4 ms·

This article is beautifully written, and it's full of proper original research. I'm sad that most comments so far are knee-jerk "lol rationalists" type response

This article is beautifully written, and it's full of proper original research. I'm sad that most comments so far are knee-jerk "lol rationalists" type responses. I haven't seen any comment yet that isn't already addressed in much more colour and nuance in the article itself.

mm263 1y ago
[flagged]
- teh_klev 1y ago
  I have a link for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Scroll to the bottom of the page.
  - mm263 1y ago
    Thank you for the link - I'm familiar with the commenting rules. I just don't think that people follow the spirit of those rules.
knallfrosch 1y ago
I think it's perfectly fine to read these articles, think "definitely a cult" and ignore whether they believe in spaceships, or demons, or AGI. The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag – not really a novel, or unique, or situational insight.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  That's a side point of the article, acknowledged as an old idea. The central points of this article are actually quite a bit more interesting than that. He even summarized his conclusions concisely at the end, so I don't know what your excuse is for trivializing it.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  The other key takeaway, that people with trauma are more attracted to organizations that purport to be able to fix and are thus over-represented in them (vs in the general population), is also important. Because if you're going to set up a hierarchical (explicitly or implicitly) isolated organization with a bunch of strangers, it's good to start by asking "How much do I trust these strangers?"
- toasterlovin 1y ago
  > The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag Even better: a social group with a lot of invented lingo is a red flag that you can see before you get isolated from your loved ones.
  - DoctorOetker 1y ago
    By this token, most scientists would be considered cultists: normal people don't have "specific tensile strength" or "Jacobian" or "Hermitian operator" etc in their vocabulary. "Must be some cult"? Edit: it seems most people don't understand what I'm pointing out. Having terminology is not the red flag. Having intricate terminology without a domain is the red flag. In science or mathematics, there are enormous amounts of jargon, terms, definitions, concepts, but they are always situated in some domain of study. The "rationalists" (better call them pseudorationalists) invent their own concepts without actual corresponding domain, just life. It's like kids re-inventing their generation specific words each generation to denote things they like or dislike, etc.
    - toasterlovin 1y ago
      > social group
      - DoctorOetker 1y ago
        fine, the jargon of a "social group" of science is a red flag? sure, theres lots of nasty side effects of how academia is run, rewarded, etc.. but thats not because of precision of language employed. do you want scientists recycling the same words and overloading ever more meanings onto ever more ambiguous words?
        toasterlovin 1y ago
        I don’t think we disagree. I’m not taking issue with scientists having jargon, which I agree is good and necessary (though I think the less analytical academic disciplines, not being rooted in fact, have come to bear many similarities to state-backed religions; and I think they use jargon accordingly). I’m pointing out that I specifically intended to exclude professionals by scoping my statement to “social groups”. Primarily I had in mind religion, politics, certain social media sites, and whatever you want to call movements like capital R Rationality (I have personally duck typed it as a religion).
- stale2002 1y ago
  > The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag – not really a novel, or unique, or situational insight Well yes and no. The reason why I think the insight is so interesting is that these groups were formed, almost definitionally for the purpose of avoiding such "obvious" mistakes. The name of the group is literally the "Rationalists"! I find that funny, ironic, and saying something important about this philosophy, in that it implies that the rest of society wasn't so "irrational" after all. As a more extreme and silly example, imagine there was a group called "Cults suck, and we are not a cult!", that was created for the very purpose of fighting cults, and yet, ironically, became a cult into and of itself. That would be insightful and funny.
meowface 1y ago
Asterisk is basically "rationalist magazine" and the author is a well-known rationalist blogger, so it's not a surprise that this is basically the only fair look into this phenomenon - compared to the typical outside view that rationalism itself is a cult and Eliezer Yudkowsky is a cult leader, both of which I consider absurd notions.
- toasterlovin 1y ago
