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Guess I'm a rationalist now

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#881

Post by genewitch »

camgunz wrote: post #743
genewitch wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the CPS on homeschooled children rate is from people who had their children in school and then "pulled them out" vs people who never had their children in school at all. As some comedian said "you're on the grid [...], they have your footprint"; i know it used to be "known" that school districts go after the former because it literally loses them money to lose a student, whereas with the latter, the kid i…

> i know it used to be "known" that school districts go after the former Maybe, but this sounds like some ideologically opposed groups slandering each other to get the moral high ground to me. The papers linked show a pretty typical racialized pattern of CPS calls (Blacks high, Asians low, Whites and Latinos somewhere between) that maybe contraindicates this, for example. > also i wasn't considering "confirmed maltre…

> racialized pattern of CPS calls (Blacks high, Asians low, Whites and Latinos somewhere between)

Predominantly "black" schools receive less funding in general (per student over $2000 less), and as such, need all the student-age people in class. So a "black" family removing their child(ren) from school becomes a fiscal issue, coupled to racial issues, coupled to history; like >60% of "black" children live in a 'single parent household' due to "no man about the house" policies dating back to the 1960s, just as a single example.

I am quoting "black" because i am sensitive to this, and if i had started out with ADOS or NBA/FBA (native black american, foundational black american) i just assume it'd brook argument.

To wrap this all up - "more testing equals more cases."

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#882

Post by Viliam1234 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #623
troyastorino wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overlap between the Effective Altruism community and the Rationalist community is extremely high. They’re largely the same people. Effective Altruism gained a lot of early attention on LessWrong, and the pessimistic focus on AI existential risk largely stems from an EA desire to avoid “temporal-discounting” bias. The reasoning is something like: if you accept that future people count just as much as current peopl…

EA always rubbed me the wrong way. (1) The kind of Gatesian solutions they like to fund like mosquito nets are part of the problem, not part of the solution as I see it. If things are going to get better in Africa, it will be because Africans grow their economy and pay taxes and their governments can provide the services that they want. Expecting NGOs to do everything for them is the same kind of neoliberal thinking…

> "The Singularity" was talked about by Jesuit Priest Teilhard de Chardin long before sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge used it as the hinge of a mystery novel.

Similarly, Big Bang was talked about by Catholic priest Georges Lemaître, and Bayes' Theorem was invented by Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes. Does that prove anything beyond the fact that there are many smart religious people?

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#883

Post by Karrot_Kream »

twoodfin wrote: post #421
ajkjk wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What creeps me out is that I have no idea of their theory of power: How will they achieve their aims? Maybe they want to do it in a way I’d consider just: By exercising their rights as individuals in their personal domains and effectively airing their arguments in the public sphere to win elections. But my intuition is they think democracy and personal rights of the non-elect are part of the problem to rationalize ar…

Why is "theory of power" a necessary framing? "Theory of power" seems to be only a popular idea in "online left progressive" circles which are based on pop readings of post-structuralist continental philosophy. There's plenty of other schools of thought out there and there have been many criticisms of the idea of "theory of power" altogether.

Reading critiques of Hegel is a great starting point for this reading.

Whether you accept it or not though, there's lots of non-rationalist schools that reject the need for a "theory of power".

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#884

Post by NoFunPedant »

mettamage wrote: post #514
lisper wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one can levy a much more specific critique of rationalism: rationalism is in some sense self-defeating. If you are rational you will necessarily conclude that the fundamental dynamic that drives the (interesting parts of) the universe is Darwinian evolution, which is not rational. It blindly selects for reproductive fitness at the expense of all else. If you are a gene, you can probably produce more offspring…

I always liken this to that we’re all asteroids floating in space. There’s no free will and everything is determined. We just see the whole thing unfold from one conscious perspective. Emotionally I don’t subscribe to this view. Rationally I do. My critique for rational people is that they don’t seem to fully take experience into account. It’s assumptions + rationality + experience/data + whatever strong inclinations…

I'd like to believe that there is no such thing as free will, but I just can't decide.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#885

Post by sanderjd »

zahlman wrote: post #681
Aurornis wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a while since I've engaged in rationalist debates, so I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :) You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form. My point wasn't to nit-pick individual predictions, it was a general explanation of how the game is played. Since Scott Alexander…

> So I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :) How was it condescending or lecturing? > You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form. Why is that not equally condescending or lecturing?

> Why is that not equally condescending or lecturing?

