40 ms·
Guess I'm a rationalist now
- VincentEvans 1y ago[dead]
- chipsrafferty 1y agoI'm absolutely shocked that a rationalist would also be a Zionist /s
- chipsrafferty 1y agoAll rationalists and effective altruists are bad people pretending to be good people for social capital.
- _zagj 1y agoDoes that mean he read the Harry Potter fanfic?
- tines 1y agoThe HP fanfic is what decisively drove me away from this shitshow years ago. I'm so glad I read that first rather than getting sucked in through another more palatable route.
- roenxi 1y agoThe irony here is the Rationalist community are made up of the ones who weren't observant enough to pick that "identifying as a Rationalist" is generally not a rational decision.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoFrom what I’ve seen it’s a mix of that, some who avoid the issue, and some who do it intentionally even though they don’t really believe it.
- cue_the_strings 1y agoI feel like I'm witnessing something that Adam Curtis would cover in the last part of The Century of Self, in real time.
- greener_grass 1y agoThere was always an underlying Randian impulse to the EA crowd - as if we could solve any issue if we just get the right minds onto tackling the problem. The black-and-white thinking, group think, hero worship and charicaturist literature are all there.
- cue_the_strings 1y agoI always wondered is it her direct influence, or is it just that those characteristics naturally "go together".
- voidhorse 1y agoThese kinds of propositions are determined by history, not by declaration. Espouse your beliefs, participate in certain circles if you want, but avoid labels unless you intend to do ideological battle with other label-bearers.
- Sharlin 1y agoBleh, labels can be restrictive, but guess what labels can also be? Useful.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- resource_waste 1y ago>These kinds of propositions are determined by history, not by declaration. A single failed prediction should revoke the label. The ideal rational person should be pyrrhonian skeptic, or at a minimum a bayesian epistemologist.
- MeteorMarc 1y agoThis is what rationalisme entails: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/
- greener_grass 1y agoFor any speed-runners out there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Dogmas_of_Empiricism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Dogmas_of_Empiricism
- Sharlin 1y agoThat's a different definition of rationalism from what is used here.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoIt is. But the Rationalists, by taking that name as a label, are claiming that they are what the GP said. They want the prestige/respect/audience that the word gets, without actually being that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- FeepingCreature 1y ago(The rationalists never took that label, it is falsely applied to them. The project is called rationality, not rationalism. Unfortunately, this is now so pervasive that there's no fixing it.)
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoHmm, interesting. Might I trouble you for your definitions of rationality and rationalism? (Not a "gotcha". I really want to know.)
- 1y ago
- amarcheschi 1y agoThey call themselves rationalist, yet they don't have very rational opinions if you ask them about scientific racism [1] [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-learn-to https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-le...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wffurr 1y agoI am not sure precisely it not very rational about that link. Did you have a specific point you were trying to make with it?
- amarcheschi 1y agoYes, that they're not "rational". If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity-part-5-the-people-of-alexander/ https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... 1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute As I said, it's not very rational of them to support such theories. And of course as you scratch the surface, it's the old 20th century racist theories, and of course those theories are supported by (mostly white men, if I had to guess) people claiming to be rational
- derangedHorse 1y agoNothing about the article you posted in your first comment seems racist. You could argue that believing in the conclusions of Richard Lynn’s work makes someone racist, but to support that claim, you’d need to show that those who believe it do so out of willful ignorance of evidence that his science is flawed.
- contrarian1234 1y agoThe article made me think deeper about what rubs me the wrong way about the whole movement I think there is some inherent tension btwn being "rational" about things and trying to reason about things from first principle.. And the general absolutist tone of the community. The people involved all seem very... Full of themselves ? They don't really ever show a sense of "hey, I've got a thought, maybe I haven't considered all angles to it, maybe I'm wrong - but here it is". The type of people that would be embarrassed to not have an opinion on a topic or say "I don't know" In the Pre-AI days this was sort of tolerable, but since then.. The frothing at the mouth convinced of the end of the world.. Just shows a real lack of humility and lack of acknowledgment that maybe we don't have a full grasp of the implications of AI. Maybe it's actually going to be rather benign and more boring than expected
- Avicebron 1y agoYeah the "rational" part always seemed a smokescreen for the ability to produce and ingest their own and their associates methane gases. I get it, I enjoyed being told I'm a super genius always right quantum physicist mathematician by the girls at Stanford too. But holy hell man, have some class, maybe consider there's more good to be done in rural Indiana getting some dirt under those nails..
- TacticalCoder 1y ago[dead]
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoIt feels like a shield of sorts, "I am a rationalist therefore my opinion has no emotional load, it's just facts bro how dare you get upset at me telling xyz is such-and-such you are being irrational do your own research" but I don't know enough about it, I'm just trolling.
- shermantanktop 1y agoThe meta with these people is “my brilliance comes with an ego that others must cater to.” I find it sadly hilarious to watch academic types fight over meaningless scraps of recognition like toddlers wrestling for a toy. That said, I enjoy some of the rationalist blog content and find it thoughtful, up to the point where they bravely allow their chain of reasoning to justify antisocial ideas.
- paganel 1y ago[flagged]
- phgn 1y agoThank you for sharing the link. It's very hard for me to take anyone seriously who doesn't speak out against the genocide. They're usually arguing about imaginary problems. ("if the will exists" in the article puts the blame for the situation on one side, which is inacceptable)
- honeybadger1 1y ago[flagged]
- Fraterkes 1y ago[flagged]
- Fraterkes 1y ago(Ive also been somewhat dogmatic and angry about this conflict, in the opposite direction. But I wouldnt call myself a rationalist)
- kombine 1y ago[flagged]
- pbiggar 1y ago[flagged]
- phgn 1y agoVery well put.
