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You're falling into some sort of fallacy; maybe a better rationalist than I could name it. The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people sp

You're falling into some sort of fallacy; maybe a better rationalist than I could name it. The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people spread around the world. We're reading an article that focuses on a few dysfunctional subgroups. They are interesting because they are so dysfunctional and rare. Or put it this way: Name one -ism that _doesn't_ have sub/splinter groups that kill people. Even Pacifism doesn't get a pass.

pavlov 1y ago
The article specifically defines the rationalists it’s talking about: “The rationalist community was drawn together by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog post series The Sequences, a set of essays about how to think more rationally.” Is this really a large body of disparate people spread around the world? I suspect not.
- animuchan 1y ago
  Not sure how to define "drawn together", but the anecdata is: about half of my friends love Yudkowsky's works; they live all across US, EU and Middle Eastern countries. So I suspect yes, it's a large body of loosely coupled people.
- BlueTemplar 1y ago
  Define "large" : https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/fall-meetups-everywhere-call-for https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/fall-meetups-everywhere-cal... (One of the largest subgroups AFAIK ?) (They still seem to be leaning heavily USA-based, and in particular California-based.)
  - Viliam1234 1y ago
    Maybe a better link would be to the previous wave of meetups, because some places join the event at the last moment: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/meetups-everywhere-spring-2025-times https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/meetups-everywhere-spring-2...
- BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
  It's large in the sense that it's not a single well connected group. There are subgroups within the rationalists
- stickfigure 1y ago
  "Self-proclaimed rationalists" is a much broader group than people who read Yudkowsky.
- giardini 1y ago
  Article (and this thread) is blog spam. Arguments about who is/not a cult member (regardless of affiliation) don't seem relevant to HN. Perhaps HN should flag the thread.
atoav 1y ago
Dadaism? Most art -isms didn't have subgroups who killed people. If people killed others in art history it was mostly tragic individual stories and had next to nothing to do with the ideology of the ism.
- pas 1y ago
  What is the connection between the Ziz crazies killing anyone and rationalism?
aydyn 1y ago
> The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people spread around the world. [Citation needed] I sincerely doubt anything but a tiny insignificant minority consider themselves part of the "rationalist community".
- ben_w 1y ago
  "Large" is very vague. The leaderboard shows (50 of) 166385 registered accounts* on https://www.lesswrong.com/leaderboard https://www.lesswrong.com/leaderboard This is simultaneously a large body and an insignificant minority. * How many are junk accounts? IDK. But I do know it's international, because I live in Berlin, Germany, and socialise regularly.
  - judahmeek 1y ago
    > But I do know it's international, because I live in Berlin, Germany, and socialise regularly. This made me chuckle. Thanks!
  - barnabee 1y ago
    I have an account on LessWrong. Heck, I even try to act rationally most of the time. I don’t consider myself a Rationalist or part of the Rationalist community. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that number turns out to overstate the size by an order of magnitude.
- poszlem 1y ago
  I realized a few years ago that there's an important difference between someone who believes women should have equal rights and a feminist. Similarly, there's a difference between someone who believes men should have equal rights and a men's rights advocate. I often sympathize with the first group. I often disagree with the latter. This same distinction applies to rationality: there's a huge difference between someone who strives to be rational and someone who belongs to a "rationalist community".
  - pas 1y ago
    How big is this 3rd gap compared to the aforementioned 2 other gaps?
ruszki 1y ago
The level of dysfunction which is described in the article is really rare. But dysfunction, the kind of which we talk about, is not really that rare, I would even say that quite common, in self proclaimed rationalist groups. They don’t kill people - at least directly - but they definitely not what they claim to be: rational. They use rational tools, more than others, but they are not more rational than others, they simply use these tools to prove their irrationality. I touch rationalists only with a pole recently, because they are not smarter than others, but they just think that, and on the surface level they seem so. They praise Julia Galef, then ignore everything what she said. Even Galef invited people who were full blown racists, just it seemed that they were all right because they knew whom they talked with, and they couldn’t bullshit. They tried to argue why their racism is rational, but you couldn’t tell from the interviews. They flat out lies all the time on every other platforms. So at the end she just gave platform for covered racism.
coldtea 1y ago
>The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people spread around the world. And that "large body" has a few hundred core major figures and prominent adherents, and a hell of a lot of them seem to be exactly like how the parent describes. Even the "tamer" of them like ASC have that cultish quality... As for the rest of the "large body", the hangers on, those are mostly out of view anyway, but I doubt they'd be paragons of sanity if looked up close. >Or put it this way: Name one -ism that _doesn't_ have sub/splinter groups that kill people -isms include fascism, nazism, jihadism, nationalism, communism, nationalism, racism, etc, so not exactly the best argument to make in rationalism's defense. "Yeah, rationalism has groups that murder people, but after all didn't fascism had those too?" Though, if we were honest, it mostly brings in mind another, more medical related, -ism.
- ben_w 1y ago
  >> Or put it this way: Name one -ism that _doesn't_ have sub/splinter groups that kill people > -isms include fascism, nazism, jihadism, nationalism, communism, nationalism, racism, etc, so not exactly the best argument to make in rationalism's defense. "Yeah, rationalism has groups that murder people, but after all didn't fascism had those too? Catholicism, empiricism, pragmatism, presenteeism. Crusades; French revolution specifically; death penalty in general; IDK going postal? More relevantly, given the number of people as per my other comment*, multiplied by e.g. the USA per-100k homicide rate** would lead to 166385 / 1e5 * 5.763 ~= 9.6 homicide victims in that group per year. Given many homicides are by people who are very close to the victim, this also suggests a similar (lower, but similar) expectation value for attackers. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44885822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44885822 ** USA because I am lazy and don't want to spend time guessing and adjusting for the global distribution of group members, but also do consider the USA is an outlier in high-income nations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2021_Homicide_rates_in_high-income_countries_-_variable-width_bar_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2021_Homicide_rates_in_hi...
  - coldtea 1y ago
    >More relevantly, given the number of people as per my other comment, multiplied by e.g. the USA per-100k homicide rate* would lead to 166385 / 1e5 * 5.763 ~= 9.6 homicide victims in that group per year. Given many homicides are by people who are very close to the victim, this also suggests a similar (lower, but similar) expectation value for attackers.* Is that homicide rate equally applicable to all groups within the population? Like the socio-economic groups the rationalists are more likely to belong to? Or is a large chunk of it applicable to gang and drug crime, low income counties, and so on, and thus the expected baseline rate here (given the rationalist group's life circumstances) should have been much lower? And is comparing to the baseline even relevant, when we're not talking about common homicide motives, like that that occurs to the general population, but homicide specifically motivated and attributed to the ideology emerging in "rationalist" groups? Or does rationality goes out the window and a less-rigorous argument is made when it comes to defending its honor?
sjducb 1y ago
This sounds like the No True Scotsman fallacy. We know all true scotsmen are good upstanding citizens. If you find a Scotsman who is a criminal, then obviously he is not a true Scotsman. If you find a rationalist who believes something mad then obviously he is not a true rationalist. There are now so many logical fallacies that you can point to any argument and say it’s a logical fallacy.
- DirkH 1y ago
  Rationality also last I checked doesn't really build ought statements insofar as morality is concerned. You can use it for good or evil and still be rational. There is no contradiction in being very evil and very rational. It is easy to think of brilliant scientists who were evil beyond evil throughout history as an analogous example.
sien 1y ago
Existentialism. Post-modernism. Accidentalism. Perhaps the difference is that these isms didn't think they had thought up everything themselves.

