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Why are there so many rationalist cults?

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Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#901

Post by heavyset_go »

tasuki wrote: post #835
heavyset_go wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shitposting comedy forums were ahead of the WHO when it came to this, it didn't take a genius to understand what was going on before shit completely hit the fan.

Yet the stock market mostly didn't get it. I know some people who made some money based on the knowledge that a pandemic was coming.

Ideology is powerful and so is the bias towards the status quo, not to mention the want and belief that Everything is Just Fine™.

At least in the US, there was a ton of political and economic incentive to pretend that nothing was wrong, as business proceeding as usual was paramount.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#902

Post by barnabee »

ben_w wrote: post #727
aydyn wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people spread around the world. [Citation needed] I sincerely doubt anything but a tiny insignificant minority consider themselves part of the "rationalist community".

"Large" is very vague. The leaderboard shows (50 of) 166385 registered accounts* on https://www.lesswrong.com/leaderboard This is simultaneously a large body and an insignificant minority. * How many are junk accounts? IDK. But I do know it's international, because I live in Berlin, Germany, and socialise regularly.

I have an account on LessWrong. Heck, I even try to act rationally most of the time.

I don’t consider myself a Rationalist or part of the Rationalist community.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that number turns out to overstate the size by an order of magnitude.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#903

Post by n4r9 »

qcnguy wrote: post #837
n4r9 wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, myself and most people I know continued mask-wearing for many months after it stopped being a legal requirement in the UK.

Sorry to hear that. The people you know are not representative. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/26/the-great-cove... "The psychology of masks: why have so many people stopped covering their faces? (This article is more than 3 years old) In England, masks are expected and recommended in crowded and enclosed spaces – but not legally required. Many have abandoned them altogether. What would convince everyone…

A quotation from someone named Dave in a Guardian article doesn't constitute a representative sample either. But that's beside the point. Your post said that "nobody" could be persuaded to wear masks and "everybody" could see that they didn't work. That's clear hyperbole.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#904

Post by danaris »

spopejoy wrote: post #518
danaris wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it’s that people tend to build up “logical” conclusions where they think each step is a watertight necessity that follows inevitably from its antecedents, but actually each step is a little bit leaky, leading to runaway growth in false confidence. Yeah, this is a pattern I've seen a lot of recently—especially in discussions about LLMs and the supposed inevitability of AGI (and the Singularity). This is a go…

You might have just explained the phenomenon of AI doomsayers overlapping with ea/rat types, which I otherwise found inexplicable. EA/Rs seem kind of appalingly positivist otherwise.

I mean, that's also because of their mutual association with Eliezer Yudkowski, who is (AIUI) a believer in the Singularity, as well as being one of the main wellsprings of "Rationalist" philosophy.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#905

Post by tshaddox »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #855
tshaddox wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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?

The first way we increased human memory by 1000x was with books. Now it’s mostly with computers.

Electronic AGI might have a small early advantage because it’s probably easier for them to have high-speed interfaces to computing power and memory, but I would be surprised if the innovations required to develop AGI wouldn’t also help us interface our biology with computing power and memory.

In my view this isn’t much less concerning than saying “AGI will have a huge advantage in physical strength because of powerful electric motors, hydraulics, etc.”

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#906

Post by snapcaster »

pizzadog wrote: post #445

I have a lot of experience with rationalists. What I will say is: 1) If you have a criticism about them or their stupid name or how "'all I know is that I know nothing' how smug of them to say they're truly wise," rest assured they have been self flagellating over these criticisms 100x longer than you've been aware of their group. That doesn't mean they succeeded at addressing the criticisms, of course, but I can tel…

This has been my experience too. Every rationalist I know personally is a well read reasonable person

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#907

Post by morleytj »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #676
morleytj wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The built in assumptions are always interesting to me, especially as it relates to intelligence. I find many of them (though not all), are organized around a series of fundamental beliefs that are very rarely challenged within these communities. I should initially mention that I don't think everyone in these communities believes these things, of course, but I think there's often a default set of assumptions going int…