- zaphar 1y agoI'm not a Rationalist, however, nothing you said in your first paragraph is factual and therefore the resultant thesis isn't supported. In fact it ignores nearly 2-3000 years of history and ignores a whole bunch of surrounding context.
- atwrk 1y agoNot interested in discussing that topic here, but that is precisely the kind of category error that would fit right in with the rationalist crowd: GP was talking about human rights, i.e. actual humans, you are talking about nations or peoples, which is an entirely orthogonal concept.
- simiones 1y agoThe 2-3000 years of history are entirely and wholly irrelevant. Especially as history shows clearly that the Palestinians are just as much the descendants of the ancient Israelites as the Jewish diaspora that returned to their modern land after the founding of modern Israel. The old population from before the Roman conquest never disappeared - some departed and formed the diaspora, but most stayed. Some converted to Christianity during this time as well. Later, they were conquered by Mohammed and his Caliphate, and many converted to Islam, but they're still the same people.
- LastTrain 1y ago[flagged]
- radicalbyte 1y ago* 20 somethings who are clearly on spectrum * Group are "special" * Centered around a charismatic leader * Weird sex stuff Guys we have a cult!
- krapp 1y agoThese are the people who came up with Roko's Basilisk, Effective Altruism and spawned the Zizians. I think Robert Evans described them not as a cult but as a cult incubator, or something along those lines.
- ausbah 1y agoso many of the people i’ve read in these rationalist groups sound like they need a hug and therapy
- nancyminusone 1y agoThey seem to have a lot in common with the People's Front of Judea (or the Judian People's Front, for that matter).
- toasterlovin 1y agoAlso: * Communal living * Sacred texts & knowledge * Doomsday predictions * Guru/prophet lives on the largesse of followers It's rich for a group that claims to reason based on priors to completely ignore that they possess all the major defining characteristics of a cult.
- timmytokyo 1y ago
- t_mann 1y ago> “You’re [X]?! The quantum physicist who’s always getting into arguments on the Internet, and who’s essentially always right, but who sustains an unreasonable amount of psychic damage in the process?” > “Yes,” I replied, not bothering to correct the “physicist” part. Didn't read much beyond that part. He'll fit right in with the rationalist crowd...
- simianparrot 1y agoNo actual person talks like that —- and if they really did, they’ve taken on the role of a fictional character. Which says a lot about the clientele either way. I skimmed a bit here and there after that but this comes off as plain grandiosity. Even the title is a line you can imagine a hollywood character speaking out loud as they look into the camera, before giving a smug smirk.
- FeteCommuniste 1y agoI assumed that the stuff in quotes was a summary of the general gist of the conversations he had, not a word for word quote.
- riffraff 1y agoI don't think GP objects to the literalness, as much as to the "I am known for always being right and I acknowledge it", which comes off as.. not humble.
- Filligree 1y agoHe is known for that, right or wrong.
- Ar-Curunir 1y agoI mean, Scott's been wrong on plenty of issues, but of course he is not wont to admit that on his own blog.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gooseus 1y agoI've never thought ill of Scott Aaronson and have often admired him and his work when I stumble across it. However, reading this article about all these people at their "Galt's Gultch", I thought — "oh, I guess he's a rhinoceros now" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_(play) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_(play) Here's a bad joke for you all — What's the difference between a "rationalist" and "rationalizer"? Only the incentives.
- dcminter 1y agoUpvote for the play link - that's interesting and I hadn't heard of it before. Worthy of a top-level post IMO.
- gooseus 1y agoI heard of the play originally from Chapter 10 of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder: https://archive.org/details/on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-the-twentieth-century-by-timothy-snyder-z-lib.org/page/n35/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/on-tyranny-twenty-lessons-from-t... Which I did post top-level here on November 7th - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071791 Unfortunately it didn't a lot of traction and dang told me that there wasn't a way to re-up or "second chance" the post due to the HN policy on posts "correlated with political conflict".
- dcminter 1y agoAh, I guess I see his point; I can't see the discussion being about use of metaphor in political fiction rather than whose team is worst. Still, I'm glad I now know the reference.
- NoGravitas 1y agoI have always considered Scott Aaronson the least bad of the big-name rationalists. Which makes it slightly funny that he didn't realize he was one until Scott Siskind told him he was.
- Joker_vD 1y agoAh, so it's like the Order of the October Star: certain people have simply realized that they are entitled to wear it. Or, rather, that they had always been entitled to wear it. Got it.
- samuel 1y agoI'm currently reading Yudkowsky's "Rationality: from AI to zombies". Not my first try, since the book is just a collection of blog posts and I found it a bit hard to swallow due its repetitiveness, so I gave up after the first 50 "chapters" the first time I tried. Now I'm enjoying it way more, probably because I'm more interested in the topic now. For those who haven't delved(ha!) into his work or have been pushed back by the cultish looks, I have to say that he's genuinelly onto something. There are a lot of practical ideas that are pretty useful for everyday thinking ("Belief in Belief", "Emergence", "Generalizing from fiction", etc...). For example, I recall being in lot of arguments that are purely "semantical" in nature. You seem to disagree about something but it's just that both sides aren't really referring to the same phenomenon. The source of the disagreement is just using the same word for different, but related, "objects". This is something that seems obvious, but the kind of thing you only realize in retrospect, and I think I'm much better equipped now to be aware of it in real time. I recommend giving it a try.
