7 ms·

For the uninitiated, what sort of content is Slate Star Codex known for? I see he kind of addresses it in his initial post. That description seemed pretty broa

For the uninitiated, what sort of content is Slate Star Codex known for? I see he kind of addresses it in his initial post. That description seemed pretty broad and open ended though.

ardy42 6y ago
> For the uninitiated, what sort of content is Slate Star Codex known for? IIRC, it's a blog that's very influential in the "rationalist" community, which I think spun out of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong. So very long-winded posts on miscellaneous topics.
- malandrew 6y ago
  Why put the word rationalist in quotes?
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Because the word has multiple meanings, some of them subtextual. The quotes don't need to be derisive.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Because it’s a label rather than a descriptor.
  - mkr-hn 6y ago
    I don't know about them, but I've found the community around it both intelligent and accepting. That's not what I've come to expect from the word rationalist.
    - mrec 6y ago
      Agreed. Much less of a Mensa syndrome going on. I remember at the peak of the 2016 post-election meltdown the SSC subreddit hosted a sort of "ask Trump supporters anything" thread. Despite the absolute insanity of the time and only a minuscule fraction of the sub's readership supporting Trump, the conversation was interesting, calm and uniformly civil. There were a few Social Justice types that used to comment there too; again, all very civil, although there was sometimes the sense that they were regarded as an interesting zoo exhibit.
  - istorical 6y ago
    Probably because self-ascribed 'rationalism' can potentially come across a bit self-aggrandizing. Like calling oneself part of the 'patriot' party (which implicitly implies members of other political groups aren't patriotic). Not that I have a problem with SSC, I think it's a cool blog.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Do you have a problem with the “democrat” party implying that other parties aren’t democratic?
      - traverseda 6y ago
        At this point it's pretty common for self-identifying lesswrong-style rationalists to use quote marks, or add a bunch of qualifiers. Weird nerdy people get a lot of hate, there are whole subreddits devoted to hating on "rationalists" for a variety of reasons. Adding quotes tends to calm those people down, and make them a bit less hateful. Really it's not derisive, it's self defense.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Do you have a problem with the “democrat” party Its called the “Democratic Party”, and it is a proper noun, which distinguishes it visiually form the common use of “democratic”.
        wmil 6y ago
        While some people get upset about it, "Democrat" is useful to differentiate the two verbally. Obviously capitalization isn't possible. Obama's team launched https://democrats.org/ https://democrats.org/ in 2009 or so. I really think people shouldn't get upset over "Democrat".
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        “Democrat” is the singular noun form, “Democrats” is the plural noun form, “Democratic” is the adjective form, and “Democrat”-as-adjective is the “signal that the speaker is a hostile partisan" form. They are all useful distinctions.
  - dfabulich 6y ago
    Some members of the LessWrong online community call themselves "the rationalist community," but there are plenty of people who self-ascribe as rationalist who don't affiliate with that community. Here, the term means the LessWrong rationalists, not all rationalists everywhere.
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    Humans aren't rational. Anyone who claims they are, doesn't understand enough about the human condition to offer you any advice that you should care about.
    - Tarq0n 6y ago
      The whole point of rationalism is understanding our biases and cognitive flaws, not to pretend they don't affect us.
      - bnralt 6y ago
        I think that's part of the problem. The stated goal is to understand our biases and flaws, and to become "less wrong." But it's easy to fall into a trap where one claims to get better at such biases, therefore making them more rational than people who haven't, therefore making their position superior - hence re-enforcing their biases. A lot of the public declarations coming from "rationalist" communities remind me of public declarations of sin coming from certain religious groups. Though it presents itself as self-effacing, it ends up being affirming. You rarely see the thought extend to "therefore, outgroups that I've been deriding perhaps know better than my ingroup." Particularly interesting when there are biases that have almost become dogma in certain "rationalist" circles, such as the preoccupation with godlike artificial superintelligence.
  - myhf 6y ago
    They call themselves "rationalists". "Rationalizers" might be more accurate.
  - voidhorse 6y ago
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-instrumental/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-instrumental/ It's because rationality that's committed to a narrow definition of what rationality means typically leads to irrationality at some terminal point. When people describe themselves as "rationalist" they typically mean "instrumental reason" which is a form of reasoning that has its own bias and baked in values (e.g. western modern values, often supremely meritocratic, technocratic, utilitarian values) which are different from the values powering the methods and forms of reasoning of other cultures and other historical periods. There's a tendency for a superiority complex to creep in where one who takes undue pride in one's "reasoning" sees only one mode of reasoning as the one true reasoning (one true value system). Ancient cultures had value systems that were entirely different than ours, this doesn't make our scientific reasoning "better" it makes our reasonings incommensurable until you commit to some system of shared values as the one true system of values (e.g. self-preservation, but there's nothing saying that's what humanity should value and in fact one could argue that one of the important facets of being human is the capability to reject this value).
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      > Ancient cultures had value systems that were entirely different than ours, this doesn't make our scientific reasoning "better" It's better at coming to the correct conclusions about objective aspects of the world (better – not perfect, mind you). This is useful if your value system prioritises knowledge, though knowledge is pretty useful for all sorts, so I think science is good unless your value system penalises knowledge-generation.
  - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
    Likely because ardy42 isn't a fan of them and the word would otherwise have positive connotations. In general, the quotes in this context signal an ideological opposition.
    - thesteamboat 6y ago
      The quotes might signal opposition, but they also might just signal fuzziness. E.g. This is a word that you're probably familiar with used in a specific jargony way that you cannot deduce merely from the standard definition.
      - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        Much like the words humanist or intellectual? Would you agree that each of those words can be used in "a specific jargony way" and that putting quotation marks around either very likely signals opposition?
        drdeca 6y ago
        I'm not familiar with a distinction between a more common usage and a more jargony usage of those two words. Is there one? Actually, I don't think I really understand any usage of the word "humanist" very well.
        AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        With no context, humanism sounds like it's just something pertaining to humans. Also, at least to my perception, the word has a built-in positive valence. But, it has a much more specific meaning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism There's a similar dynamic with rationalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism
        drdeca 6y ago
        ah, but here "rationalist" isn't being used in that particular way. One of the reasons it is sometimes put in quotes, I think, is to distinguish it from the meaning that you've linked. A rationalist in that sense is someone who holds the philosophical positions described in that article. A rationalist-in-this-other-sense is someone who, uh, generally has beliefs in some other collection of philosophical positions, and is involved in a certain community/social-circle . It is an unfortunate overloading of a term. Some have given a definition of rationalist (or rationalist-adjacent) as : Eliezer Yudkowsky is a rationalist, and anyone who spends a lot of time arguing with rationalists is a rationalist. This is quite a different thing that the sense of the word described in the Wikipedia article. Personally, I'm rather fond of the group, but there are still cases where I find myself using quote marks when describing it.
bpodgursky 6y ago
Good... content. I don't really have a good summary except that he digs into random issues (and thought experiments) with an intellectual honesty and wit + clarity that I haven't found elsewhere.
texuf 6y ago
Lots of very in depth book reviews. Scott is a psychiatrist, so lots of posts on the replication crisis in the soft sciences. And plenty of "rationalist" posts, which are just deep thoughts on culture and society. I'm still not entirely sure why he's controversial. He's definitely very very smart. Unfortunately the rationalist community has a few people who will start arguing that IQ is at least partially genetic, therefore IQ is also tied to race somehow... I think? So watch out for those landmines.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  Scott is very intentional about not getting into the landmine issues. IMO part of his service to the community is helping define those boundaries for the less... socially aware members of the community (ie, the things you Do Not Discuss).
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > IMO part of his service to the community is helping define those boundaries for the less... socially aware members of the community (ie, the things you Do Not Discuss). Are you talking about stuff like this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f...
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      This one comes to mind https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-...
      - selimthegrim 6y ago
        I wish more people cited Frances Yates on Bruno - his heliocentrism was a side note even before he attacked Copernicus but he had some fantastic mnemonic techniques
galactus 6y ago
Popsci about "nootropics" and QI.
Shoop 6y ago
Scott has written an intro post about this on the new blog: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wondering-why-ive https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wonderi... The about page also has some links to more popular articles on the old blog: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/about https://astralcodexten.substack.com/about
fossuser 6y ago
Here are some of my favorites that I'd recommend: The Toxoplasma of Rage: An essay about how more controversial examples tend to get elevated and thinking about why that happens. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... Meditations On Moloch: An essay about how incentives and coordination problems cause systemic societal issues: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ Who By Very Slow Decay: An essay about death in medicine. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay... I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup: An essay about tribalism https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... He's a good writer, as other replies mention it came out of lesswrong (see: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences). Some lesswrong favorites (mostly Eliezer Yudkowsky): Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb... A Fable of Science and Politics: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hfGNLf4Hg5DXqJCF/a-fable-of-science-and-politics https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hfGNLf4Hg5DXqJCF/a-fable-of... Pretending to be Wise: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jeyvzALDbjdjjv5RW/pretending-to-be-wise https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jeyvzALDbjdjjv5RW/pretending... Local Validity as a Key to Sanity and Civilization: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WQFioaudEH8R7fyhm/local-validity-as-a-key-to-sanity-and-civilization https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WQFioaudEH8R7fyhm/local-vali... The Bottom Line: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom... --- For a fun creative fiction one from Scott: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-dee... From EY: http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/
- mrec 6y ago
