3 ms·

> They were “easily persuaded by weird, contrarian things,” said Robin Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University who helped create the blogs t

by api 6y ago

> They were “easily persuaded by weird, contrarian things,” said Robin Hanson, a professor of economics at George Mason University who helped create the blogs that spawned the Rationalist movement. “Because they decided they were more rational than other people, they trusted their own internal judgment.” The article as a whole is meh, but that quote made skimming it worthwhile. I've never been impressed by the "rationalist" community around SSC, LessWrong, Overcoming Bias, etc., but I've really struggled to put my finger on it. This gets pretty damn close. The whole sphere struck me from the beginning (way before present controversies) as a big circle jerk of smart people trying to impress each other. The standard issue rationalist flex is to pick a contrarian point of view and invent an extremely novel argument for it. Bonus points if it skirts close to something controversial or taboo, but doesn't quite cross the line. Then an endless thread of discussion can ensue where all the participants have an opportunity to flex by either agreeing or taking apart the argument. Problem is: I never got the sense that anything was being accomplished, nor that the ideas coming out of these places stood up when dragged out of their bubbles and examined in the context of the wider world and the wider sphere of human experience. The first thing that really put me off was the whole idea of runaway super-intelligent AI. Please, please, please for the love of g-d study some biology. Dunning-Krueger is a worn out meme but I think the idea of it applies well to CS people talking about intelligence (as opposed to glorified statistical regression) without knowing anything about biology, which is the only existing example of an intelligent system. The neo-racist ("human biodiversity") and neoreactionary stuff just put me off further. When it emerged it didn't surprise me one bit that it came from those circles. Contrarian? Check. Controversial? Check. Elitist? Check. In the end I started thinking of it as an online cult, sort of a really high-brow companion to the 'chans. I guess the hierarchy goes: rationalist sphere > 'chan culture > Qanon.

