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Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

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Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#41

Post by heavyset_go »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

The "rationalist community" is morbidly fascinating in their tendency to be so self-important while also having a deficit of self-awareness. The author of this piece can't understand why an internet-famous blogger/Substack writer that he follows doesn't have time to drop everything and debate the minutia of a blog post he wrong last year on a topic that has long since been settled. Note that Scott did listen to him,…

> Regardless, this seems like a silly diatribe after the medical community has already investigated the Ivermectin idea to great lengths and at massive scale and concluded that any effects it might have are too small to be worth pursuing. It's weird to see someone writing volumes about re-litigating last years' amateur scientist social media battles.

Many rationalists are driven by contrarianism and are the living embodiments of second-option bias[1] and confirmation bias, so I don't find it weird anymore that they're still relitigating such issues, I just expect things like this from that crowd, now.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Second-option_bias

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#42

Post by reducesuffering »

pasabagi wrote: post #6

I guess 'rationalism', as a name, calls a certain kind of person out of the ether: 1. They like rationality, and feel it's opposed by 'irrationality'. 2. They want to be part of some 'rational group'. 3. They're ignorant enough not to know the name is already taken. 4. They're ignorant enough not to know that the name means pretty much the opposite of what they believe. (A real rationalist, for instance, probably wou…

> 3. They're ignorant enough not to know the name is already taken.

Imagine the hubris to claim ignorance of another when oneself is ignorant that rationalists already know this and it was a mistaken momentum thing.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#43

Post by adamrezich »

mpalczewski wrote: post #37

The "Do Your Own Research" title is about where he lost me. Without reading, I'm pretty sure the author didn't perform a double blind study himself, nor is he suggesting that we all perform one. The rest reads like gibberish.

what value does this comment have? you dislike the title the author has chosen for his blog, and you are physically unable to read the text below it?

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#44

Post by dekhn »

topgun77 wrote: post #21
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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COVID has entered a post-rationalist phase of discussion. Nobody today is trying to convince another person using a rational unemotional analysis of the presented data. As we've seen more clearly in this crisis than ever before, people weaponize data and arguments and emotions to manipulate the beliefs of other people, and it takes an inordinate amount to debunk carefully constructed data lies.

I work on a set of principles that I don't particularly need to defend:

1) there is no global conspiracy with a large numbers of members working to create COVID and spread it around, or working to suppress legitimate medical approaches to treatment.

2) the people working in this field, by and large, are smart, but make mistakes, especially in the heat of the pandemic, but over time, as we collect more data across multiple lines of evidence, we'll come to a better understanding of what works well for COVID-infected patients. This took decades with HIV/AIDS and I expect it could take as long with COVID.

3) Armchair internet statisticians are not going to find some details in COVID studies demonstrating some sort of large-scale suppression of ivermectin results. Scientists are not going to run a study that gives unambiguous evidence that ivermectin is not a worthwhile treatment

4) there will continue to be some segment of the internet- a particular type of kook- who continue to insist that the error they found in subsection 9, clause c, is proof that ivermectin is actually a cheap and effective way to treat COVID. Just like we still have HIV/AIDS denialists.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#45

Post by larryfreeman »

Rationality is only a pathway to reliable information when it makes clear its assumptions (i.e. axioms or postulates) and sticks to logical proof.

Empiricism is only useful when it adequately adopts Occam's Razor to stay focused on the facts and has a clear understanding of the difference between correlation and causality.

Want to disprove a mainstream position? Find a commonly held false assumption or some fact that cannot be explained by the current approaches. Keep it simple and be open to having this point explained with standard methods.

Read T.S. Kuhn if necessary to understand what it typically takes to change a scientific paradigm.

Everything else is just noise with the purpose of making a given community feel enlightened or smarter than the other "fools".

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#46

Post by the_only_law »

astrange wrote: post #28
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

The "rationalist community" is morbidly fascinating in their tendency to be so self-important while also having a deficit of self-awareness. The author of this piece can't understand why an internet-famous blogger/Substack writer that he follows doesn't have time to drop everything and debate the minutia of a blog post he wrong last year on a topic that has long since been settled. Note that Scott did listen to him,…

There was a lesswrong thread warning people about Leverage (a 100% literal Bay Area Scientology-like therapy cult, as opposed to the general LW community which is just a self-organized kind-of-a-sex-cult). I thought it was notable because it's written as if actually having an emotion or trying to look like it believed anything would be a deadly sin. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kz9zMgWB5C27Pmdkh/common-kno...

> I thought it was notable because it's written as if actually having an emotion or trying to look like it believed anything would be a deadly sin.

We’re all sinners.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#47

Post by pasabagi »

astrange wrote: post #35
pasabagi wrote: post #6

I guess 'rationalism', as a name, calls a certain kind of person out of the ether: 1. They like rationality, and feel it's opposed by 'irrationality'. 2. They want to be part of some 'rational group'. 3. They're ignorant enough not to know the name is already taken. 4. They're ignorant enough not to know that the name means pretty much the opposite of what they believe. (A real rationalist, for instance, probably wou…

I think the use of "rationalism" follows modern philosophy trends and isn't a reinvention. They are "actually" empiricists as opposed to rationalists, yes, but most of those rationalist ideas[0] moved to continental philosophy and are now part of the modern rationalists' enemies, humanities people who read French theory. "Rationalism" descends from analytic philosophy/logical positivism/scientific method types, so th…

Wait, I'm getting confused between the two senses of 'rationalism' here. My guess is that contemporary 'rationalism' doesn't actually descend from any explicit philosophical tradition, just because if you read an introductory philosophy book, you'd not join a group with that name combined with their ethos.

I'm not that well versed in analytic philosophy - I think it's come a long way since the early days, so now straddles both sides of the rationalist/empiricist divide. At this point, I think it's basically a writing style. You get a lot of analytic philosophers with some pretty wild assertions about reality.

On the other side, somebody like Deleuze is basically a hardcore empiricist, but he's as 'continental' as they come.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#48

Post by dekhn »

DonHopkins wrote: post #9
toolz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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You're wrong; countries use medicine. There are national formularies which determine by and large what medicines are allowed to be used. This is not hard and fast, doctors are given wide latitude to prescribe medicine for off-label usage, but I think Sinovac and Sputnik V are both examples where "countries" use a medicine. There are many other examples outside of COVID.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#49

Post by DonHopkins »

toolz wrote: post #32
DonHopkins wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

What point are you trying to make? That I'm misrepresenting the usage of Ivermectin by cherry picking facts? Wouldn't you be inclined to show I'm wrong then instead of just imply I'm misleading people? Here you can find a long list of countries that use it nationwide as recommended at the national level (which is why I used countries to begin with) https://ivmstatus.com/

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