I now tend regard anyone who isn’t Bayesian as either uneducated or moronic. Same thing about materialist reductionism, only with a slightly lower confidence.
To be blunt, that is a bit strange. In my experience you are far more likely to find a material reductionist than you are to find a Bayesian. This leads me to think that you might be too withdrawn, which might be causing you to have a poor model of what ideas other people are likely to hold, and adding to your general sense of misanthropy. Of course, I’m generalizing from only a few examples (I have talked with others who have this problem) so you should take that into consideration.
Are you in college? If so, perhaps you would do well to hang around the science buildings and look around for science or atheism or freethought-centric groups that meetup on some regular basis (assuming there are no LW meetups near you, as is the case with me). Could you give a brief outline of your current situation? Maybe that would help us to help you.
My slightly lower confidence doesn’t flow from popularity, but from the fact that Bayesianism is more meta than materialist reductionism. Along with the current state of the art of science, it causes my belief in a reductionistic world. Without it, I would be allowed to believe in souls. But it would be harder to abandon Bayesianism if I discovered that we do have immaterial souls.
I currently work at a programming shop. I intend to do a thesis soon. I live in France, far from Paris (or I promise I would have gone to that meetup not long ago).
I suppose I thought it was strange because I was a reductionist long before I knew about Bayesianism; I’ve always had an interest in science and I always gave scientific theories precedence (though when I was very young this was more out of my recognition that science had the authority on truth rather than a rational dissection of epistemology). I read A.J. Ayer and Karl Popper before I read Jaynes (unfortunately, I really wish that it had been Jaynes I read first).
I’m still an undergraduate and I live in the U.S. so I’m afraid that I can offer little in the way of insight. I could perhaps share my experience with I can tell you that I often have similar feelings. I do not live near any meetups and none of my friends share any interest in mathematics, the sciences or rationality. I do have one friend who is very intellectual, but he’s a soft science type who, again, doesn’t share any of my specific interests.
To be blunt, that is a bit strange. In my experience you are far more likely to find a material reductionist than you are to find a Bayesian. This leads me to think that you might be too withdrawn, which might be causing you to have a poor model of what ideas other people are likely to hold, and adding to your general sense of misanthropy. Of course, I’m generalizing from only a few examples (I have talked with others who have this problem) so you should take that into consideration.
Are you in college? If so, perhaps you would do well to hang around the science buildings and look around for science or atheism or freethought-centric groups that meetup on some regular basis (assuming there are no LW meetups near you, as is the case with me). Could you give a brief outline of your current situation? Maybe that would help us to help you.
My slightly lower confidence doesn’t flow from popularity, but from the fact that Bayesianism is more meta than materialist reductionism. Along with the current state of the art of science, it causes my belief in a reductionistic world. Without it, I would be allowed to believe in souls. But it would be harder to abandon Bayesianism if I discovered that we do have immaterial souls.
I currently work at a programming shop. I intend to do a thesis soon. I live in France, far from Paris (or I promise I would have gone to that meetup not long ago).
I suppose I thought it was strange because I was a reductionist long before I knew about Bayesianism; I’ve always had an interest in science and I always gave scientific theories precedence (though when I was very young this was more out of my recognition that science had the authority on truth rather than a rational dissection of epistemology). I read A.J. Ayer and Karl Popper before I read Jaynes (unfortunately, I really wish that it had been Jaynes I read first).
I’m still an undergraduate and I live in the U.S. so I’m afraid that I can offer little in the way of insight. I could perhaps share my experience with I can tell you that I often have similar feelings. I do not live near any meetups and none of my friends share any interest in mathematics, the sciences or rationality. I do have one friend who is very intellectual, but he’s a soft science type who, again, doesn’t share any of my specific interests.