pavlov 1y ago

The article specifically defines the rationalists it’s talking about: “The rationalist community was drawn together by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog post series The Sequences, a set of essays about how to think more rationally.” Is this really a large body of disparate people spread around the world? I suspect not.

animuchan 1y ago
Not sure how to define "drawn together", but the anecdata is: about half of my friends love Yudkowsky's works; they live all across US, EU and Middle Eastern countries. So I suspect yes, it's a large body of loosely coupled people.
BlueTemplar 1y ago
Define "large" : https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/fall-meetups-everywhere-call-for https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/fall-meetups-everywhere-cal... (One of the largest subgroups AFAIK ?) (They still seem to be leaning heavily USA-based, and in particular California-based.)
- Viliam1234 1y ago
  Maybe a better link would be to the previous wave of meetups, because some places join the event at the last moment: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/meetups-everywhere-spring-2025-times https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/meetups-everywhere-spring-2...
BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
It's large in the sense that it's not a single well connected group. There are subgroups within the rationalists
stickfigure 1y ago
"Self-proclaimed rationalists" is a much broader group than people who read Yudkowsky.
giardini 1y ago
Article (and this thread) is blog spam. Arguments about who is/not a cult member (regardless of affiliation) don't seem relevant to HN. Perhaps HN should flag the thread.

atoav 1y ago

Dadaism? Most art -isms didn't have subgroups who killed people. If people killed others in art history it was mostly tragic individual stories and had next to nothing to do with the ideology of the ism.

pas 1y ago
What is the connection between the Ziz crazies killing anyone and rationalism?

aydyn 1y ago

> The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people spread around the world. [Citation needed] I sincerely doubt anything but a tiny insignificant minority consider themselves part of the "rationalist community".