- greener_grass 1y agoI think there is an arbitrage going on where STEM types who lack background in philosophy, literature, history are super impressed by basic ideas from those subjects being presented to them by stealth. Not saying this is you, but these topics have been discussed for thousands of years, so it should at least be surprising that Yudkowsky is breaking new ground.
- samuel 1y agoI don't claim that his work is original (the AI related probably is, but it's just tangentially related to rationalism), but it's clearly presented and is practical. And, BTW, I could just be ignorant in a lot of these topics, I take no offense in that. Still I think most people can learn something from an unprejudiced reading.
- elt895 1y agoAre there other philosophy- or history-grounded sources that are comparable? If so, I’d love some recommendations. Yudkowsky and others have their problems, but their texts have an interesting points, are relatively easy to read and understand, and you can clearly see which real issues they’re addressing. From my experience, alternatives tend to fall into two categories: 1. Genuine classical philosophy, which is usually incredibly hard to read and after 50 pages I have no idea what the author is even talking about anymore. 2. Basically self help books that take one or very few idea and repeat them ad nouseam for 200 pages.
- d--b 1y agoSorry, I haven't followed what is it that these guys call Rationalism?
- pja 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community Fair warning: when you turn over some of the rocks here you find squirming, slithering things that should not be given access to the light.
- retRen87 1y agoHe already had a rationalist “coming out” like ages ago. Dude just make up your mind https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2537 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2537
- kragen 1y agoWhile this was an interesting and enjoyable read, it doesn't seem to be a “rationalist ‘coming out’”. On the contrary, he's just saying he would have liked going to a ‘rationalist’ meeting.
- retRen87 1y agoThe last paragraph discusses how he's resisted the label and then he closes with “the rationalists have walked the walk and rationaled the rational, and thus they’ve given me no choice but to stand up and be counted as one of them.” He’s clearly identifying as a rationalist there
- resource_waste 1y ago"I'm a Rationalist" "Here are some labels I identify as" So they arent rational enough to understand first principles don't objectively exist. They were corrupted by words of old men, and have built a foundation of understanding on them. This isnt rationality, but rather Reason based. I consider Instrumentalism and Bayesian epistemology to be the best we can get towards knowledge. I'm going to be a bit blunt and not humble at all, this person is a philosophical inferior to myself. Their confidence is hubris. They haven't discovered epistemology. There isnt enough skepticism in their claims. They use black and white labels and black and white claims. I remember when I was confident like the author, but a few empirical pieces of evidence made me realize I was wrong. "it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy."
- bargainbin 1y ago[flagged]
- falcor84 1y agoI don't see how that's any more "wanker" then this famous saying by Socrates's; Western thought is wankers all the way down. > Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.
- cogman10 1y ago> clever enough to always be right Oh, see here's the secret. Lots of people THINK they are always right. Nobody is. The problem is you can read a lot of books, study a lot of philosophy, practice a lot of debate. None of that will cause you to be right when you are wrong. It will, however, make it easier for you to sell your wrong position to others. It also makes it easier for you to fool yourself and others into believing you're uniquely clever.
- KolibriFly 1y agoSometimes the meta-skill of how you come across while being right is just as important as the correctness itself…
- gadders 1y agoIt's a coping mechanism for autists, mainly.
- lowbloodsugar 1y ago“I don’t like how they said it” and “I don’t like how this made me feel” is the aspect of the human brain that has given us Trump. As long as the idea that “how you feel about it” is a basis for any decision making, the world will continue to be fucked. The authors audience largely understand that “this made me feel” is an indication that introspection is required, and not an indication that the author should be ignored.
- 1y ago
- dr_dshiv 1y agoSince intuitive and non-rational thinking are demonstrably rational in the face of incomplete information, I guess we’re all rationalists. Or that’s how I’m rationalizing it, anyway.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwaway984393 1y ago[dead]
- aosaigh 1y ago> “You’re Scott Aaronson?! The quantum physicist who’s always getting into arguments on the Internet, and who’s essentially always right, but who sustains an unreasonable amount of psychic damage in the process?” Give me strength. So much hubris with these guys (and they’re almost always guys). I would have assumed that a rationalist would look for truth and not correctness. Oh wait, it’s all just a smokescreen for know-it-alls to show you how smart they are.
- stevenhuang 1y agoPretty sure that's meant to be taken light-heartedly. You know, as a joke.
- chipsrafferty 1y agoIt's not.
- api 1y agoThat's exactly what Rationalism(tm) is. The basic trope is showing off how smart you are and what I like to call "intellectual edgelording." The latter is basically a fetish for contrarianism. The big flex is to take a very contrarian position -- according to what one imagines is the prevailing view -- and then defend it in the most creative way possible. Intellectual edgelording gives us shit like neoreaction ("monarchy is good actually" -- what a contrarian flex!), timeless decision theory, and wild-ass shit like the Zizians, effective altruists thinking running a crypto scam is the best path to maximizing their utility, etc. Whether an idea is contrarian or not is unrelated to whether it's a good idea or not. I think the fetish for contrarianism might have started with VCs playing public intellectual, since as a VC you make the big bucks when you make a contrarian bet that pays off. But I think this is an out-of-context misapplication of a lesson from investing to the sphere of scientific and philosophical truth. Believing a lot of shitty ideas in the hopes of finding gems is a good way to drive yourself bonkers. "So I believe in the flat Earth, vaccines cause autism, and loop quantum gravity, so I figure one big win this portfolio makes me a genius!" Then there's the cults. I think this stuff is to Silicon Valley and tech what Scientology is to Hollywood and the film and music industries.
