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Why are there so many rationalist cults?

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Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#571

Post by 12_throw_away »

bglazer wrote: post #174
pingou wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a horse in the battle but could you provide a few examples where he was wrong?

Here's one: Yudkowsky has been confidently asserting (for years) that AI will extinct humanity because it will learn how to make nanomachines using "strong" covalent bonds rather than the "weak" van der Waals forces used by biological systems like proteins. I'm certain that knowledgeable biologists/physicists have tried to explain to him why this belief is basically nonsense, but he just keeps repeating it. Heck ther…

Dear god. The linked article is a good takedown of this "idea," but I would like to pile on: biological systems are in fact extremely good at covalent chemistry, usually via extraordinarily powerful nanomachines called "enzymes". No, they are (usually) not building totally rigid condensed matter structures, but .. why would they? Why would that be better?

I'm reminded of a silly social science article I read, quite a long time ago. It suggested that physicists only like to study condensed matter crystals because physics is a male-dominated field, and crystals are hard rocks, and, um ... men like to think about their rock-hard penises, I guess. Now, this hypothesis obviously does not survive cursory inspection - if we're gendering natural phenomena studied by physicists, are waves male? Are fluid dynamics male?

However, Mr. Yudowsky's weird hangups here around rigidity and hardness have me adjusting my priors.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#572

Post by wussboy »

trawy081225 wrote: post #470
gen220 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly recommend this profile in the NYer on Curtis Yarvin (who also uses "rationalism" to justify their beliefs) [0]. The section towards the end that reports on his meeting one of his supposed ideological heroes for an extended period of time is particularly illuminating. I feel like the internet has led to an explosion of these such groups because it abstracts the "ideas" away from the "people". I suspect if mos…

> I feel like the internet has led to an explosion of these such groups because it abstracts the "ideas" away from the "people". I suspect if most people were in a room or spent an extended amount of time around any of these self-professed, hyper-online rationalists, they would immediately disregard any theories they were able to cook up, no matter how clever or persuasively-argued they might be in their written down…

Hard disagree. People use rationality to support the beliefs they already have, not to change those beliefs. The internet allows everyone to find something that supports anything.

I do it. You do it. I think a fascinating litmus test is asking yourself this question: “When did I last change my mind about something significant?” For most people the answer is “never”. If we lived in the world you described, most people’s answers would be “relatively recently”.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#573

Post by 1attice »

throw4847285 wrote: post #561
1attice wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In philosophy grad school, we described this as 'being reasonable' as opposed to 'being rational'. That said, big-R Rationalism (the Lesswrong/Yudkowsky/Ziz social phenomenon) has very little in common with what we've standardly called 'rationalism'; trained philosophers tend to wince a little bit when we come into contact with these groups (who are nevertheless chockablock with fascinating personalities and compelli…

I actually think that the fact that rationalists use the term "steel manning" betrays a lack of charity. If the only thing you owe your interlocutor is to use your "prodigious intellect" to restate their own argument in the way that sounds the most convincing to you, maybe you are in fact a terrible listener.

Just so. I hate this term, and for essentially this reason, but it has undeniable currency right now; I was writing to be understood.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#574

Post by lupusreal »

taberiand wrote: post #502
psunavy03 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can believe climate change is a serious problem without believing it is necessarily an extinction-level event. It is entirely possible that in the worst case, the human race will just continue into a world which sucks more than it necessarily has to, with less quality of life and maybe lifespan.

I never said I held the belief, just that it's reasonable

A set of beliefs which causes somebody to waste their life in misery, because they think doom is imminent and everything is therefore pointless, is never a reasonable set of beliefs to hold. Whatever the weight of the empirical evidence behind the belief, it would be plainly unreasonable to accept that belief if accepting it condemns you to a wasted life.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#575

Post by [deleted] »

username332211 wrote: post #558
wredcoll wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, whatever meager resistence was faced by that group seems to have come from economists, natural scientist or legal scholars. > I wouldn't blame people for refusing to study in a humanities department where they can't tell right from wrong. Man, if you have to make stuff up to try to convince people... you might not be on the right side here.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. I have to admit, I mostly wrote my comment based on my recollections and it's a case 20 years ago I barely paid attention to until after the bizzaire conclusion. But looking trough Wikipedia's articles on the case[1] it doesn't seem I'm that far from the truth. I guess I should have limited my statement about resisting mob justice to the economists at that university as the ot…

[deleted]

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#576

Post by lmm »

Muromec wrote: post #342
psunavy03 wrote: post #335

A problem with this whole mindset is that humans, all of us, are only quasi-rational beings. We all use System 1 ("The Elephant") and System 2 ("The Rider") thinking instinctively. So if you end up in deep denial about your own capacity for irrationality, I guess it stands to reason you could end up getting led down some deep dark rabbit holes.

Wasn't the "fast&slow" thingy debunked as another piece of popscience?

No?

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#577

Post by samdoesnothing »

guerrilla wrote: post #460
samdoesnothing wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they need formal training? Can't they just read Plato, Socrates, etc, and classical lit like Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka etc? That would be far better than whatever they're doing now.

I'm someone who has read all of that and much more, including intense study of SEP and some contemporary papers and textbooks, and I would say that I am absolutely not qualified to produce philosophy of the quality output by analytic philosophy over the last century. I can understand a lot of it, and yes, this is better than being completely ignorant of the last 2500 years of philosophy as most rationalists seem to b…

Oh I don't mean to imply reading some classical lit prepares you for a career producing novel works in philosophy, simply that if one wants to understand themselves, others, and the world better they don't need to go to university to do it. They can just read.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#578

Post by lexandstuff »

qcnguy wrote: post #514
pavlov wrote: post #398

A very interesting read. My idea of these self-proclaimed rationalists was fifteen years out of date. I thought they’re people who write wordy fan fiction, but turns out they’ve reached the point of having subgroups that kill people and exorcise demons. This must be how people who had read one Hubbard pulp novel in the 1950s felt decades later when they find out he’s running a full-blown religion now. The article see…

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The point of wearing a mask is to protect other people from your respiratory droplets. Please wear a mask when you're sick.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#579

Post by samdoesnothing »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #475
samdoesnothing wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they need formal training? Can't they just read Plato, Socrates, etc, and classical lit like Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka etc? That would be far better than whatever they're doing now.

This is like saying someone who wants to build a specialized computer for a novel use should read the turing paper and get to it. A lot has of development has happened in the field in the last couple hundred years.

I don't think that is similar at all. People want to understand the world better, they don't want to learn how to build it from first principles.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#580

Post by [deleted] »

skrebbel wrote: post #246

This article is beautifully written, and it's full of proper original research. I'm sad that most comments so far are knee-jerk "lol rationalists" type responses. I haven't seen any comment yet that isn't already addressed in much more colour and nuance in the article itself.

[deleted]
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