ben_w 1y ago
"Large" is very vague. The leaderboard shows (50 of) 166385 registered accounts* on https://www.lesswrong.com/leaderboard https://www.lesswrong.com/leaderboard This is simultaneously a large body and an insignificant minority. * How many are junk accounts? IDK. But I do know it's international, because I live in Berlin, Germany, and socialise regularly.
- judahmeek 1y ago
  > But I do know it's international, because I live in Berlin, Germany, and socialise regularly. This made me chuckle. Thanks!
- barnabee 1y ago
  I have an account on LessWrong. Heck, I even try to act rationally most of the time. I don’t consider myself a Rationalist or part of the Rationalist community. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that number turns out to overstate the size by an order of magnitude.
poszlem 1y ago
I realized a few years ago that there's an important difference between someone who believes women should have equal rights and a feminist. Similarly, there's a difference between someone who believes men should have equal rights and a men's rights advocate. I often sympathize with the first group. I often disagree with the latter. This same distinction applies to rationality: there's a huge difference between someone who strives to be rational and someone who belongs to a "rationalist community".
- pas 1y ago
  How big is this 3rd gap compared to the aforementioned 2 other gaps?

ruszki 1y ago

The level of dysfunction which is described in the article is really rare. But dysfunction, the kind of which we talk about, is not really that rare, I would even say that quite common, in self proclaimed rationalist groups. They don’t kill people - at least directly - but they definitely not what they claim to be: rational. They use rational tools, more than others, but they are not more rational than others, they simply use these tools to prove their irrationality. I touch rationalists only with a pole recently, because they are not smarter than others, but they just think that, and on the surface level they seem so. They praise Julia Galef, then ignore everything what she said. Even Galef invited people who were full blown racists, just it seemed that they were all right because they knew whom they talked with, and they couldn’t bullshit. They tried to argue why their racism is rational, but you couldn’t tell from the interviews. They flat out lies all the time on every other platforms. So at the end she just gave platform for covered racism.

coldtea 1y ago

>The "they" you are describing is a large body of disparate people spread around the world. And that "large body" has a few hundred core major figures and prominent adherents, and a hell of a lot of them seem to be exactly like how the parent describes. Even the "tamer" of them like ASC have that cultish quality... As for the rest of the "large body", the hangers on, those are mostly out of view anyway, but I doubt they'd be paragons of sanity if looked up close. >Or put it this way: Name one -ism that _doesn't_ have sub/splinter groups that kill people -isms include fascism, nazism, jihadism, nationalism, communism, nationalism, racism, etc, so not exactly the best argument to make in rationalism's defense. "Yeah, rationalism has groups that murder people, but after all didn't fascism had those too?" Though, if we were honest, it mostly brings in mind another, more medical related, -ism.

ben_w 1y ago
>> Or put it this way: Name one -ism that _doesn't_ have sub/splinter groups that kill people > -isms include fascism, nazism, jihadism, nationalism, communism, nationalism, racism, etc, so not exactly the best argument to make in rationalism's defense. "Yeah, rationalism has groups that murder people, but after all didn't fascism had those too? Catholicism, empiricism, pragmatism, presenteeism. Crusades; French revolution specifically; death penalty in general; IDK going postal? More relevantly, given the number of people as per my other comment*, multiplied by e.g. the USA per-100k homicide rate** would lead to 166385 / 1e5 * 5.763 ~= 9.6 homicide victims in that group per year. Given many homicides are by people who are very close to the victim, this also suggests a similar (lower, but similar) expectation value for attackers. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44885822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44885822 ** USA because I am lazy and don't want to spend time guessing and adjusting for the global distribution of group members, but also do consider the USA is an outlier in high-income nations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2021_Homicide_rates_in_high-income_countries_-_variable-width_bar_chart.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2021_Homicide_rates_in_hi...
- coldtea 1y ago
  >More relevantly, given the number of people as per my other comment, multiplied by e.g. the USA per-100k homicide rate* would lead to 166385 / 1e5 * 5.763 ~= 9.6 homicide victims in that group per year. Given many homicides are by people who are very close to the victim, this also suggests a similar (lower, but similar) expectation value for attackers.* Is that homicide rate equally applicable to all groups within the population? Like the socio-economic groups the rationalists are more likely to belong to? Or is a large chunk of it applicable to gang and drug crime, low income counties, and so on, and thus the expected baseline rate here (given the rationalist group's life circumstances) should have been much lower? And is comparing to the baseline even relevant, when we're not talking about common homicide motives, like that that occurs to the general population, but homicide specifically motivated and attributed to the ideology emerging in "rationalist" groups? Or does rationality goes out the window and a less-rigorous argument is made when it comes to defending its honor?

sjducb 1y ago

This sounds like the No True Scotsman fallacy. We know all true scotsmen are good upstanding citizens. If you find a Scotsman who is a criminal, then obviously he is not a true Scotsman. If you find a rationalist who believes something mad then obviously he is not a true rationalist. There are now so many logical fallacies that you can point to any argument and say it’s a logical fallacy.

DirkH 1y ago
Rationality also last I checked doesn't really build ought statements insofar as morality is concerned. You can use it for good or evil and still be rational. There is no contradiction in being very evil and very rational. It is easy to think of brilliant scientists who were evil beyond evil throughout history as an analogous example.

sien 1y ago

Existentialism. Post-modernism. Accidentalism. Perhaps the difference is that these isms didn't think they had thought up everything themselves.