- NoGravitas 1y agoProbably the most useful book ever written about topics adjacent to capital-R Rationalism is "Neoreaction, A Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right" [1], by Elizabeth Sandifer. Though the topic of the book is nominally the Alt-Right, a lot more of it is about the capital-R Rationalist communities and individuals that incubated the neoreactionary movement that is currently dominant in US politics. It's probably the best book to read for understanding how we got politically and intellectually from where we were in 2010, to where we are now. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41198053-neoreaction-a-basilisk https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41198053-neoreaction-a-b...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kragen 1y agoThanks for the recommendation! I hadn't heard about the book.
- mananaysiempre 1y agoThat book, IMO, reads very much like a smear attempt, and not one done with a good understanding of the target. The premise, with an attempt to tie capital-R Rationalists to the neoreactionaries though a sort of guilt by association, is frankly weird: Scott Alexander is well-known among the former to be essentially the only prominent figure that takes the latter seriously—seriously enough, that is, to write a large as-well-stated-as-possible survey[1] followed by a humongous point-by-point refutation[2,3]; whereas the “cult leader” of the rationalists, Yudkowsky, is on the record as despising neoreactionaries to the point of refusing to discuss their views. (As far as recent events, Alexander wrote a scathing review of Yarvin’s involvement in Trumpist politics[4] whose main thrust is that Yarvin has betrayed basically everything he advocated for.) The story of the book’s conception also severely strains an assumption of good faith[5]: the author, Elizabeth Sandifer, explicitly says it was to a large extent inspired, sourced, and edited by David Gerard, a prominent contributor to RationalWiki and r/SneerClub (the “sneerers” mentioned in TFA) and Wikipedia administrator who after years of edit-warring got topic-banned from editing articles about Scott Alexander (Scott Siskind) for conflict of interest and defamation[6] (including adding links to the book as a source for statements on Wikipedia about links between rationalists and neoreaction). Elizabeth Sandifer herself got banned for doxxing a Wikipedia editor during Gerard's earlier edit war at the time of Manning's gender transition, for which Gerard was also sanctioned[7]. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy... [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f... [3] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/24/some-preliminary-responses-to-responses-to-the-anti-reactionary-faq/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/24/some-preliminary-respo... [4] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out [5] https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1061#Propose_topic_ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning_naming_dispute#David_Gerard_restricted_in_use_of_tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
- apples_oranges 1y agoNever heard of the man, but that was a fun read. And it looks like a fun club to be part of. Until in becomes unbearable perhaps. Also raises the chances to get invited to birthday orgies..? Perhaps I should have stayed a in academia..
- moolcool 1y ago> Until in becomes unbearable perhaps Until?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Barrin92 1y ago>"frankly, that they gave off some (not all) of the vibes of a cult, with Eliezer as guru. Eliezer writes in parables and koans. He teaches that the fate of life on earth hangs in the balance, that the select few who understand the stakes have the terrible burden of steering the future" One of the funniest and most accurate turns of phrases in my mind is Charles Stross' characterization of rationalists as "duck typed Evangelicals". I've come to the conclusion that American atheists just don't exist, in particular Californians. Five minutes after they leave organized religion they're in a techno cult that fuses chosen people myths, their version of the Book of Revelation, gnosticism and what have you. I used to work abroad in Shenzhen for a few years and despite meeting countless of people as interested in and obsessed with technology, if not more than the people mentioned in this blogpost, there's just no corellary to this. There's no millenarian obsession over machines taking over the world, bizarre trust in rationalism or cult like compounds full of socially isolated new age prophets.
- Terr_ 1y agoThis also related to that earlier bit: > I also found them bizarrely, inexplicably obsessed with the question of whether AI would soon become superhumanly powerful and change the basic conditions of life on earth, and with how to make the AI transition go well. Why that, as opposed to all the other sci-fi scenarios one could worry about, not to mention all the nearer-term risks to humanity? The reason they landed on a not-so-rational risk to humanity is because it fulfilled the psycho-social need to have a "terrible burden" that binds the group together. It's one of the reasons religious groups will get caught up on The Rapture or whatever, instead of eradicating poverty.
- bee_rider 1y agoThe main things I don’t like about rationalism are aesthetic (the name sucks and misusing the language of Bayesian probability is annoying). Sounds like they are a thoughtful and nice bunch otherwise(?).
- mathattack 1y agoLogic is an awesome tool that took us from Greek philosophers to the gates on our computers. The challenge with pure rationalism is checking the first principles that the thinking comes from. Logic can lead you astray if the principles are wrong, or you miss the complexity along the way. On the missing first principles, look at Aristotle. One of the history's greatest logicians came to many false conclusions. On missing complexity, note that Natural Selection came from empirical analysis rather than first principles thinking. (It could have come from the latter, but was too complex) [1] This doesn't discount logic, it just highlights that answers should always come with provisional humility. And I'm still a superfan of Scott Aaronson. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/aristotle-was-wrong-very-wrong-but-people-still-love-him/ https://www.wired.com/story/aristotle-was-wrong-very-wrong-b... [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400494 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400494
- jrm4 1y agoYup, can't stress the word "tool" enough. It's a "tool," it's a not a "magic window into absolute truth." Tools can be good for a job, or bad. Carry on.
- jrm4 1y agolooks like I riled up the Rationalists, huh
- pjscott 1y agoYou stated one of their core doctrines, something they’ve been loudly preaching for as long as they’ve existed, as though it was something they disagree with and had never even considered. Can you blame them for a bit of exasperation? For wanting to simply downvote-and-disengage from someone who makes up falsehoods about them and then gloats about how it annoyed them? Life is too short to tilt at windmills.