  That's a good list. I'm also very partial to Fearful Symmetry: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/14/fearful-symmetry/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/14/fearful-symmetry/ although I seem to be in a minority on that one. I find it immensely calming when the horrors of the Culture War get too much. Also G.K. Chesterton on AI Risk: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/01/g-k-chesterton-on-ai-risk/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/01/g-k-chesterton-on-ai-r... for a giggle, although it'll probably only appeal to Chesterton fans. Oh, and to anyone working through this list, please take the trigger warning on Who By Very Slow Decay seriously. He's not kidding.
norswap 6y ago
Here is a decent selection of top articles: https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/top-slate-star-codex-articles-from-the-wayback-machine-f5ab50da83f9 https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/top-slate-star-cod... I didn't write this, but I second most of the selection.
vmception 6y ago
Also for the uninitiated, what is this post about? Why were people trying to cancel him, cancel the Times, and more?
- fossuser 6y ago
  Summary: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... NYT was writing a piece about rationality, SSC, lesswrong, east bay, maybe AGI, etc. Evidence suggests it wasn't a hit piece (at least initially) and was just about the rationality community/bay area influence since a lot of people don't really know about lesswrong. As part of it NYT said they had to reveal his real name and he asked them not to (details described in that blog post). This created controversy.
  - vmception 6y ago
    I’m sorry, rationality, lesswrong, AGI?? Adjusted gross income? Et Cetera? A lot of people know what this is and it bothers them? I’m still lost, so I looked at that older blog post and its also not explained there and the linked subreddit is the “non political one” so, reading the room here, there is a political context and those above terms are political and I should google something about “lesswrong politics” I’ll maybe check out that particular rabbit hole in synthesizing but can you enlighten me further because I still have no idea what you’re talking about
    - fossuser 6y ago
      AGI = Artificial General Intelligence, watch this for the main idea around the goal alignment problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjc1WuyPT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjc1WuyPT8 They're explicitly not political, lesswrong is a website/community and rationality is about trying to think better by being aware of normal cognitive biases and correcting for them. Also trying to make better predictions and understand things better by applying Bayes' theorem when possible to account for new evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem (and being willing to change your mind when the evidence changes). It's about trying to understand and accept what's true no matter what political tribe it could potentially align with. See: https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality For more reading about AGI: Books: - Superintelligence (I find his writing style somewhat tedious, but this is one of the original sources for a lot of the ideas): https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/1501227742 https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-... - Human Compatible: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intelligence-Problem/dp/0525558632/ https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intellige... - Life 3.0, A lot of the same ideas, but the other extreme of writing style from superintelligence makes it more accessible: https://www.amazon.com/Life-3-0-Being-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/1101970316/ https://www.amazon.com/Life-3-0-Being-Artificial-Intelligenc... Blog Posts: - https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ - https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/artificial-general-intelligence https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/artificial-general-intelligenc... - https://www.alexirpan.com/2020/08/18/ai-timelines.html https://www.alexirpan.com/2020/08/18/ai-timelines.html The reason the groups overlap a lot with AGI is that Eliezer Yudkowsky started less wrong and founded MIRI (the machine intelligence research institute). He's also formalized a lot of the thinking around the goal alignment problem and the existential risk of discovering how to create an AGI that can improve itself without first figuring out how to align it to human goals. For an example of why this is hard: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hidden-complexity-of-wishes https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hidden... and probably the most famous example is the paperclip maximizer: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer
Lazare 6y ago
Hard to pigeonhole. Long, sometimes rambling, well written (in my view; opinions vary), generally thoughtful, fairly centrist, often left-of-centre (enough so to deeply annoy certain breeds of conservatives), but with enough libertarian or classical liberal ideas sprinkled through it to deeply annoy a certain type of leftist. Some of his consistent themes are a gentle scepticism about what we think we know, a refusal to attribute malice to those who disagree with him, and a desire to be pragmatic about how we can achieve our shared goals. ...obviously this means there's a vocal faction on social media who believe he is the modern equivalent of a grand wizard of the KKK, and who have said so in exactly so many words repeatedly. If you're the kind of person who'd like Scott's writing, you'll probably like it a lot, and you will reach this conclusion quite quickly. You'll also likely find it inexplicable anyone might disagree. If you're the kind of person who does not like his writing, you'll probably hate it, and probably find it confusing that anyone else might not hate it. For reasons I don't remotely understand, he (and his writing) is oddly polarizing.
- cwkoss 6y ago
  Your last paragraph reminds me of one of my favorite short stories from him, about "Scissor Statements". Very black mirror vibes, and I mean that as a sincere complement. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
  - Lazare 6y ago
    Yes, I really like that one too. Fun and enjoyable to read, but once I got to the end, I found it quite thought provoking. It hadn't occurred to me before to think about its relevance to Scott himself; there's some interesting irony there. Particularly, I think, because I rather imagine that's the opposite of what Scott has ever intended with his writing.