  > the typical outside view that rationalism itself is a cult and Eliezer Yudkowsky is a cult leader, both of which I consider absurd notions Cults are a whole biome of personalities. The prophet does not need to be the same person as the leader. They sometimes are and things can be very ugly in those cases, but they often aren’t. After all, there are Christian cults today even though Jesus and his supporting cast have been dead for approaching 2k years. Yudkowsky seems relatively benign as far as prophets go, though who knows what goes on in private (I’m sure some people on here do, but the collective We do not). I would guess that the failure mode for him would be a David Miscavige type who slowly accumulates power while Yudkowsky remains a figurehead. This could be a girlfriend or someone who runs one of the charitable organizations (controlling the purse strings when everyone is dependent on the organization for their next meal is a time honored technique). I’m looking forward to the documentaries that get made in 20 years or so.
- low_tech_love 1y ago
  The view from the inside, written by a person who is waist deep into the movement, is the only fair look into the phenomenon?
  - meowface 1y ago
    Okay, true, that was a silly statement for me to make. It's just a look that's different from the typical media treatment of the rationalist community, and is as far as I know the first time there's an inside view of this cult-spawning phenomenon from a media outlet or publication. The story from the outside is usually reduced to something like "rationalism is a wacky cult", with the recent ones tacking on "and some of its members include this Ziz gang who murdered many people". Like the NYT article a week ago.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lyu07282 1y ago
> I haven't seen any comment yet that isn't already addressed in much more colour and nuance in the article itself. I once called rationalists infantile, impotent liberal escapism, perhaps that's the novel take you are looking for. Essentially my view is that the fundamental problem with rationalists and the effective altruist movement is that they are talking about profound social and political issues, with any and all politics completely and totally removed from it. It is liberal depoliticisation[1] driven to its ultimate conclusion. That's just why they are ineffective and wrong about everything, but that's also why they are popular among the tech elites that are giving millions to associated groups like MIRI[2]. They aren't going away, they are politically useful and convenient to very powerful people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-politics [2] https://intelligence.org/transparency/ https://intelligence.org/transparency/
- aidenn0 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa%27s_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa%27s_Brain
- BlueTemplar 1y ago
  I just so happened to read in the last few days the (somewhat disjointed and rambling) Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized [Leftist] Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers https://wedontagree.net/technically-radical-on-the-unrecognized-potential-of-tech-workers-and-hackers https://wedontagree.net/technically-radical-on-the-unrecogni... as well as the better but much older "The professional-managerial class" Ehrenreich (1976) : https://libcom.org/article/professional-managerial-class-barbara-and-john-ehrenreich https://libcom.org/article/professional-managerial-class-bar... "Rationalists" do seem to be in some ways the poster children of consumerist atomization, but do note that they also resisted it socially by forming those 'cults' of theirs. (If counter-cultures are 'dead', why don't they count as one ?? Alternatively, might this be a form of communitarianism, but with less traditionalism, more atheism, and perhaps a Jewish slant ?)
- DirkH 1y ago
  This is basically exactly the same kind of criticism the far-left throws at effective altruism (EA), except they call EA moronic hyper-capitalism that is too fixated on quantifying cause and effect with modern economic theories that it ignores the systemic injustices inherent within the systems it works within. As a consequence it is doomed from the onset and completely ineffective and is only counterproductive and any other conclusion is dumb.
dang 1y ago
The contrarian dynamic strikes again! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (I'm referring to how this comment, objecting to the other comments as unduly negative, has been upvoted to the top of the thread.) (p.s. this is not a criticism!)
- bondarchuk 1y ago
  I think that since it's not possible to reply to multiple comments at the same time, people will naturally open a new top-level comment the moment there's a clearly identifiable groupthink emerging. Quoting one of your earlier comments about this: >This happens so frequently that I think it must be a product of something hard-wired in the medium *[I mean the medium of the internet forum] I would say it's only hard-wired in the medium of tree-style comment sections. If HN worked more like linear forums with multi-quote/replies, it might be possible to have multiple back-and-forths of subgroup consensus like this.
  - dang 1y ago
    That could be!
- skrebbel 1y ago
  Hahaah yeah true. If I had been commenting earlier I might’ve written “lol rationalists”
- jamesmiller5 1y ago
  I'm more than happy I read your comment body and its good/well natured tone before your name XD .
TimByte 1y ago
It's not just a drive-by hit piece

mm263 1y ago

[flagged]

teh_klev 1y ago
I have a link for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Scroll to the bottom of the page.
- mm263 1y ago
  Thank you for the link - I'm familiar with the commenting rules. I just don't think that people follow the spirit of those rules.