- kragen 1y agoThe ‘rationalist’ group being discussed here aren't Cartesian rationalists, who dismissed empiricism; rather, they're Bayesian empiricists. Bayesian probability turns out to be precisely the unique extension of Boolean logic to continuous real probability that Aristotle (nominally an empiricist!) was lacking. (I think they call themselves “rationalists” because of the ideal of a “rational Bayesian agent” in economics.) However, they have a slogan, “One does not simply reason over the joint conditional probability distribution of the universe.” Which is to say, AIXI is uncomputable, and even AIXI can only reason over computable probability distributions!
- jrm4 1y agoMy eyes started to glaze over after a bit; so what I'm getting here is there a group that calls themselves "Rationalists," but in just about every externally meaningful sense, they're smelling like -- perhaps not a cult, but certainly a lot of weird insider/outsider talk that feels far from rational?
- pja 1y agoCapital r-Rationalism definitely bleeds into cult-like behaviour, even if they haven’t necessarily realised that they’re radicalising themselves. They’ve already had a splinter rationalist group go full cult, right up to & including the consequent murders & shoot-out with the cops flameout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians
- pja 1y agoScott Aaronson, the man who turned scrupulosity into a weapon against his own psyche is a capital R rationalist? Yeah, this surprises absolutely nobody.
- great_tankard 1y ago"YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE: I have now joined the club everyone assumed I was already a member of."
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoIt's his personal blog, the only people whose attention he's asking for are the people choosing to wander over there to see what he's up to. Not his fault that people deemed it interesting enough to upvote to the front page of HN.
- djoldman 1y agoJust to confirm, this is about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community and not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism right?
- thomasjudge 1y agoAlong these lines I am sort of skimming articles/blogs/websites about Lightcone, LessWrong, etc, and I am still struggling with the question...what do they DO?
- Mond_ 1y agoLook, it's just an internet community of people who write blog posts and discuss their interests on web forums. Asking "What do they do?" is like asking "What do Hackernewsers do?" It's not exactly a coherent question. Rationalists are a somewhat tighter group, but in the end the point stands. They write and discuss their common interests, e.g. the progress of AI, psychiatry stuff, bayesianism, thought experiments, etc.
- FeepingCreature 1y agoTwenty years or so ago, Eliezer Yudkowsky, a former proto-accelerationalist, realized that superintelligence was probably coming, was deeply unsafe, and that we should do something about that. Because he had a very hard time convincing people of this to him obvious fact, he first wrote a very good blog about human reason, philosophy and AI, in order to fix whatever was going wrong in people's heads that caused them to not understand that superintelligence was coming and so on. The group of people who read, commented on and contributed to this blog are called the rationalists. (You're hearing about them now because these days it looks a lot more plausible than in 2007 that Eliezer was right about superintelligence, so the group of people who've beat the drum about this for over a decade now form the natural nexus around which the current iteration of project "we should do something about unsafe superintelligence" is congealing.)
- astrange 1y ago
- KolibriFly 1y agoIt's encouraging to hear that behind all the internet noise, the real-life community is thriving and full of people earnestly trying to build a better future
- norir 1y agoOne of my many problems with rationalism is that it generally fails to acknowledge it's fundamentally religious character while pronouncing itself superior to all other religions.
- throw7 1y agoI used to snicker at these guys, but I realized I'm not being humble or to be more theologically minded: gracious. Recognizing we all take a step of faith to move outside of solipsism into a relationship with others should humble us.
- os2warpman 1y agoRationalists as a movement remind me of the individuals who claim to be serious about history but are only interested in a very, VERY specific set of six years in one very specific part of the world. And boy are they extremely interested in ONLY those six years.
- Mikhail_K 1y ago"Rationalists," the "objectivists" rebranded?
- lanfeust6 1y agoPolitical affiliation distribution is similar to the general population.
- mkoubaa 1y agoThe problem with rationalism is we don't have language to express our thoughts formally enough nor a compiler to transform that language into something runnable (platonic AST) nor a machine capable of emulating reality. Expecting rational thought to correspond to reality is like expecting a 6 million line program written in a hypothetical programming language invented in the 1700s to run bug free on a turing machine. Tooling matters.
- pjscott 1y agoThe rationalist movement has been talking about this since the beginning, and has consistently come to the conclusion that of course the thing to do is admit to our own fallibility and try to do the best we can with our profound limitations. (You didn’t explicitly say otherwise, so if my exasperation is misdirected then you have my apology in advance.)
- mkoubaa 1y agoNo need to apologize, I am unashamedly an opponent of rationalism and I hold the entire movement and every one like it in history in withering contempt.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoI once was interested in a woman who was really into the effective altruism/rationalism crowd. I went to a few meetings with her but my inner contrarian didn't like it. Took me a few years to realize how cultish it all felt and that I am somewhat happy my edgy atheist contrarian personality overwrote my dicks thinking with that crowd.
- unit149 1y ago[dead]
- jrd259 1y agoI'm so out of the loop. What is the new, special sense of Rationalist over what it might have meant to e.g. Descarte?
- musha68k 1y agoVery Bay Area to assume you invented Bayesian thinking.
- nathcd 1y agoSome of the comments here remind me of online commentary about some place called "the orange site". Always wondered who they were talking about...
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoCan't stand that place. Those people are all so sure that they're right about everything.