Tenoke 6y ago
Hanson is very pro-Scott and funnily enough much more contrarian and sucked into what the nyt would think of as questionable beliefs based on analysis than Scott is. Quoting him like this is downright amusing and only just dishonest enough to push you towards having a negative opinion without being 'wrong'.
Noos 6y ago
I don't think this is fair, and I generally am not a fan of the community either. I don't think they are trying to impress each other, or are contrarian for the sake of it. I think it's a fair amount of legitimately smart people who don't have much in the way of life experience, may be in part on the autism spectrum, and tend to be engineer/rational types who think systematically more than intuitively. I mean they construct and deal with systems. This leads to sort of a naivety that tends to look for elegant explanations of a sort and is vulnerable to them. The all-explaining system of thought that in general intellectuals tend to get ensnared by, but is self-contained and self-perpetuating. The idea of the messiness or stickiness or even corrosiveness of life on these systems tends to not be entertained much, as it reduces the power of rationality. So the rationalists get really vulnerable to these kind of left-field ideas like AI risk, or neo-reaction. These ideas are often rationally elegant in the way many negative systems are; they are a novel way of explaining things. The red pill/manosphere stuff was similar; as a system of thought it's a lot more elegant and explanatory to its audience than the alternatives, and even criticized actual things as well as its own untrue things. I guess I'm saying is that it's more the rationalists are vulnerable to getting captured by those contrarian ideas you describe than they are malicious or doing it to flex. It's not really unique to them, academia goes through it, philosophers go through it, artists go through it, etc. As for the cultish stuff, its apparent to me that a lot of rationalists are kind of adrift in real life due to the great unpersoning of religion and its replacement with woke or trumpian politics. Thats part of why the grey tribe was coined, neither left nor right. They need meaning as well as anyone.
- ThrustVectoring 6y ago
  IMO the entire ecosystem is just by and for people with high personality-trait Openness. If you write a blog that presents novel ideas in interesting ways, you get a readership full of people that like reading novel ideas presented in interesting ways. Nothing really more interesting or complicated going on here - people rarely have one weird idea, they tend to be idiosyncratic or conformist in general.
- AngrySkillzz 6y ago
  > rationalists are kind of adrift in real life due to the great unpersoning of religion and its replacement with woke or trumpian politics Interesting point. It's a collectivist religion for people who despise "religion" and "collectivism"
lasagnaphil 6y ago
It's unfortunate that given SSC's talents he's being associated with the "rationalist" community as a whole, given that they really have a bad rep among the Internet. From reading a few of his articles SSC doesn't seem to be the type who flouts his ego because he understands "Bayesianism" or statistics/psychology, he's often a pessimist and often shifts his opinions if he's not confident enough about it. There's a cautiousness that always lingers in his writing, which might make it infuriating for some readers (the "why are you not taking a firm stance at this and are just making vague suggestions!" reaction, which might further mislead some to think of him as a crypto-racist/fascist/whatever.). But I understand there's an appeal for this sort of cautious, "grey" writing. Plus SSC does frequently show empathy towards people in his writing (practicing psychiatry would probably require at least some!), and empathy in writing is becoming a rarer sight these days. It's just that his method of trying to untangle/solve the world's problems might seem too technocratic for some. Your critique of the rationlist community as a circlejerk seems to be on point, it seems to be driven by an elitism fueled by knowing some Bayesian statistics (which I know the hype for it is kind of bullshit because I'm currently studying it for machine learning, and it seems to create as many problems as well as solutions.) But one thing that still is murky is how the "rationalist" community got to be highly associated with NRx (the neoreactionaries). I don't the NRx has ever formed a majority on sites like LessWrong (a 2013 poll, which was probably the NRx's height, showed only 2.5%: https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=43fNDwAAQBAJ&q=3060&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=3060&f=false https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=43fNDwAAQBAJ&q=3060&redi...). But it still seems that they have used the site as a platform to lure STEM people who are frustrated with the "woke culture" around them. I think I've got some clues from Sandifier's book about the subject ("Basilisk: A Neoreaction"), but I really still don't understand their culture well (or maybe, I think I need better hobbies than studying about obscure Internet subcultures, right...) Really, I think SSC's posts on his own are worth it, but it's just depressing how too many Internet "factions" are trying to bend it as something else.
twic 6y ago
I pretty much agree with your characterisation of LessWrong (and i think Yudkowsky is a complete waste of time), but i found SSC to be much better. Part of the same scene, but much closer to reality. I wouldn't write off SSC for LW's failings. Unrelatedly, i think your description also applies to modern Continental philosophy / critical theory - it's far more a game to prove who has the biggest brain than it is a real attempt to do anything useful.
- api 6y ago
  Yes, I agree about a lot of critical theory too. There’s a lot of Chinese finger traps for the brain around. We fixate on this stuff like raccoons with shiny objects. One of my litmus tests is usefulness or potential usefulness. I define this broadly to include social and aesthetic stuff as well as utilitarian concerns. Even with a broad definition a lot of this brain wank just strikes me as useless and not really applicable to anything.

by api 6y ago

Tenoke 6y ago

Hanson is very pro-Scott and funnily enough much more contrarian and sucked into what the nyt would think of as questionable beliefs based on analysis than Scott is. Quoting him like this is downright amusing and only just dishonest enough to push you towards having a negative opinion without being 'wrong'.

Noos 6y ago

I don't think this is fair, and I generally am not a fan of the community either. I don't think they are trying to impress each other, or are contrarian for the sake of it. I think it's a fair amount of legitimately smart people who don't have much in the way of life experience, may be in part on the autism spectrum, and tend to be engineer/rational types who think systematically more than intuitively. I mean they construct and deal with systems. This leads to sort of a naivety that tends to look for elegant explanations of a sort and is vulnerable to them. The all-explaining system of thought that in general intellectuals tend to get ensnared by, but is self-contained and self-perpetuating. The idea of the messiness or stickiness or even corrosiveness of life on these systems tends to not be entertained much, as it reduces the power of rationality. So the rationalists get really vulnerable to these kind of left-field ideas like AI risk, or neo-reaction. These ideas are often rationally elegant in the way many negative systems are; they are a novel way of explaining things. The red pill/manosphere stuff was similar; as a system of thought it's a lot more elegant and explanatory to its audience than the alternatives, and even criticized actual things as well as its own untrue things. I guess I'm saying is that it's more the rationalists are vulnerable to getting captured by those contrarian ideas you describe than they are malicious or doing it to flex. It's not really unique to them, academia goes through it, philosophers go through it, artists go through it, etc. As for the cultish stuff, its apparent to me that a lot of rationalists are kind of adrift in real life due to the great unpersoning of religion and its replacement with woke or trumpian politics. Thats part of why the grey tribe was coined, neither left nor right. They need meaning as well as anyone.