knallfrosch 1y ago

I think it's perfectly fine to read these articles, think "definitely a cult" and ignore whether they believe in spaceships, or demons, or AGI. The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag – not really a novel, or unique, or situational insight.

andrewflnr 1y ago
That's a side point of the article, acknowledged as an old idea. The central points of this article are actually quite a bit more interesting than that. He even summarized his conclusions concisely at the end, so I don't know what your excuse is for trivializing it.
ethbr1 1y ago
The other key takeaway, that people with trauma are more attracted to organizations that purport to be able to fix and are thus over-represented in them (vs in the general population), is also important. Because if you're going to set up a hierarchical (explicitly or implicitly) isolated organization with a bunch of strangers, it's good to start by asking "How much do I trust these strangers?"
toasterlovin 1y ago
> The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag Even better: a social group with a lot of invented lingo is a red flag that you can see before you get isolated from your loved ones.
- DoctorOetker 1y ago
  By this token, most scientists would be considered cultists: normal people don't have "specific tensile strength" or "Jacobian" or "Hermitian operator" etc in their vocabulary. "Must be some cult"? Edit: it seems most people don't understand what I'm pointing out. Having terminology is not the red flag. Having intricate terminology without a domain is the red flag. In science or mathematics, there are enormous amounts of jargon, terms, definitions, concepts, but they are always situated in some domain of study. The "rationalists" (better call them pseudorationalists) invent their own concepts without actual corresponding domain, just life. It's like kids re-inventing their generation specific words each generation to denote things they like or dislike, etc.
  - toasterlovin 1y ago
    > social group
    - DoctorOetker 1y ago
      fine, the jargon of a "social group" of science is a red flag? sure, theres lots of nasty side effects of how academia is run, rewarded, etc.. but thats not because of precision of language employed. do you want scientists recycling the same words and overloading ever more meanings onto ever more ambiguous words?
      - toasterlovin 1y ago
        I don’t think we disagree. I’m not taking issue with scientists having jargon, which I agree is good and necessary (though I think the less analytical academic disciplines, not being rooted in fact, have come to bear many similarities to state-backed religions; and I think they use jargon accordingly). I’m pointing out that I specifically intended to exclude professionals by scoping my statement to “social groups”. Primarily I had in mind religion, politics, certain social media sites, and whatever you want to call movements like capital R Rationality (I have personally duck typed it as a religion).
stale2002 1y ago
> The key takeaway from the article is that if you have a group leader who cuts you off from other people, that's a red flag – not really a novel, or unique, or situational insight Well yes and no. The reason why I think the insight is so interesting is that these groups were formed, almost definitionally for the purpose of avoiding such "obvious" mistakes. The name of the group is literally the "Rationalists"! I find that funny, ironic, and saying something important about this philosophy, in that it implies that the rest of society wasn't so "irrational" after all. As a more extreme and silly example, imagine there was a group called "Cults suck, and we are not a cult!", that was created for the very purpose of fighting cults, and yet, ironically, became a cult into and of itself. That would be insightful and funny.

meowface 1y ago

Asterisk is basically "rationalist magazine" and the author is a well-known rationalist blogger, so it's not a surprise that this is basically the only fair look into this phenomenon - compared to the typical outside view that rationalism itself is a cult and Eliezer Yudkowsky is a cult leader, both of which I consider absurd notions.