- Nursie 1y agoHonestly, as a daily reader and oftentimes commenter on the dreaded orange site, I've seen a lot of criticism of its denizens, very often along the lines of - "Computer people who think that because they're smart in one area they have useful opinions on anything else, holding forth with great certainty about stuff they have zero undertanding or insight into" And you know what, I think they're right. The rest of you are always doing that sort of thing! (/s, if it's necessary...)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bikamonki 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community "In particular, several women in the community have made allegations of sexual misconduct, including abuse and harassment, which they describe as pervasive and condoned." There's weird sex stuff, logically, it's a cult.
- Matticus_Rex 1y agoMost weird sex stuff takes place outside of cults, so that doesn't follow.
- bmacho 1y agoThere's weird sex stuff, logically, it's likely not a cult.
- tptacek 1y agoWell that was a whole thing. I especially liked the existential threat of Cade Metz. But ultimately, I think the great oracle of Chicago got this whole thing right when he said: -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself There's an -ism for that. Actually, a few different ones depending on the exact angle you look at the it from: solipsism, narcissism,...
- astrange 1y ago> There's an -ism for that It's Buddhism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anattā https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anattā > Actually, a few different ones depending on the exact angle you look at the it from: solipsism, narcissism,... That is indeed a problem with it. The Buddhist solution is to make you promise not to do that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhicitta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhicitta And the (well, a) term for the entire problem is "non-dual awareness".
- Aurornis 1y ago> I especially liked the existential threat of Cade Metz. I am perpetually fascinated by the way rationalists love to dismiss critics by pointing out that they met some people in person and they seemed nice. It's such a bizarre meme. Curtis Yarvin went to one of the "Vibecamp" rationalist gatherings, was nice to some prominent Twitter rationalists, and now they are ardent defenders of him on Twitter. Their entire argument is "I met him and he was nice". It's mind boggling that the rationalist part of their philosophy goes out the window as soon as the lines are drawn between in-group and out-group. Bringing up Cade Metz is a perennial favorite signal because of how effectively they turned it into a "you're either with us or against us" battle, completely ignoring any valid arguments Cade Metz may have been brought to the table. Then you look at how they treat Neoreactionaries and how we're supposed to look past our disdain for them and focus on the possible good things in their arguments, and you realize maybe this entire movement isn't really about truth-seeking as much as they think it is.
- danans 1y ago> A third reason I didn’t identify with the Rationalists was, frankly, that they gave off some (not all) of the vibes of a cult, with Eliezer as guru. Apart from a charismatic leader, a cult (in the colloquial meaning) needs a business model, and very often, a sense of separation from, and lack of accountability to those who are outside the cult, which provides conveniently simpler environment under which the cults ideas operate. A sort of "complexity filter" at the entry gate. I'm not sure how the Rationalists compare to those criteria, but I'd be curious to find out.
- meindnoch 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- scoofy 1y agoIt's weird that "being interested in philosophy" is like... a movement. My background is in philosophy, but the rationalist vs nonrationalist debate seems like an undergraduate class dispute. My old roommate worked for Open Phil, and was obsessed with AI Safety and really into Bitcoin. I never was. We still had interesting arguments about it all the time. Most of the time we just argued until we got to the axioms we disagreed on, and that was that. You don't have to agree with the Rationalist™ perspective to apply philosophically rigorous thinking. You can be friends and allies with them without agreeing with all their views. There are strong arguments for why frequentism may be more applicable than bayesianism in different domains. Or why transhumanism is a pipe dream. They are still conversations that are worthwhile as long as you're not so confident in your position that you think you might learn something.
- Aurornis 1y ago> It's weird that "being interested in philosophy" is like... a movement. My background is in philosophy, but the rationalist vs nonrationalist debate seems like an undergraduate class dispute. Bring up the rationalist community within academic philosophy circles and you'll get a lot of groans. The fun part about rationalists is that they like to go back to first principles and rediscover basics. The less fun part is that they'll ignore all of the existing work and pretend they're going to figure it all out themselves, often with weird results. This leaves philosophy people endlessly frustrated as the rationalists write long essays about really basic philosophy concepts as if they're breaking new ground, while ignoring a lot of very interesting work that could have made the topic much more interesting to discuss.
- scoofy 1y agoI mean, I don't disagree with you there. Even within academic philosophy circles, you'll get groans when one sect is discussing things with another sect. Lord knows ancient philosophy academics and analytic philosophy academics are going to get headaches just trying to hold a conversation... and we're not even including continental school. My point is that, yes, while it may be a bit annoying in general (lord knows how many times I rolled my eyes at my old roommate talking about trans-humanism), the idea that this Rationalist™ movement "thinking about things philosophically" is controversial is just weird. That they seem to care about a philosophical approach to thinking about things, and maybe didn't get degrees and maybe don't understand much background while forming their own little school, seems as unremarkable is it is uncontroversial.
- lukas099 1y agoThis 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 opinions different than their own. 3. They're nerds. Whatever has historically caused nerds to be bullied/ostracized, they probably have.
- teamonkey 1y ago> This is vibe-based You mean an empirical observation
- lowbloodsugar 1y agoThree examples of feelings-based conclusions were presented. There is what is so, and how you feel about them. By all means be empirical about what you felt, and maybe look into that. “How this made me feel” describes the cause of how we got the USA today.