For the uninitiated, what sort of content is Slate Star Codex known for? I see he kind of addresses it in his initial post. That description seemed pretty broad and open ended though.

ardy42 6y ago

> For the uninitiated, what sort of content is Slate Star Codex known for? IIRC, it's a blog that's very influential in the "rationalist" community, which I think spun out of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong. So very long-winded posts on miscellaneous topics.

malandrew 6y ago
Why put the word rationalist in quotes?
- tptacek 6y ago
  Because the word has multiple meanings, some of them subtextual. The quotes don't need to be derisive.
- zepto 6y ago
  Because it’s a label rather than a descriptor.
- mkr-hn 6y ago
  I don't know about them, but I've found the community around it both intelligent and accepting. That's not what I've come to expect from the word rationalist.
  - mrec 6y ago
    Agreed. Much less of a Mensa syndrome going on. I remember at the peak of the 2016 post-election meltdown the SSC subreddit hosted a sort of "ask Trump supporters anything" thread. Despite the absolute insanity of the time and only a minuscule fraction of the sub's readership supporting Trump, the conversation was interesting, calm and uniformly civil. There were a few Social Justice types that used to comment there too; again, all very civil, although there was sometimes the sense that they were regarded as an interesting zoo exhibit.
- istorical 6y ago
  Probably because self-ascribed 'rationalism' can potentially come across a bit self-aggrandizing. Like calling oneself part of the 'patriot' party (which implicitly implies members of other political groups aren't patriotic). Not that I have a problem with SSC, I think it's a cool blog.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Do you have a problem with the “democrat” party implying that other parties aren’t democratic?
    - traverseda 6y ago
      At this point it's pretty common for self-identifying lesswrong-style rationalists to use quote marks, or add a bunch of qualifiers. Weird nerdy people get a lot of hate, there are whole subreddits devoted to hating on "rationalists" for a variety of reasons. Adding quotes tends to calm those people down, and make them a bit less hateful. Really it's not derisive, it's self defense.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Do you have a problem with the “democrat” party Its called the “Democratic Party”, and it is a proper noun, which distinguishes it visiually form the common use of “democratic”.
      - wmil 6y ago
        While some people get upset about it, "Democrat" is useful to differentiate the two verbally. Obviously capitalization isn't possible. Obama's team launched https://democrats.org/ https://democrats.org/ in 2009 or so. I really think people shouldn't get upset over "Democrat".
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        “Democrat” is the singular noun form, “Democrats” is the plural noun form, “Democratic” is the adjective form, and “Democrat”-as-adjective is the “signal that the speaker is a hostile partisan" form. They are all useful distinctions.
- dfabulich 6y ago
  Some members of the LessWrong online community call themselves "the rationalist community," but there are plenty of people who self-ascribe as rationalist who don't affiliate with that community. Here, the term means the LessWrong rationalists, not all rationalists everywhere.
- rodgerd 6y ago
  Humans aren't rational. Anyone who claims they are, doesn't understand enough about the human condition to offer you any advice that you should care about.
  - Tarq0n 6y ago
    The whole point of rationalism is understanding our biases and cognitive flaws, not to pretend they don't affect us.
    - bnralt 6y ago
      I think that's part of the problem. The stated goal is to understand our biases and flaws, and to become "less wrong." But it's easy to fall into a trap where one claims to get better at such biases, therefore making them more rational than people who haven't, therefore making their position superior - hence re-enforcing their biases. A lot of the public declarations coming from "rationalist" communities remind me of public declarations of sin coming from certain religious groups. Though it presents itself as self-effacing, it ends up being affirming. You rarely see the thought extend to "therefore, outgroups that I've been deriding perhaps know better than my ingroup." Particularly interesting when there are biases that have almost become dogma in certain "rationalist" circles, such as the preoccupation with godlike artificial superintelligence.