toasterlovin 1y ago
> the typical outside view that rationalism itself is a cult and Eliezer Yudkowsky is a cult leader, both of which I consider absurd notions Cults are a whole biome of personalities. The prophet does not need to be the same person as the leader. They sometimes are and things can be very ugly in those cases, but they often aren’t. After all, there are Christian cults today even though Jesus and his supporting cast have been dead for approaching 2k years. Yudkowsky seems relatively benign as far as prophets go, though who knows what goes on in private (I’m sure some people on here do, but the collective We do not). I would guess that the failure mode for him would be a David Miscavige type who slowly accumulates power while Yudkowsky remains a figurehead. This could be a girlfriend or someone who runs one of the charitable organizations (controlling the purse strings when everyone is dependent on the organization for their next meal is a time honored technique). I’m looking forward to the documentaries that get made in 20 years or so.
low_tech_love 1y ago
The view from the inside, written by a person who is waist deep into the movement, is the only fair look into the phenomenon?
- meowface 1y ago
  Okay, true, that was a silly statement for me to make. It's just a look that's different from the typical media treatment of the rationalist community, and is as far as I know the first time there's an inside view of this cult-spawning phenomenon from a media outlet or publication. The story from the outside is usually reduced to something like "rationalism is a wacky cult", with the recent ones tacking on "and some of its members include this Ziz gang who murdered many people". Like the NYT article a week ago.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

lyu07282 1y ago

> I haven't seen any comment yet that isn't already addressed in much more colour and nuance in the article itself. I once called rationalists infantile, impotent liberal escapism, perhaps that's the novel take you are looking for. Essentially my view is that the fundamental problem with rationalists and the effective altruist movement is that they are talking about profound social and political issues, with any and all politics completely and totally removed from it. It is liberal depoliticisation[1] driven to its ultimate conclusion. That's just why they are ineffective and wrong about everything, but that's also why they are popular among the tech elites that are giving millions to associated groups like MIRI[2]. They aren't going away, they are politically useful and convenient to very powerful people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-politics [2] https://intelligence.org/transparency/ https://intelligence.org/transparency/

aidenn0 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa%27s_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Saved_Lisa%27s_Brain
BlueTemplar 1y ago
I just so happened to read in the last few days the (somewhat disjointed and rambling) Technically Radical: On the Unrecognized [Leftist] Potential of Tech Workers and Hackers https://wedontagree.net/technically-radical-on-the-unrecognized-potential-of-tech-workers-and-hackers https://wedontagree.net/technically-radical-on-the-unrecogni... as well as the better but much older "The professional-managerial class" Ehrenreich (1976) : https://libcom.org/article/professional-managerial-class-barbara-and-john-ehrenreich https://libcom.org/article/professional-managerial-class-bar... "Rationalists" do seem to be in some ways the poster children of consumerist atomization, but do note that they also resisted it socially by forming those 'cults' of theirs. (If counter-cultures are 'dead', why don't they count as one ?? Alternatively, might this be a form of communitarianism, but with less traditionalism, more atheism, and perhaps a Jewish slant ?)
DirkH 1y ago
This is basically exactly the same kind of criticism the far-left throws at effective altruism (EA), except they call EA moronic hyper-capitalism that is too fixated on quantifying cause and effect with modern economic theories that it ignores the systemic injustices inherent within the systems it works within. As a consequence it is doomed from the onset and completely ineffective and is only counterproductive and any other conclusion is dumb.

dang 1y ago

The contrarian dynamic strikes again! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (I'm referring to how this comment, objecting to the other comments as unduly negative, has been upvoted to the top of the thread.) (p.s. this is not a criticism!)

bondarchuk 1y ago
I think that since it's not possible to reply to multiple comments at the same time, people will naturally open a new top-level comment the moment there's a clearly identifiable groupthink emerging. Quoting one of your earlier comments about this: >This happens so frequently that I think it must be a product of something hard-wired in the medium *[I mean the medium of the internet forum] I would say it's only hard-wired in the medium of tree-style comment sections. If HN worked more like linear forums with multi-quote/replies, it might be possible to have multiple back-and-forths of subgroup consensus like this.
- dang 1y ago
  That could be!
skrebbel 1y ago
Hahaah yeah true. If I had been commenting earlier I might’ve written “lol rationalists”
jamesmiller5 1y ago
I'm more than happy I read your comment body and its good/well natured tone before your name XD .

TimByte 1y ago

It's not just a drive-by hit piece