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> For one, their analyses almost always amounted to post hoc justifications of the things they liked. "Almost always" is carrying a lot of weight here. Rationa
by sxp 2mo ago
> For one, their analyses almost always amounted to post hoc justifications of the things they liked.
"Almost always" is carrying a lot of weight here. Rationalists are ideologically diverse [1] when it comes to things like monogamy vs polyamory, left vs right, pro-AI vs anti-AI, nature vs nurture, racism vs anti-racism. The distribution is different from the general population, but many people have changed their minds about various aspects of their life after discussions and debates with rationalists.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5FqX6XBJlfOShMd3UKmQTKiXjM92p3dtyybtlwt4q3r3lDw/viewanalytics https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5FqX6XBJlfOShMd3U...
> What’s less known is that the memo was originally sent to the skeptics@google.com mailing list, which I was a member of. It was a personal belief masquerading as a rationalist inquiry that tried to pull everyone into an unwanted workplace argument.
One of Damore's mistakes was opting for a high-decoupling route on a politically charged topic instead of a low decoupling route. That tends to end badly and he learned this the hard way.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7cAsBPGh98pGyrhz9/low-decoupling-vs-high-decoupling https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7cAsBPGh98pGyrhz9/low-decoup...
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoThat graph looks incredibly un-diverse. Assuming it's accurate, it's mostly childless white male Americans, who skew heavily towards being students.
- alephnerd 2mo ago[dead]
- lux-lux-lux 2mo agoWell-educated young middle class white men, and with politics that generally flow entirely predictably from those demographics. The only real outlier is the openness to HBD/scientific racism stuff.
- pavel_lishin 2mo ago[flagged]
- lux-lux-lux 2mo ago[flagged]
- zahlman 2mo ago> with politics that generally flow entirely predictably from those demographics. There is obviously no such thing. The clear purpose of the subthread the two of you are engaging in is clearly against HN guidelines.
- zahlman 2mo agoAnd? The entire point is that true statements are true, and false statements are false, regardless of who does or doesn't utter them.
- zahlman 2mo ago>> Rationalists are ideologically diverse [1] > That graph looks incredibly un-diverse. Which of age, childlessness, white skin, being male or US citizenship is an "ideology"?
- xhevahir 2mo ago> One of Damore's mistakes was opting for a high-decoupling route on a politically charged topic instead of a low decoupling route. Why does the formation of correct beliefs, a topic people have been discussing for millennia, require such exotic jargon? It's things like this that give off cult vibes.
- zahlman 2mo agoBecause, as the incident with Damore amply demonstrated, trying to use common language to describe these concepts leads to enormous misunderstandings at best. (And sometimes people go out of their way to misinterpret you anyway.)
- tzs 2mo agoOn those survey results several items show a 5 item bar chart with the bars labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 showing the counts and percentages of respondents who chose 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. For example, "Do you prefer modern or older architecture?" shows 20% chose 1, 34.6% chose 2, 25.6% chose 3, 15% chose 4, and 4.8% chose 5. WTF does this mean? I don'e see anything that says what those labels mean. I'd guess for questions asking X or Y they mean X, lean X, no preference, lean Y, and Y but in what order? But some aren't comparisons. One such chart is simply titled "Global Warming". What does it mean to answer "2" to that?
- zahlman 2mo ago> I'd guess for questions asking X or Y they mean X, lean X, no preference, lean Y, and Y Yes; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale > but in what order? ... One such chart is simply titled "Global Warming". What does it mean to answer "2" to that? These things become clear by cross-referencing with the actual survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZLCk8_L64hen93A2gpMXL1BQvtSyRc8uAOGgbQsoRJkbcZg/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZLCk8_L64hen93A2g...).