- myhf 6y ago
  They call themselves "rationalists". "Rationalizers" might be more accurate.
- voidhorse 6y ago
  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-instrumental/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-instrumental/ It's because rationality that's committed to a narrow definition of what rationality means typically leads to irrationality at some terminal point. When people describe themselves as "rationalist" they typically mean "instrumental reason" which is a form of reasoning that has its own bias and baked in values (e.g. western modern values, often supremely meritocratic, technocratic, utilitarian values) which are different from the values powering the methods and forms of reasoning of other cultures and other historical periods. There's a tendency for a superiority complex to creep in where one who takes undue pride in one's "reasoning" sees only one mode of reasoning as the one true reasoning (one true value system). Ancient cultures had value systems that were entirely different than ours, this doesn't make our scientific reasoning "better" it makes our reasonings incommensurable until you commit to some system of shared values as the one true system of values (e.g. self-preservation, but there's nothing saying that's what humanity should value and in fact one could argue that one of the important facets of being human is the capability to reject this value).
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    > Ancient cultures had value systems that were entirely different than ours, this doesn't make our scientific reasoning "better" It's better at coming to the correct conclusions about objective aspects of the world (better – not perfect, mind you). This is useful if your value system prioritises knowledge, though knowledge is pretty useful for all sorts, so I think science is good unless your value system penalises knowledge-generation.
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  Likely because ardy42 isn't a fan of them and the word would otherwise have positive connotations. In general, the quotes in this context signal an ideological opposition.
  - thesteamboat 6y ago
    The quotes might signal opposition, but they also might just signal fuzziness. E.g. This is a word that you're probably familiar with used in a specific jargony way that you cannot deduce merely from the standard definition.
    - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
      Much like the words humanist or intellectual? Would you agree that each of those words can be used in "a specific jargony way" and that putting quotation marks around either very likely signals opposition?
      - drdeca 6y ago
        I'm not familiar with a distinction between a more common usage and a more jargony usage of those two words. Is there one? Actually, I don't think I really understand any usage of the word "humanist" very well.
        AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        With no context, humanism sounds like it's just something pertaining to humans. Also, at least to my perception, the word has a built-in positive valence. But, it has a much more specific meaning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism There's a similar dynamic with rationalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism
        drdeca 6y ago
        ah, but here "rationalist" isn't being used in that particular way. One of the reasons it is sometimes put in quotes, I think, is to distinguish it from the meaning that you've linked. A rationalist in that sense is someone who holds the philosophical positions described in that article. A rationalist-in-this-other-sense is someone who, uh, generally has beliefs in some other collection of philosophical positions, and is involved in a certain community/social-circle . It is an unfortunate overloading of a term. Some have given a definition of rationalist (or rationalist-adjacent) as : Eliezer Yudkowsky is a rationalist, and anyone who spends a lot of time arguing with rationalists is a rationalist. This is quite a different thing that the sense of the word described in the Wikipedia article. Personally, I'm rather fond of the group, but there are still cases where I find myself using quote marks when describing it.

