Why are there so many rationalist cults? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#321

Post by freedomben » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

derektank wrote: post #274

inasio wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saw once a discussion that people should not have kids as it's by far the highest increase in your carbon footprint in your lifetime (>10x than going vegan, etc) be driven all the way to advocating genocide as a way of carbon footprint minimization

Setting aside the reductio ad absurdum of genocide, this is an unfortunately common viewpoint. People really need to take into account the chances their child might wind up working on science or technology which reduces global CO2 emissions or even captures CO2. This reasoning can be applied to all sorts of naive "more people bad" arguments. I can't imagine where the world would be if Norman Borlaug's parents had dec…

It also entirely subjugates the economic realities that we (at least currently) live in to the future health of the planet. I care a great deal about the Earth and our environment, but the more I've learned about stuff the more I've realized that anyone advocating for focusing on one without considering the impact on the other is primarily following a religion

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#322

Post by twic » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

o11c wrote: post #206

noqc wrote: post #15

Perhaps I will get downvoted to death again for saying so, but the obvious answer is because the name "rationalist" is structurally indistinguishable from the name "scientology" or "the illuminati". You attract people who are desperate for an authority to appeal to, but for whatever reason are no longer affiliated with the church of their youth. Even a rationalist movement which held nothing as dogma would attract pe…

> for whatever reason are no longer affiliated with the church of their youth. This is the Internet, you're allowed to say "they are obsessed with unlimited drugs and weird sex things, far beyond what even the generally liberal society tolerates". I'm increasingly convinced that every other part of "Rationalism" is just distraction or justification for those; certainly there's a conscious decision to minimize talking…

I strongly suspect there is heterogeneity here. An outer party of "genuine" rationalists who believe that learning to be a spreadsheet or whatever is going to let them save humanity, and an inner party who use the community to conceal some absolute shenanigans.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#323

Post by emseetech » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #297

jl6 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> non-rationalists do at least benefit from some intellectual humility The Islamists who took out the World Trade Center don’t strike me as particularly intellectually humble. If you reject reason, you are only left with force.

Are you so sure the 9/11 hijackers rejected reason?

Why Are So Many Terrorists Engineers?

https://archive.is/XA4zb

Self-described rationalists can and often do rationalize acts and beliefs that seem baldly irrational to others.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#324

Post by freedomben » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #257

bobson381 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be an extremist cult of people who are certain only that uncertainty is the only certain thing

Socrates was fairly close to that.

My thought as well! I can't remember names at the moment, but there were some cults that spun off from Socrates. Unfortunately they also adopted his practice of never writing anything down, so we don't know a whole lot about them

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#325

Post by uoaei » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:26 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #85

One 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…

This is why it's important to emphasize that rationality is not a good goal to have. Rationality is nothing more than applied logic, which takes axioms as given and deduces conclusions from there.

Reasoning is the appropriate target because it is a self-critical, self-correcting method that continually re-evaluates axioms and methods to express intentions.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#326

Post by amanaplanacanal » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:26 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #85

One 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…

It's very tempting to try to reason things through from first principles. I do it myself, a lot. It's one of the draws of libertarianism, which I've been drawn to for a long time.

But the world is way more complex than the models we used to derive those "first principles".

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#327

Post by notahacker » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

mlinhares wrote: post #79

reactordev wrote: post #46

Earlier 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.

Mage is a game for teenagers, it doesn't try to be anything else other than a game where you roll dice do to stuff.

tbf Helter Skelter was a song about a fairground ride that didn't really pretend to be much more than an excuse for Paul McCartney to write something loud, but that didn't stop a sufficiently manipulative individual turning it into a reason why the Family should murder people. And he didn't even need the internet to help him find followers.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#328

Post by Liftyee » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:30 PM UTC

Finally, something that properly articulates my unease when encountering so-called "rationalists" (especially the ones that talk about being "agentic", etc.). For some reason, even though I like logical reasoning, they always rubbed me the wrong way - probably just a clash between their behavior and my personal values (mainly humility).

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#329

Post by vlowther » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:31 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #290

MajimasEyepatch wrote: post #271

Earlier 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?

"I came up with a step-by-step plan to achieve World Peace, and now I am on a government watchlist!"

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#330

Post by zaphar » Tue, Aug 12, 2025, 7:32 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #85

One 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…

The distinction between them and religion is that religion is free to say that those axioms are a matter of faith and treat them as such. Rationalists are not as free to do so.