- johnfn 1y agoHN judges rationality quite severely. I mean, look at this thread about Mr. Beast[1], who it's safe to say is a controversial figure, and notice how all the top comments are all pretty charitable. It's pretty funny to take the conversation there and then compare the comments to this article. Scott Aaronson - in theory someone HN should be a huge fan of, from all reports a super nice and extremely intelligent guy who knows a staggering amount about quantum mechanics - says he likes rationality, and gets less charity than Mr. Beast. Huh? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649
- foldr 1y agoMost people are trying to be rational (to be sure, with varying degrees of success), and people who aren't even trying aren't really worth having abstract intellectual discussions with. I'm reminded of CS Lewis's quip in a different context that "you might just as well expect to be congratulated because, whenever you do a sum, you try to get it quite right."
- bovermyer 1y agoI think I'm missing something important. My understanding of "Rationalists" is that they're followers of rationalism; that is, that truth can be understood only through intellectual deduction, rather than sensory experience. I'm wondering if this is a _different_ kind of "Rationalist." Can someone explain?
- kurtis_reed 1y agoIt's a terrible name that collides with the older one you're thinking of
- FeteCommuniste 1y agoThe easiest way to understand their usage of the term "rational" might be to think of it as the negation of the term "irrational" (where the latter refers mostly to cognitive biases). Not as a contrast with "empirical."
- stuaxo 1y agoHad to stop reading, everyone sounded so awful.
- absurdo 1y agoWhat the fuck am I reading lmao.
- bdbenton5255 1y ago[flagged]
- cess11 1y agoThe narcissism in this movement is insufferable. I hope the conditions for its existence will soon pass and give way to something kinder and more learned.
- lasersail 1y agoI was at Lighthaven that week. The weekend-long LessOnline event Scott references opened what LightHaven termed "Festival Season", with a summer camp organised for the following 5 week days, and a prediction market & forecasting conference called Manifest the following weekend. I didn't attend LessOnline since I'm not active on LessWrong nor identify as a rationalist - but I did attended a GPU programming course in the "summer camp" portion of the week, and the Manifest conference (my primary interest). My experience generally aligns with Scott's view, the community is friendly and welcoming, but I had one strange encounter. There was some time allocated to meet with other attendees at Manifest who resided in the same part of the world (not the bay area). I ended up surrounded by a group of 5-6 folks who appeared to be friends already, had been a part of the Rationalist movement for a few years, and had attended LessOnline the previous weekend. They spent most of the hour critiquing and comparing their "quality of conversations" at LessOnline with the less Rationalist-y, more prediction market & trading focused Manifest event. Completely unaware or unwelcoming of my presence as an outsider, they essentially came to the conclusion that a lot of the Manifest crowd were dummies and were - on average - "more wrong" than themselves. It was all very strange, cult-y, pseudo-intellectual, and lacking in self-awareness. All that said, the experience at Summer Camp and Manifest was a net positive, but there is some credence to sneers aimed at the Rationalist community.
- thornewolf 1y agoI attended Manifest to meet some rationalists. I consider myself a post-rat. I also heard some comments that Manifest was less Rationalist-y than LessOnline but w/o the additional commentary on "dummies" (not meant to imply you didn't hear it). I did find some rationalists too far down their "epistemological rabbit hole" to successfully unwind in one or two conversations but nevertheless many clever people. I still need some time to make post-rats out of them, though. Affirming that it was a positive experience. I'm glad to have attended.
- PoignardAzur 1y agoAs someone who likes both the Rationalist community and the Rust community, it's fascinating to see the parallels in how the Hacker News crowd treats both. The contempt, the general lack of curiosity and the violence of the bold sweeping statements people will make here are mind-boggling.
- cosmojg 1y agoBoth the Rationalist community and the Rust community are very active in pursuing their goals, and unfortunately, it's far easier to criticize others for doing things than it is to actually do things yourself. Worse yet, if you are not yourself actively doing things, you are far more likely to experience fear when other people are actively doing things as there is always some nonzero chance that they will do things counter to your own goals, forcing you to actively do something lest you fall behind. Alas, people often respond to fear with hatred, especially given the benefit of physical isolation and dissociation from humanity offered by the Internet, and I think that's what you're seeing here on Hacker News.
- Aurornis 1y ago> the general lack of curiosity Honestly, I find the Hacker News comments in recent years to be most enlightening because so many comments come from people who spent years immersed in rationalist communities. For years one of my friend groups was deep into LessWrong and SSC. I've read countless blog posts and other content out of those groups. Yet every time I write about it, I'm dismissed as an uninformed outsider. It's an interesting group of people who like to criticize and dissect other groups, but they don't take kindly to anyone questioning their own circles.
- zahlman 1y ago> Yet every time I write about it, I'm dismissed as an uninformed outsider. No; you're being dismissed as someone who is entirely too credulous about arguments that don't hold up to scrutiny. Edit: and as someone who doesn't understand basics about what rationalists are trying to accomplish in certain contexts (like the concept of a calibration curve re the example you brought up of https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/grading-my-2021-predictions https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/grading-my-2021-predictions). You come across (charitably) as having missed the point, because you have.
- protocolture 1y ago"I have come out as a smart good thinking person, who knew" >liberal zionist hmmmm
- xinuc 1y agoAs others have pointed out about the movement, it's for people who think they are smart and doing good things. It's just fitting that he is a Zionist who think he is a good person.
- khazhoux 1y agoI 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 characters were actually smart." I've read a bunch of EY essays and a lot of lesswrong posts, trying to figure out what is the mind-shattering idea. * The map is not the territory --> of course it isn't. * Update your beliefs based on evidence --> who disagrees with this? (with exception on religion) * People are biased and we need to overcome that --> another obvious statement * Make decisions based on evidence and towards your desired outcomes --> thanks for the tip? Seems to me this whole philosophy can be captured in about half page of notes, which most people would nod and say "yup, makes sense."