bpodgursky 6y ago

Good... content. I don't really have a good summary except that he digs into random issues (and thought experiments) with an intellectual honesty and wit + clarity that I haven't found elsewhere.

texuf 6y ago

Lots of very in depth book reviews. Scott is a psychiatrist, so lots of posts on the replication crisis in the soft sciences. And plenty of "rationalist" posts, which are just deep thoughts on culture and society. I'm still not entirely sure why he's controversial. He's definitely very very smart. Unfortunately the rationalist community has a few people who will start arguing that IQ is at least partially genetic, therefore IQ is also tied to race somehow... I think? So watch out for those landmines.

bpodgursky 6y ago
Scott is very intentional about not getting into the landmine issues. IMO part of his service to the community is helping define those boundaries for the less... socially aware members of the community (ie, the things you Do Not Discuss).
- ardy42 6y ago
  > IMO part of his service to the community is helping define those boundaries for the less... socially aware members of the community (ie, the things you Do Not Discuss). Are you talking about stuff like this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f...
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    This one comes to mind https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-...
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      I wish more people cited Frances Yates on Bruno - his heliocentrism was a side note even before he attacked Copernicus but he had some fantastic mnemonic techniques

galactus 6y ago

Popsci about "nootropics" and QI.

Shoop 6y ago

Scott has written an intro post about this on the new blog: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wondering-why-ive https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/youre-probably-wonderi... The about page also has some links to more popular articles on the old blog: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/about https://astralcodexten.substack.com/about

fossuser 6y ago

Here are some of my favorites that I'd recommend: The Toxoplasma of Rage: An essay about how more controversial examples tend to get elevated and thinking about why that happens. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... Meditations On Moloch: An essay about how incentives and coordination problems cause systemic societal issues: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ Who By Very Slow Decay: An essay about death in medicine. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay... I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup: An essay about tribalism https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... He's a good writer, as other replies mention it came out of lesswrong (see: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences). Some lesswrong favorites (mostly Eliezer Yudkowsky): Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb... A Fable of Science and Politics: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hfGNLf4Hg5DXqJCF/a-fable-of-science-and-politics https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hfGNLf4Hg5DXqJCF/a-fable-of... Pretending to be Wise: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jeyvzALDbjdjjv5RW/pretending-to-be-wise https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jeyvzALDbjdjjv5RW/pretending... Local Validity as a Key to Sanity and Civilization: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WQFioaudEH8R7fyhm/local-validity-as-a-key-to-sanity-and-civilization https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WQFioaudEH8R7fyhm/local-vali... The Bottom Line: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom... --- For a fun creative fiction one from Scott: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-dee... From EY: http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/

mrec 6y ago
That's a good list. I'm also very partial to Fearful Symmetry: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/14/fearful-symmetry/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/14/fearful-symmetry/ although I seem to be in a minority on that one. I find it immensely calming when the horrors of the Culture War get too much. Also G.K. Chesterton on AI Risk: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/01/g-k-chesterton-on-ai-risk/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/01/g-k-chesterton-on-ai-r... for a giggle, although it'll probably only appeal to Chesterton fans. Oh, and to anyone working through this list, please take the trigger warning on Who By Very Slow Decay seriously. He's not kidding.

norswap 6y ago

Here is a decent selection of top articles: https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/top-slate-star-codex-articles-from-the-wayback-machine-f5ab50da83f9 https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/top-slate-star-cod... I didn't write this, but I second most of the selection.