I think you'll indeed find, if you were to seek out the relevant literature, that those claims are more or less true, or at least, are the currently best-supported interpretation available. So I don't think they're assumptions so much as simply current state of the science on the matter, and therefore widely accepted among those who for whatever reason have looked into it (or, more likely, inherited the information f…

My general disagreements with those axioms from my reading of the literature are around the concepts of immutability and of the belief in the almost entirely biological factor, which I don't think is well supported by current research in genetics, but that may change in the future. I think primarily I disagree about the effect sizes and composition of factors with many who hold these beliefs.

I do agree with you in that I generally have an intuition that intelligence in humans is largely defined as a set of skills that often correlate, I think one of the main areas I differ in interpretation is in the interpretation of the strength of those correlations.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#908

Post by godelski »

bondarchuk wrote: post #891
godelski wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are taking the rationalist argument to be I think they say P(doom) is high number[0]. Or in other words, AGI is likely to kill us. I interpret this as "if we make a really intelligent machine it is very likely to kill us all." My interpretation is mainly biased on them saying "if we build a really intelligent machine, it is very likely to kill us all." Yud literally wrote a book titled "If Anyone Builds It, Eve…

Yes, I agree they are saying it is likely going to kill us all. My interpretation is consistent with that, and so is yours. The difference is in why/how it will kill us; you sound to me like you think the rationalist position is that from intelligence follows malice, and therefore it will kill us. I think that's a wrong interpretation of their views.

Well then, instead of just telling me I'm wrong why don't you tell me why I'm wrong.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#909

Post by Viliam1234 »

low_tech_love wrote: post #881
Viliam1234 wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Every reporting is always based on the reporter, so you’re never going to escape the need to just make your own conclusions and decide for yourself whether you think that the piece makes sense or not. There is no conspiracy against rationalists, they’re being reported on with the same methods as everything else; whether you trust journalism in general or not is up to you.

> There is no conspiracy against rationalists, they’re being reported on with the same methods as everything else

No conspiracy, I agree. Only clickbait, and one obsessed Wikipedia admin.

However, different newspapers have different quality; sometimes dramatically different. Ironically, Zizians are usually reported on by the ones that keep professional standards. So it's quite funny to see how psychopathic murderers are treated with respect and reported on factually, while nerds who study artificial intelligence and send money to anti-malaria charities are accused of... well, whatever the journalists' imagination can accuse them of.

(Have you heard of the "TESCREAL" theory? Apparently, effective altruists are secretly Nazis, because... you know, the idea of improving the world is related to the genre of science fiction, and some science fiction fans in previous century also happened to be fans of eugenics, therefore... you know, wink wink. Seriously, this is documented in Wikipedia, because it comes from a "reliable source".)

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#910

Post by Viliam1234 »

BrenBarn wrote: post #873
Viliam1234 wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems to sidestep the issue that a major feature distinguishing the "good" rationalists from the "bad" is that the bad ones are willing to take very extreme actions in support of their beliefs. What is a "very extreme action"? Killing someone? In our culture, yes. What about donating half of your salary to charity? I think many people would consider that quite extreme, too. Maybe even more difficult to understan…

> What about donating half of your salary to charity? I think many people would consider that quite extreme, too. Maybe, but there are also degrees of extremity in terms of stuff like how broadly you donate (like there's a difference between donating a huge amount to one charity vs. spreading it around 10). Also I don't think the mere fact of donating half your salary would itself necessarily be seen as extreme; it w…

> My point is just that, insofar as this is true, it means what the article is saying is more about cults in general and less about anything specific to rationalism.

The lesson I took from it was how tiny cults can appear inside of a larger group which itself is not a cult. Not specific to rationalism, I agree.

There are a few thousand rationalists, and the sizes of the cults mentioned in the article were about 20, 5, 5, I think.

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