4 ms·

What is the answer to everything in the Universe they think they've found? I've read a lot of the bigger posts on Lesswrong (http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all ht

What is the answer to everything in the Universe they think they've found? I've read a lot of the bigger posts on Lesswrong (http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all) and none of them are anything like. No better than any other cult? How are you deciding that? The LW community hasn't killed people. Doesn't cut people off from their family. Does't emotionally/physically abuse people. Etc... Even if they are a "cult", this puts them miles ahead of other cults, like say, Scientology which has done far, far more harm to people. I struggle to think in what way LW has harmed anyone at all.

manish_gill 11y ago
cult |kʌlt| noun 1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object: the cult of St Olaf. • a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. The veneration of Yudkowski and others in the LW community is more than a bit "religious". So I'd say by definition it's a cult. LW hasn't done harm to people physically, but what it's done is spawn some very questionable ideas, perpetuate pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics. The cult leader has no formal training, zero research in peer-reviewed journals and still calls himself a "senior research fellow" in an institute he himself started. Hell, he even has an introductory religious text - The Sequences and the Methods of Rationality fan fiction (which by the way, he wanted to monetise before the broader fan fiction community stopped him. A clear violation of copyright law). For more, see: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky I'll quote the section titled "More controversial positions" Despite being viewed as the smartest two-legged being to ever walk this planet on LessWrong, Yudkowsky (and by consequence much of the LessWrong community) endorses positions as TruthTM that are actually controversial in their respective fields. Below is a partial list: Transhumanism is correct. Cryonics might someday work. The Singularity is near![citation NOT needed] Bayes' theorem and the scientific method don't always lead to the same conclusions (and therefore Bayes is better than science).[21] Bayesian probability can be applied indiscriminately.[22] Non-computable results, such as Kolmogorov complexity, are totally a reasonable basis for the entire epistemology. Solomonoff, baby! Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics is correct (a "slam dunk"), despite the lack of consensus among quantum physicists.[23] Evolutionary psychology is well-established science. Utilitarianism is a correct theory of morality. In particular, he proposes a framework by which an extremely, extremely huge number of people experiencing a speck of dust in their eyes for a moment could be worse than a man being tortured for 50 years.[24] Also, while it is not very clear what his actual position is on this, he wrote a short sci-fi story where rape was briefly mentioned as legal. TL;DR: If it's associated with LessWrong/Yudkowsky, it's probably bullshit.
- sawwit 11y ago
  I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit, but I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. Regarding the rape sequence in HPMOR: It's a terribly chosen trope to convey that the fictional society has very different values from ours. Apparently it ties into various parts of the story, so that EY didn't remove it and only toned it down after it was criticized.
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    > I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit. Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material. Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart. http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it. > I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. There are other ways to improve your thinking. Read books. Read different kind of books, that offer counter point of views. Farnham Street Blog is a good place to start for a list of resources for thinking tools/mental models btw. :)
    - sawwit 11y ago

manish_gill 11y ago

cult |kʌlt| noun 1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object: the cult of St Olaf. • a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. The veneration of Yudkowski and others in the LW community is more than a bit "religious". So I'd say by definition it's a cult. LW hasn't done harm to people physically, but what it's done is spawn some very questionable ideas, perpetuate pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics. The cult leader has no formal training, zero research in peer-reviewed journals and still calls himself a "senior research fellow" in an institute he himself started. Hell, he even has an introductory religious text - The Sequences and the Methods of Rationality fan fiction (which by the way, he wanted to monetise before the broader fan fiction community stopped him. A clear violation of copyright law). For more, see: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky I'll quote the section titled "More controversial positions" Despite being viewed as the smartest two-legged being to ever walk this planet on LessWrong, Yudkowsky (and by consequence much of the LessWrong community) endorses positions as TruthTM that are actually controversial in their respective fields. Below is a partial list: Transhumanism is correct. Cryonics might someday work. The Singularity is near![citation NOT needed] Bayes' theorem and the scientific method don't always lead to the same conclusions (and therefore Bayes is better than science).[21] Bayesian probability can be applied indiscriminately.[22] Non-computable results, such as Kolmogorov complexity, are totally a reasonable basis for the entire epistemology. Solomonoff, baby! Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics is correct (a "slam dunk"), despite the lack of consensus among quantum physicists.[23] Evolutionary psychology is well-established science. Utilitarianism is a correct theory of morality. In particular, he proposes a framework by which an extremely, extremely huge number of people experiencing a speck of dust in their eyes for a moment could be worse than a man being tortured for 50 years.[24] Also, while it is not very clear what his actual position is on this, he wrote a short sci-fi story where rape was briefly mentioned as legal. TL;DR: If it's associated with LessWrong/Yudkowsky, it's probably bullshit.

sawwit 11y ago
I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit, but I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. Regarding the rape sequence in HPMOR: It's a terribly chosen trope to convey that the fictional society has very different values from ours. Apparently it ties into various parts of the story, so that EY didn't remove it and only toned it down after it was criticized.
- manish_gill 11y ago
  > I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit. Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material. Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart. http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it. > I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. There are other ways to improve your thinking. Read books. Read different kind of books, that offer counter point of views. Farnham Street Blog is a good place to start for a list of resources for thinking tools/mental models btw. :)
  - sawwit 11y ago