vmception 6y ago

Also for the uninitiated, what is this post about? Why were people trying to cancel him, cancel the Times, and more?

fossuser 6y ago
Summary: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... NYT was writing a piece about rationality, SSC, lesswrong, east bay, maybe AGI, etc. Evidence suggests it wasn't a hit piece (at least initially) and was just about the rationality community/bay area influence since a lot of people don't really know about lesswrong. As part of it NYT said they had to reveal his real name and he asked them not to (details described in that blog post). This created controversy.
- vmception 6y ago
  I’m sorry, rationality, lesswrong, AGI?? Adjusted gross income? Et Cetera? A lot of people know what this is and it bothers them? I’m still lost, so I looked at that older blog post and its also not explained there and the linked subreddit is the “non political one” so, reading the room here, there is a political context and those above terms are political and I should google something about “lesswrong politics” I’ll maybe check out that particular rabbit hole in synthesizing but can you enlighten me further because I still have no idea what you’re talking about
  - fossuser 6y ago
    AGI = Artificial General Intelligence, watch this for the main idea around the goal alignment problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjc1WuyPT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUjc1WuyPT8 They're explicitly not political, lesswrong is a website/community and rationality is about trying to think better by being aware of normal cognitive biases and correcting for them. Also trying to make better predictions and understand things better by applying Bayes' theorem when possible to account for new evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem (and being willing to change your mind when the evidence changes). It's about trying to understand and accept what's true no matter what political tribe it could potentially align with. See: https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality For more reading about AGI: Books: - Superintelligence (I find his writing style somewhat tedious, but this is one of the original sources for a lot of the ideas): https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/1501227742 https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-... - Human Compatible: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intelligence-Problem/dp/0525558632/ https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intellige... - Life 3.0, A lot of the same ideas, but the other extreme of writing style from superintelligence makes it more accessible: https://www.amazon.com/Life-3-0-Being-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/1101970316/ https://www.amazon.com/Life-3-0-Being-Artificial-Intelligenc... Blog Posts: - https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ - https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/artificial-general-intelligence https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/artificial-general-intelligenc... - https://www.alexirpan.com/2020/08/18/ai-timelines.html https://www.alexirpan.com/2020/08/18/ai-timelines.html The reason the groups overlap a lot with AGI is that Eliezer Yudkowsky started less wrong and founded MIRI (the machine intelligence research institute). He's also formalized a lot of the thinking around the goal alignment problem and the existential risk of discovering how to create an AGI that can improve itself without first figuring out how to align it to human goals. For an example of why this is hard: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hidden-complexity-of-wishes https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hidden... and probably the most famous example is the paperclip maximizer: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer

Lazare 6y ago

Hard to pigeonhole. Long, sometimes rambling, well written (in my view; opinions vary), generally thoughtful, fairly centrist, often left-of-centre (enough so to deeply annoy certain breeds of conservatives), but with enough libertarian or classical liberal ideas sprinkled through it to deeply annoy a certain type of leftist. Some of his consistent themes are a gentle scepticism about what we think we know, a refusal to attribute malice to those who disagree with him, and a desire to be pragmatic about how we can achieve our shared goals. ...obviously this means there's a vocal faction on social media who believe he is the modern equivalent of a grand wizard of the KKK, and who have said so in exactly so many words repeatedly. If you're the kind of person who'd like Scott's writing, you'll probably like it a lot, and you will reach this conclusion quite quickly. You'll also likely find it inexplicable anyone might disagree. If you're the kind of person who does not like his writing, you'll probably hate it, and probably find it confusing that anyone else might not hate it. For reasons I don't remotely understand, he (and his writing) is oddly polarizing.

cwkoss 6y ago
Your last paragraph reminds me of one of my favorite short stories from him, about "Scissor Statements". Very black mirror vibes, and I mean that as a sincere complement. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
- Lazare 6y ago
  Yes, I really like that one too. Fun and enjoyable to read, but once I got to the end, I found it quite thought provoking. It hadn't occurred to me before to think about its relevance to Scott himself; there's some interesting irony there. Particularly, I think, because I rather imagine that's the opposite of what Scott has ever intended with his writing.