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Guess I'm a rationalist now

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#611

Post by retRen87 »

kragen wrote: post #256
retRen87 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last paragraph discusses how he's resisted the label and then he closes with “the rationalists have walked the walk and rationaled the rational, and thus they’ve given me no choice but to stand up and be counted as one of them.” He’s clearly identifying as a rationalist there

Oh, you're right! I'd add that it's actually the penultimate paragraph of the first of two postscripts appended to the post. I should have read those, and I appreciate the correction.

Ah good catch!!

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#612

Post by georgeecollins »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #546

As someone who likes both the Rationalist community and the Rust community, it's fascinating to see the parallels in how the Hacker News crowd treats both. The contempt, the general lack of curiosity and the violence of the bold sweeping statements people will make here are mind-boggling.

I thought HN liked Rust? I learned Rust because I heard about it on HN back in the day. I don't want to start a debate about programming languages but if I were going to look for Rust fans, this is where I would expect to find them.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#613

Post by vishnugupta »

jandrese wrote: post #237
contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

The article made me think deeper about what rubs me the wrong way about the whole movement I think there is some inherent tension btwn being "rational" about things and trying to reason about things from first principle.. And the general absolutist tone of the community. The people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ? They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considere…

They remind me of the "Effective Altruism" crowd who get completely wound up in these hypothetical logical thought exercises and end up coming to insane conclusions that they feel trapped in because they got there using pure logic. Not realizing that their initial conditions were highly artificial so any conclusion they reach is only of academic value. There is a term for this. "Getting stuck up your own butt." It wo…

I don’t have anything to add to the discussion except that EA was the very first thing that popped into my mind when I read Rationalists.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#614

Post by retRen87 »

ajkjk wrote: post #355
cassepipe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the whole tree of responses under this comment and I could only convince myself that when people have no arguments they try to make you look bad. Most of criticisms are just "But they think they are better than us !" and the rest is "But sometimes they are wrong !" I don't know about the community and couldn't care less but their writings have brought me some almost life saving fresh air in how to think about…

Here's a theory of what's happening, both with you here in this comment section and with the rationalists in general. Humans are generally better at perceiving threats than they are at putting those threats into words. When something seems "dangerous" abstractly, they will come up with words for why---but those words don't necessarily reflect the actual threat, because the threat might be hard to describe. Neverthele…

Oh this is a great breakdown, I totally agree. I feel there’s a morality hierarchy that’s akin to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

People benefit from a sense of a family, a sense of community. It helps us feel more secure, both personally and to our loved ones.

I think the more I view things through this lenses the downstream benefits I see.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#615

Post by stephc_int13 »

This is largely a cult, showing most of the red flags.

But if we put aside the narcissistic traits, lack of intellectual humility, religious undertones and (paradoxically) appeal to emotional responses with apocalyptic framing, the whole thing is still irrelevant BS.

They work in a vacuum, on either false or artificial premises with nothing to back their claims except long strings of syllogism.

This is not Science, no measurements, no experiments, no validation, zero value apart from maybe intellectual stimulation and socialisation for nerds with too much free time…

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#616

Post by aspenmayer »

jrflowers wrote: post #503
resters wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not meaning to be too direct, but you are misinterpreting a lot about rationalists. In my view, rationalists are often "Bayesian" in that they are constantly looking for updates to their model. Consider that the default approach for most humans is to believe a variety of things and to feel indignant if someone holds differing views (the adage never discuss religion or politics ). If one adopts the perspective that th…

It seems that you are conflating theoretical rationalists with the actual real-life rationalists that write stuff like >The quantum physicist who’s always getting into arguments on the Internet, and who’s essentially always right “Guy Who Is Always Right” as a role in a social group is a terrible target, yet it somehow seems like what rationalists are aiming for every time I read any of their blog posts

The rationalist community are fish in barrels convinced that they’re big fish in a small pond because that’s what those who moved them from the pond told them to convince them to enter the barrel. Once in the barrel, the fish are told that they will be moved to a big pond so that they can be big fish in a big pond together. If the fish/fishmonger telling you things is bigger than you, they may not share your preferences about where you fit in to the food chain, and they may not even perceive you at all. You are chum.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#617

Post by gopher_space »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #522
nyeah wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's read the thread: "There has to be (or ought to be) a name for this kind of epistemological fallacy, where in pursuit of truth, the pursuit of logical sophistication and soundness between starting assumptions (or first principles) and conclusions becomes functionally way more important than carefully evaluating and thoughtfully choosing the right starting assumptions (and being willing to change them when they a…

Name calling may be helpful in some contexts, but I doubt it's persuasive to the people in question.

I think a huge part of the subtext to this conversation is that nothing is persuasive to the people in question. How many people in this thread have come down off the mountain to explain a point of view that's just bouncing off some dude who's never needed to develop a feedback loop for his thinking?

Calling someone a dumbass in this situation is a kindness, because the assumption is that they're capable of not being one with a little self-reflection.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#618

Post by catern »

achierius wrote: post #576
Veedrac wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems very odd to criticize the group that most reliably and effectively funds global health and malaria prevention for this. What is your alternative? What's your framework that makes you contribute to malaria prevention more or more effectively than EAs do? Or is the claim instead that people should shut down conversation within EA that strays from the EA mode?

I think the group that most reliably and effectively funds global health -- at least in terms of total $ -- would be the United Nations, or perhaps the Catholic Church, or otherwise one national government or another. If you exclude "nations" then it does look to be the Church: "The Church operates more than 140,000 schools, 10,000 orphanages, 5,000 hospitals and some 16,000 other health clinics". Caritas, the releva…

Rationalists and EAs spend far more time praising the Catholic Church and other religious groups than criticizing them - since they spend essentially no time criticizing them, and do occasionally praise them.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#619

Post by LargeWu »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #585
LargeWu wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not a very big leap from "My purpose is to do whatever is the greatest good" to "It doesn't matter if I hurt people as long as the overall net result is good (by some arbitrary standard)"

99% of effective altruists and rationalists agree that you shouldn't hurt people as part of some complicated scheme to do good. For example, here is eliezer yudkowsky in 2008 saying exactly that, and explaining why it's true: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t...

I believe they believe that, on its face.

I also believe that idealistic people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that their desired outcome is, in fact, the moral one. It starts by saying things like, "Well, what is harm, actually..." and then constructing a definition that supports the conclusions they've already arrived at.

I'm quite sure Sam Bankman-Fried did not believe he was harming anybody when he lost/stole/defrauded his investors and depositors' money.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#620

Post by idontwantthis »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #9

The article made me think deeper about what rubs me the wrong way about the whole movement I think there is some inherent tension btwn being "rational" about things and trying to reason about things from first principle.. And the general absolutist tone of the community. The people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ? They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considere…

I'm hyper "rational" when I go through a period of clinical anxiety. I know exactly how the future is going to play out and of course it's all going to be terrible.
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