ThrustVectoring 6y ago
IMO the entire ecosystem is just by and for people with high personality-trait Openness. If you write a blog that presents novel ideas in interesting ways, you get a readership full of people that like reading novel ideas presented in interesting ways. Nothing really more interesting or complicated going on here - people rarely have one weird idea, they tend to be idiosyncratic or conformist in general.
AngrySkillzz 6y ago
> rationalists are kind of adrift in real life due to the great unpersoning of religion and its replacement with woke or trumpian politics Interesting point. It's a collectivist religion for people who despise "religion" and "collectivism"

lasagnaphil 6y ago

It's unfortunate that given SSC's talents he's being associated with the "rationalist" community as a whole, given that they really have a bad rep among the Internet. From reading a few of his articles SSC doesn't seem to be the type who flouts his ego because he understands "Bayesianism" or statistics/psychology, he's often a pessimist and often shifts his opinions if he's not confident enough about it. There's a cautiousness that always lingers in his writing, which might make it infuriating for some readers (the "why are you not taking a firm stance at this and are just making vague suggestions!" reaction, which might further mislead some to think of him as a crypto-racist/fascist/whatever.). But I understand there's an appeal for this sort of cautious, "grey" writing. Plus SSC does frequently show empathy towards people in his writing (practicing psychiatry would probably require at least some!), and empathy in writing is becoming a rarer sight these days. It's just that his method of trying to untangle/solve the world's problems might seem too technocratic for some. Your critique of the rationlist community as a circlejerk seems to be on point, it seems to be driven by an elitism fueled by knowing some Bayesian statistics (which I know the hype for it is kind of bullshit because I'm currently studying it for machine learning, and it seems to create as many problems as well as solutions.) But one thing that still is murky is how the "rationalist" community got to be highly associated with NRx (the neoreactionaries). I don't the NRx has ever formed a majority on sites like LessWrong (a 2013 poll, which was probably the NRx's height, showed only 2.5%: https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=43fNDwAAQBAJ&q=3060&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=3060&f=false https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=43fNDwAAQBAJ&q=3060&redi...). But it still seems that they have used the site as a platform to lure STEM people who are frustrated with the "woke culture" around them. I think I've got some clues from Sandifier's book about the subject ("Basilisk: A Neoreaction"), but I really still don't understand their culture well (or maybe, I think I need better hobbies than studying about obscure Internet subcultures, right...) Really, I think SSC's posts on his own are worth it, but it's just depressing how too many Internet "factions" are trying to bend it as something else.

twic 6y ago

I pretty much agree with your characterisation of LessWrong (and i think Yudkowsky is a complete waste of time), but i found SSC to be much better. Part of the same scene, but much closer to reality. I wouldn't write off SSC for LW's failings. Unrelatedly, i think your description also applies to modern Continental philosophy / critical theory - it's far more a game to prove who has the biggest brain than it is a real attempt to do anything useful.

api 6y ago
Yes, I agree about a lot of critical theory too. There’s a lot of Chinese finger traps for the brain around. We fixate on this stuff like raccoons with shiny objects. One of my litmus tests is usefulness or potential usefulness. I define this broadly to include social and aesthetic stuff as well as utilitarian concerns. Even with a broad definition a lot of this brain wank just strikes me as useless and not really applicable to anything.