4 ms·

It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us. That, along with constantly calling yourself rational

by g-b-r 3mo ago

It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us. That, along with constantly calling yourself rational and being well-intentioned, easily leads to cultish beliefs to be pursued despite how wacky they seem at their face, because it was your superior brains that led you to them. If we add the often good (or enormous) financial resources, it makes for a seriously dangerous cult.

zahlman 3mo ago
> It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us. There is not any such conviction. This is just your interpretation of a domain name, which is not intended that way. > That, along with constantly calling yourself rational This is explicitly not what you are supposed to do, and the point is explicitly not to create an identity around it.
- justonepost2 3mo ago
  https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850#m https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850#m
  - g-b-r 3mo ago
    Oh, they're working to instate a dictatorship, they're not that bad...
    - justonepost2 3mo ago
      For the record, I’m not saying this particular loser on twitter will ever have the power to institute a dictatorship. But it is insane to say that EA and rationalism* are not about believing you are superior and more rational than your peers, or that most EA/rats don’t make an identity out of it (look at any of their online presences). Anthropic literally exists to funnel money and influence to its EA/rat cofounders and early investors, who sincerely believe that they and they alone are smart and rational enough to shepherd our society through its “technological adolescence”. I wish people who agree with this would at least be honest about it.
- g-b-r 3mo ago
  Ok, less wrong every day; we have some rationalists here, whether you think yourself as rational or not let's get an idea of how rational you actually are: do you agree with the views of @tenobrus mentioned below (https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850 https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850), specifically that humanity should be placed under a dictatorship? I know he's EA, but let's not pretend that EA is so distinct from the rationalist community.
  - eudamoniac 3mo ago
    I'm not a rationalist and I don't know who these people are. As far as I can tell they're a bunch of online weirdos who don't matter. But as for that statement, "humanity will be far far better off if they're subjected to the values of effective altruists," that depends on the values in question, which haven't been explained in this thread. But there is definitely a set of values that exists that humanity would be better off subjected to than pure democracy. This is different from supporting an undefined alignment dictatorship in the abstract. Everyone implicitly believes the above when they believe the concept of a "backwards society" can even exist, or when they think their own society would be better if their lost candidate had power. In both cases you think that there exist a set of values that are better to live under than what the democratic process resulted in. I think actually most people believe this about their own values. I could find you infinite posts online that say "humanity would be better off if the other political party was gone [and my political party had sole power]"
    - g-b-r 3mo ago
      There might (might, see later) be a set of values, but there definitely isn't anyone or anything that, given dictatorial powers, can be trusted in applying such values forever fairly without abusing or misusing their power. I'm far from sure that even the rationalists' god-like AI could play that role, even in the extremely unlikely hypothesis that it will materialize at some point. Not to mention that the best set of values could change with the circumstances, and most of all values are a vague concept, WAY too vague to make a dictator behave properly in all circumstances, even if he were somehow compelled to always follow them. > humanity would be better off if the other political party was gone [and my political party had sole power]" Even people wishing that don't necessarily long for a dictatorship, far from it; you could wish for the party you loathe to not exist, but still want everything else of your democratic system to stay unchanged (the possible parties are infinite, removing one doesn't necessarily turn your system into a single-party system).
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

by g-b-r 3mo ago

zahlman 3mo ago

> It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us. There is not any such conviction. This is just your interpretation of a domain name, which is not intended that way. > That, along with constantly calling yourself rational This is explicitly not what you are supposed to do, and the point is explicitly not to create an identity around it.

justonepost2 3mo ago
https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850#m https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850#m
- g-b-r 3mo ago
  Oh, they're working to instate a dictatorship, they're not that bad...
  - justonepost2 3mo ago
    For the record, I’m not saying this particular loser on twitter will ever have the power to institute a dictatorship. But it is insane to say that EA and rationalism* are not about believing you are superior and more rational than your peers, or that most EA/rats don’t make an identity out of it (look at any of their online presences). Anthropic literally exists to funnel money and influence to its EA/rat cofounders and early investors, who sincerely believe that they and they alone are smart and rational enough to shepherd our society through its “technological adolescence”. I wish people who agree with this would at least be honest about it.
g-b-r 3mo ago
Ok, less wrong every day; we have some rationalists here, whether you think yourself as rational or not let's get an idea of how rational you actually are: do you agree with the views of @tenobrus mentioned below (https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850 https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850), specifically that humanity should be placed under a dictatorship? I know he's EA, but let's not pretend that EA is so distinct from the rationalist community.
- eudamoniac 3mo ago
  I'm not a rationalist and I don't know who these people are. As far as I can tell they're a bunch of online weirdos who don't matter. But as for that statement, "humanity will be far far better off if they're subjected to the values of effective altruists," that depends on the values in question, which haven't been explained in this thread. But there is definitely a set of values that exists that humanity would be better off subjected to than pure democracy. This is different from supporting an undefined alignment dictatorship in the abstract. Everyone implicitly believes the above when they believe the concept of a "backwards society" can even exist, or when they think their own society would be better if their lost candidate had power. In both cases you think that there exist a set of values that are better to live under than what the democratic process resulted in. I think actually most people believe this about their own values. I could find you infinite posts online that say "humanity would be better off if the other political party was gone [and my political party had sole power]"
  - g-b-r 3mo ago
    There might (might, see later) be a set of values, but there definitely isn't anyone or anything that, given dictatorial powers, can be trusted in applying such values forever fairly without abusing or misusing their power. I'm far from sure that even the rationalists' god-like AI could play that role, even in the extremely unlikely hypothesis that it will materialize at some point. Not to mention that the best set of values could change with the circumstances, and most of all values are a vague concept, WAY too vague to make a dictator behave properly in all circumstances, even if he were somehow compelled to always follow them. > humanity would be better off if the other political party was gone [and my political party had sole power]" Even people wishing that don't necessarily long for a dictatorship, far from it; you could wish for the party you loathe to not exist, but still want everything else of your democratic system to stay unchanged (the possible parties are infinite, removing one doesn't necessarily turn your system into a single-party system).

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]