- thornewolf 1y agoSelf-help books are useful, not because they have "mind-shattering ideas", but because they collect a lot of self-consistent and reasonably coherent advice into the same place. In this same way, the rationalist knowledge seeking strategies are not "mind-shattering" but simply reasonable. It presents a set of rules to follow to be more effective in the world around you. The parts of rationalism that stretch past the half page of notes mainly concern all the downstream conclusions that pop up from this reasonable set of epistemological rules.
- Viliam1234 1y ago> 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 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 about "trying to reason about things from first principle", when if fact it is the opposite. A commenter links a post by Scott Alexander and claims that Scott predicted something and was wrong, when if fact in the linked article Scott says he gives it a probability 30% (which means he gives probability 70% to that thing not happening). Another commenter defends that as a "perfectly reasonable but critical comment". And hey, compared to most of the internet, HN is the smart place, and the local discussion norms are better than average. But it still doesn't seem like people here actually care about being, uhm, less wrong about things, even ones that are relatively trivial to figure out. So basically, the mind-shattering idea is to build a community that actually works like that (well, most of the time). Where providing evidence gets upvoted, and unsubstantiated accusations that turn out to be wrong get downvoted, and a few more things like this. Plus there is the idea of trying to express your beliefs as probabilities, using actual numbers. That's why EY cannot stop talking about the Bayes' Theorem. Yes, people actually do that.
- akomtu 1y agoSounds like they hear only themselves? There is a common type of sophisticated thinkers who have trained their intellectual muscle to a remarkable degree and got stuck there, refusing to see that intellect isn't the capstone of life. Their mind, ears and mouth quickly form a closed loop that makes them hear only what they themselves say. When this loop strengthens, this thinker becomes a dogmatic cult leader with a sophisticated, but dimly lit inner world that can, nevertheless impress smaller minds. Such inner worlds are always like mazes, with lots of rooms and corridors, all dimly lit, without exits and with their impressively developed mind roaming along these corridors like the Minotaur.
- old_man_cato 1y ago"I’m still a computer scientist, an academic, a straight-ticket Democratic voter, a liberal Zionist, a Jew, etc. (all identities, incidentally, well-enough represented at LessOnline that I don’t even think I was the unique attendee in the intersection of them all)" Not incidental!
- stephc_int13 1y agoThis is largely a cult, showing most of the red flags. But if we put aside the narcissistic traits, lack of intellectual humility, religious undertones and (paradoxically) appeal to emotional responses with apocalyptic framing, the whole thing is still irrelevant BS. They work in a vacuum, on either false or artificial premises with nothing to back their claims except long strings of syllogism. This is not Science, no measurements, no experiments, no validation, zero value apart from maybe intellectual stimulation and socialisation for nerds with too much free time…
- appleaday1 1y agoI stopped reading once I read the word "zionist"
- Zaylan 1y agoReading this made me realize that rationality isn’t really about joining a group. It’s more about whether you care about how you think. No matter how solid the logic is, if the starting assumptions are off, it doesn’t help much. Reality is often messier than any model we build. How do you decide when to trust the model vs trust your instincts?
- gblargg 1y ago> The closest to right-wing politics that I witnessed at LessOnline was a session, with Kelsey Piper and current and former congressional staffers, about the prospects for moderate Democrats to articulate a moderate, pro-abundance agenda that would resonate with the public and finally defeat MAGA. I can't say I'm surprised.
- nathias 1y agoI don't understand the urge for Americans to name things the opposite of what they are.
- user____name 1y agoI somehow was expecting talk about Descartes and Spinoza.
- DrNosferatu 1y agoI'm yet to see "Effective Altruism" or (neo-)"Rationalism" that is not mostly the rationalization of exploiting less privileged people than them, and justifying behaving in anti-social, exploitative and extractionary ways.
- aiiizzz 1y agoExamples?
- DrNosferatu 1y agoAre you really concerned about the consequences of AI? Then, empower UN-like organizations to oversee the use of technology - like the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. And, if you're even further concerned, put in place mechanisms that guarantee that the productivity gains, yields, and GDP increases obtained via the new technology of AI are distributed and enjoyed by all of the living population with a minimum of fairness. For some reason, specially this last bit, doesn't really fly with our friends, The Rationalists. I wonder why...
- DrNosferatu 1y agoI cannot falsify the thesis that so-called "Rationalism" and "Effective Altruism" is - in practice - just folklore so that top-percenters don't pay taxes and feel good about themselves. As the least worse solution to maximize Social Utility has long been invented: Democracy and political action.
- Viliam1234 1y agoI have some doubts about the rationality of trying to avoid paying taxes by sending half of their salary to anti-malaria charities, but maybe those people just suck at math which is why they get paid so much. Or maybe you are wrong.
- DrNosferatu 1y agoInstead of waving the appeal to authority fallacy, try to do some reading up: https://ips-dc.org/the-true-cost-of-billionaire-philanthropy-how-the-taxpayer-subsidizes-stockpiled-wealth https://ips-dc.org/the-true-cost-of-billionaire-philanthropy...
- DrNosferatu 1y agoHuman emotions guide reasoning: that's why we need Politics. These people should have read "Descartes' Error" with more attention than they spent on Friedman and Hayek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
- leggy77 1y agoI read Scott Aaronson's blog and his papers and enjoy both. That said, he's a perfect example of a person who is a genius in one area, thinks this translates to expertise or intuition in other areas, and is often very, very wrong.