc. So by that logic, there could never be a time that was not full of misery. So then why do all of that stuff?
At some point in the future, there won't be more people who will live in the future than live in the present, at which point you are allowed to improve conditions today. Of course, by that point the human race is nearly finished, but hey. That said, if they really thought hard about this problem, they would have come to a different conclusion: https://theconversation.com/solve-suffering-by-blowing-up-th...
Some time after we've colonized half the observable universe. Got it.
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#317The whole game of Rationalism is that you should ignore gut intuitions and cultural norms that you can't justify with rational arguments. Well, it turns out that intuition and long-lived cultural norms often have rational justifications, but individuals may not know what they are, and norms/intuitions provide useful antibodies against narcissist would-be cult leaders. Can you find the "rational" justification not to…
From another piece about the Zizians [1]:
> The ability to dismiss an argument with a “that sounds nuts,” without needing recourse to a point-by-point rebuttal, is anathema to the rationalist project. But it’s a pretty important skill to have if you want to avoid joining cults.
[1] https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationali...
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#318I 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.
They mostly seem to lean that way because it gives them carte blanche to do as they please. It is just a modern version of 'god has led my hand'.
I agree with the religion comparison (the "rational" conclusions of rationalism tend towards millenarianism with a scifi flavour), but the people going furthest down that rabbit hole often aren't doing what they please: on the contrary they're spending disproportionate amounts of time worrying about armageddon and optimising for stuff other people simply don't care about, or in the case of the explicit cults being actively exploited. Seems like the typical in-too-deep rationalist gets seduced by the idea that others who scoff at their choices just aren't as smart and rational as them, as part of a package deal which treats everything from their scifi interests to their on-the-spectrum approach to analysing every interaction from first principles as great insights...
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#319One 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
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other." thunderous applause
Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?
#320[deleted]