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Why are there so many rationalist cults?

asteriskmag.com

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Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#851

Post by JohnMakin »

antisthenes wrote: post #606
JohnMakin wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's crazy to read this, because by writing what you wrote you basically show that you don't understand what an axiom is. You need to review the definition of the word. Oh, do enlighten then. > The smartest people are unsure about their higher level beliefs, but I can assure you that they almost certainly don't re-evaluate "axioms" as you put it on a daily or weekly basis. Not that it matters, as we almost certainl…

> Oh, do enlighten then. Absolutely. Just in case your keyboard wasn't working to arrive at this link via Google. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/axiom First definition, just in case it still isn't obvious. > I'm not sure you are responding to the right comment, or are severely misinterpreting what I said. Clearly a nerve was struck though, and I do apologize for any undue distress. Someone was wrong on th…

Ah, I see the confusion now. It is you that actually does not know what the word means or how it was used in this context. Several hundred other people seemed to have avoided this confusion though, and you still haven’t said how it was used wrong, so I can safely dismiss you as a troll. hint: it was once axiomatic that the sun revolved around the earth. Hope that helps!

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#852

Post by Viliam1234 »

low_tech_love wrote: post #705
meowface wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asterisk is basically "rationalist magazine" and the author is a well-known rationalist blogger, so it's not a surprise that this is basically the only fair look into this phenomenon - compared to the typical outside view that rationalism itself is a cult and Eliezer Yudkowsky is a cult leader, both of which I consider absurd notions.

The view from the inside, written by a person who is waist deep into the movement, is the only fair look into the phenomenon?

In theory, there should be a middle way between "waist deep into the movement" and "my research consists of collecting rumors on the internet, and then calling one or two people to give me a quote".

In practice, I don't remember reading an article on the rationality community written from such position. Most articles are based on other articles, which are based on yet other articles... ultimately based on someone's opinion posted on their blogs. (Plus the police reports about the Zizians.)

I think it would be really nice for a change if e.g. some journalist infiltrated the rationality community under a fake identity, joined one of their meetups or workshops, talked to a few people there, and then heroically exposed to the public all the nefarious plans... or the lack thereof. Shouldn't be that hard, I think. New people are coming all the time, no one does a background check on them. Yet for some mysterious reason, this never happens.

Notice how this article describes more bad things in the community than a typical outsider-written article. Three specific rationalist cults were named! The difference is not insider vs outsider, but having specific information vs vibes-based reporting.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#853

Post by dang »

bondarchuk wrote: post #732
dang wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contrarian dynamic strikes again! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (I'm referring to how this comment, objecting to the other comments as unduly negative, has been upvoted to the top of the thread.) (p.s. this is not a criticism!)

I think that since it's not possible to reply to multiple comments at the same time, people will naturally open a new top-level comment the moment there's a clearly identifiable groupthink emerging. Quoting one of your earlier comments about this: >This happens so frequently that I think it must be a product of something hard-wired in the medium *[I mean the medium of the internet forum] I would say it's only hard-wi…

That could be!

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#854

Post by godelski »

bondarchuk wrote: post #848
godelski wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are assuming that intelligence will necessarily and inherently lead to (good) morality Please read before responding. I said no such thing. I even said there are bad smart people. I only argued that a person's goodness is orthogonal to their intelligence. But I absolutely did not make an assumption that intelligence equates to good. I said it was irrelevant...

Idk, you certainly seemed to be implying that especially in your earlier comment. I would agree that it is orthogonal, I would think most rationalists would, too.

I promise you you misread. I think this is probably the problem sentence

  >>>> The vast majority of smart people I know are very peaceful.
I'll also add that the vast majority of people I know are very peaceful. But neither of these means I don't know malicious people. You'd need to change "The vast majority" to "Every" for this to be the conclusion. I'm not discounting malicious smart people, I'm pointing out that it is a weird assumption to make when most people we know are kind and peaceful.

The second comment is explicit though

  >> So we can't conclude that greater intelligence results in greater malice.
This is not equivalent to "We can conclude that greater intelligence results in less malice." Those are completely different claims.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#855

Post by Viliam1234 »

tshaddox wrote: post #366
ar-nelson wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Yudowsky-style rationalists morbidly fascinating in the same way as Scientologists and other cults. Probably because they seem to genuinely believe they're living in a sci-fi story. I read a lot of their stuff, probably too much, even though I find it mostly ridiculous. The biggest nonsense axiom I see in the AI-cult rationalist world is recursive self-improvement. It's the classic reason superintelligence tak…

> - What if there are several paths to different kinds of intelligence with their own local maxima, in which the AI can easily get stuck after optimizing itself into the wrong type of intelligence? I think what's more plausible is that there is general intelligence, and humans have that, and it's general in the same sense that Turing machines are general, meaning that there is no "higher form" of intelligence that ha…

I agree that general intelligence is general. But increasing computation speed 1000x could still be something that is available to the machines and not to the humans, simply because electrons are faster than neurons. Also, how specifically would you 1000x increase human memory?

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#856

Post by riku_iki »

to11mtm wrote: post #404
xg15 wrote: post #290

Earlier 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?

Well, there's a balance to be had. Do the most good you can while still being able to survive the rat race. However, people are bad at that. I'll give an interesting example. Hybrid Cars. Modern proper HEVs[0] usually benefit to their owners, both by virtue of better fuel economy as well as in most cases being overall more reliable than a normal car. And, they are better on CO2 emissions and lower our oil consumption…

> [2] - I feel like there's ways to make an exciting hybrid, but until there's a critical mass or Stellantis gets their act together, it won't happen...

many hybrid already way more exciting than regular ice, because they provide more torque, and many consumer buy hybrid because of this reason.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#857

Post by Viliam1234 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #236
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…

You're describing the impressions I had of MENSA back in the 70's.

He probably is describing Mensa, and assuming that it also applies to the rationality community without having any specific knowledge of the latter.

(From my perspective, Hacker News is somewhere in the middle between Mensa and Less Wrong. Full of smart people, but most of them don't particularly care about evidence, if providing their own opinion confidently is an alternative.)

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#858

Post by Viliam1234 »

bobson381 wrote: post #96
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…

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

You mean like this? https://www.readthesequences.com/Zero-And-One-Are-Not-Probab...

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#859

Post by mrguyorama »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #283
lesuorac wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hippos are more dangerous than emus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

My understanding of the emu war is that they werent dangerous so much as quick to multiply. The army couldnt whack the moles fast enough. Hippos dont strike me as animals that can go underground when threatened

Also, the Emu "war" was really "The emu invasion and a singular machine gun team". It was a good simulation of how effective Call Of Duty heros actually are.

They aren't.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#860

Post by Viliam1234 »

6177c40f wrote: post #592
throwanem wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article attempts to establish disjoint categories "good rationalist" and "cultist." Its authorship, and its appearance in the cope publication of the "please take us seriously" rationalist faction, speak volumes of how well it is likely to succeed in that project.

I think it's a meaningful distinction- most rationalists aren't running murder cults.

Funny how the comment making a factual correction gets downvoted.

For me, that is the crucial information in the article: Yes, multiple people have succeeded to create a cult within the rationality community, but it always involved isolating their victims from the rest of the rationality community. (Now that we see the pattern, could it possibly help us defend against this?)

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