It just isn't! An inability to accurately identify what comes off as condescending is kind of the point...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#886

Post by sanderjd »

Veedrac wrote: post #668
Aurornis wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a while since I've engaged in rationalist debates, so I forgot about the slightly condescending, lecturing tone that comes out when you disagree with rationalist figureheads. :) You could simply ask "Can you provide examples" instead of the "If you ____ then I suggest ____" form. My point wasn't to nit-pick individual predictions, it was a general explanation of how the game is played. Since Scott Alexander…

Please be civil. I genuinely don't understand how you can point to someone's calibration curve where they've broadly done well, and cherry pick the failed predictions they made, and use this not just to claim that they're making bad predictions but that they're slimy about admitting error. What more could you possibly want from someone than a tally of their prediction record graded against the probability they explic…

> Please be civil.

lol, what? That was a civil comment. This seems like an excellent example of the point being made. Replying to a perfectly reasonable but critical comment with "please be civil" is super condescending.

So is stuff like "one man's modus ponens".

Look, we get it, you're talking to people who found this stuff smart and interesting in the past. But we got tired of it. For me, I realized after awhile that the people I most admired in real life were pretty much the opposite of the people I was reading the most on the internet. None of the smartest people I know talk in this snooty online iamsosmart style.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#887

Post by Hercuros »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #311
Certhas wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a valid point. But to some degree both can be true. I often felt when reading some of these type of texts: Wait a second, there is a wealth of thinking on these topics out there; You are not at all situating all your elaborate thinking in a broader context. And there absolutely is willingness to be challenged, and (maybe less so) a willingness to be wrong. But there also is an arrogance that "we are t…

That's a fair point. Speaking only for myself, I think I fail to understand why it's important to situate philosophical discussions in the context of all the previous philosophers who have expressed related ideas, rather than simply discussing the ideas in isolation. I remember as a child coming to the same "if reality is a deception, at least I must exist to be deceived" conclusion that Descartes did, well before I…

How could you say that your views are aligned with those of Descartes and Kant if you have not seriously engaged with their works and what others have written about them?

All serious works in philosophy (Kant especially) are subject to interpretation. Whole research programmes exist around the works of major philosophers, interpreting and building on their works.

One cannot really do justice to e.g. the Critique of Pure Reason by discussing it based on a high level summary of the “main ideas” contained in it. These works have had a major impact on the history of Western philosophy and were groundbreaking at the time (and still are).

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#888

Post by sanderjd »

lechatonnoir wrote: post #646
Aurornis wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> es, I do think that these hedging statements make them immune from the specific criticism that I quoted. That's my point: Their rhetorical style is interpreted by the in-group as a sort of weird infallibility. Like they've covered both sides and therefore the work is technically correct in all cases. Once they go through the hedging dance, they can put forth the opinion-based point they're trying to make in a very…

> They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considered all angles to it, maybe I'm wrong - but here it is". The type of people that would be embarrassed to not have an opinion on a topic or say "I don't know" edit: my apologies, that was someone else in the thread. I do feel like between the two comments though there is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't". (The original qu…

> "damned if you do, damned if you don't"

This is right, but doesn't actually cover all the options. It's damned if you [write confidently about something and] do or don't [hedge with a probability or "epistemic status"].

But the other option, which is the one the vast majority of people choose, is to not write confidently about everything.

It's fine, there are far worse sins than writing persuasively about tons of stuff and inevitably getting lots of it wrong. But it's absolutely reasonable to criticize this choice, irregardless of the level of hedging.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#889

Post by sanderjd »

lechatonnoir wrote: post #641
jerf wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be easier to imagine someone trying to derive mathematics all by themselves, since it's less abstract. It's not that they won't come up with anything, it's that everything that even a genius can come up with in their lifetime will be something that the whole of humanity has long since come up with, chewed over, simplified, had a rebellion against, had a counter-rebellion against the rebellion, and ultimately p…

Well, sure, but mathematics is the domain for which this holds maybe the most true out of any. It's less true for fields which are not as old. I'm not sure if this counterpoint generalizes entirely to the original critique, since certainly LessWrongers aren't usually posting about or discussing math as if they've discovered it-- usually substantially more niche topics.

... philosophy is if anything older than what we call mathematics.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#890

Post by sanderjd »

cassepipe wrote: post #330
jandrese wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

Or maybe you are demonstrating the exact failure to demonstrate introspective humility that people are talking about?
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