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Guess I'm a rationalist now

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Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#991

Post by freejazz »

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #489
notahacker wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wytham Abbey was bought mainly to host internal workshops and "retreats", as outlined by the people who bought it https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/... https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yggjKEeehsnmMYnZd/... As far as I know it's never hosted an impress-the-oligarch fundraiser, which as you say would at least have a logic behind it[1] even if it might seem distasteful. For a philosop…

Ah, fair enough! I had heard the "hosting wealthy donors" as the primary motivation, but it appears to be secondary. My bad. >As far as I know it's never hosted an impress-the-oligarch fundraiser As far as I know, they only hosted 3 events there before deciding to sell, so this is low-information.

Surely you've learned in your life that whatever people might say is not true, nor is it the best reflection of their intentions...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#992

Post by lukas099 »

const_cast wrote: post #524
lukas099 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rationalist community is most definitely not exclusive. I agree, and didn't intend to express otherwise. It's not an exclusive community, but it is a community, and if you aren't in it you are in the out-group. > The problem isn't differing opinions, the problem is that they disregard actual expertise and try ham-fisted attempts at "first principals" evaluations of a subject while ignoring contradictory evidenc…

> Maybe I don't give people enough credit and you do, but I don't think most people care how you arrived at an opinion; they merely care about whether you're in their opinion-tribe or not. Yes, most people don't care how you arrived at an opinion, they rather care about the practical impact of said opinion. IMO this is largely a good thing. You can logically push yourself to just about any opinion, even absolutely ho…

Some of them certainly do have some opinions outside the Overton Windows of many.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#993

Post by lukas099 »

woopwoop wrote: post #627
lukas099 wrote: post #381

This is vibe-based, but I think the Rationalists get more vitriol than they deserve. Upon reflecting, my hypothesis for this is threefold: 1. They are a community —they have an in-group, and if you are not one of them you are by-definition in the out-group. People tend not to like being in other peoples' out-groups. 2. They have unusual opinions and are open about them. People tend not to like people who express opin…

Agree, but I think there is another, more important factor. They are a highly visible part of the internet, and their existence is mainly internet-based. This means that the people assessing them are mainly on the internet, and as we all know, internet discourse tends to the blandly negative (ironically my own comment is a mild example of this).

Great point!

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#994

Post by HDThoreaun »

ashwinsundar wrote: post #969
HDThoreaun wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HPMOR is not supposed to be rigorous. It’s supposed to be entertaining in a way that rigorous philosophy is not. You could make the same argument about any of Camus’ novels but again that would miss the point. If you want something more rigorous yudkowsky has it, bit surprising to me to complain he isn’t rigorous without talking about his rigorous work.

I really have no interest in reading any more of that guy’s “work”

Totally fair but why comment on something you arent interested in understanding

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#995

Post by skinnymuch »

chipsrafferty wrote: post #973
skinnymuch wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read other comments then. Not everyone is saying “they think they are better than us”. The primary issues as others have noted is they focus on people going to the highest paying jobs without much care for morality of the jobs. Ergo they are fine being net negatives in terms of their work and philosophy. All they do is donate money. Donations don’t fix society. Nothing changes structurally. No root problems are looke…

Well put.

Thanks

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#996

Post by Turn_Trout »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #928
khazhoux wrote: post #579

I would love a link to anything that could convince me the Rationalist community isn't just a bunch of hoo-haw. I read the first third of HPMOR. I stopped because I found the writing poor, but more importantly, it didn't "open my mind" to any higher-order way of rationalist thinking. My takeaway was "Yup, the original HP story was full of inconsistencies and stupidities, and you get a different story if the character…

> Update your beliefs based on evidence --> who disagrees with this? Like, dozens of comments in this thread? For example, people expressing strong opinions on what Effective Altruism is actually about, when https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities is just one google search away... but why would anyone bother checking before they post a strong opinion? The #1 comment says that the rationality community is abo…

> The #1 comment says that the rationality community is about "trying to reason about things from first principle", when if fact it is the opposite.

Oh? Eliezer Yudkowsky (the most prominent Rationalist) bragged about how he was able to figure out AI was dangerous (the most stark Rationalist claim) from "the null string as input."[1]

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a...

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#997

Post by nyeah »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #280
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…

> their initial conditions were highly artificial 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…

Or "garbage in, garbage out"? But that's really about computers. And maybe it is name calling. Is there no standard name for this? Or not in English?

Maybe it's similar to the "Good Student" picture. Bright within a given assignment, but taking the assignment to be immutable, or taking no interest in where the assignment comes from.

Or I've heard a saying "nobody will pay you to solve problems that they've already defined clearly."

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#998

Post by Aurornis »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #924
tptacek wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes.

[Citation needed]

Late to respond, but here's one such link: https://web.archive.org/web/20130118213127/https://www.overc...

Title of the post is "Hail Scott Siskind" from Robin Hanson's blog Overcoming Bias. This blog was a central point of the early rationalist movement.

Notably, posts like this were scrubbed some time near the New York Times debacle. There was an active effort to scrub mentions of "Siskind" from rationalist adjacent blogs around that time.

It was amazingly effective at rewriting the history. You won't find any mention of the activities to scrub "Siskind" from the rationalist blogs, though.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#999

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

lukev wrote: post #534
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you discover it from first principles by yourself because it's a natural conclusion anyone would reach if they ponder the subject? Or because western culture reflects this theme continuously through all the culture and media you've immersed in since you were a child? Also the idea is definitely not new to Descartes, you can find echoes of it going back to Plato, so your idea isn't wrong per se. But I think it und…

Because it's a natural conclusion anyone would reach if they ponder the subject. Sorry, I thought I expressed that opinion clearly. I don't think I was exposed to that idea through media by that age.

Re: Guess I'm a rationalist now

#1000

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

Hercuros wrote: post #887
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 P…

Did I give you the impression from my comment that I haven't read Descartes and Kant? That's not what I intended to say.
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