I think you’re treating this as more of a joke than it deserves to be. The epistemic learned helplessness post was serious, and the “take ideas seriously” post was de-endorsed by its author. And the part about non-independent beliefs is another way to say “being in a bubble can be bad”.
There’s also Scott’s post about it being hard to aim advice at the people who need it. There are some people who need to update their beliefs more, but there are some people, especially rationalists, who are too eager to jump on some idea while ignoring Chesterton’s fence, and should learn to update beliefs less.
My experience is that rationalists are hard headed and immune to evidence?
More specifically, I find that the median takeaway from rationalism is that thinking is hard, and you should leave it up to paid professionals to do that for you. If you are a paid professional, you should stick to your lane and never bother thinking about anything you’re not being paid to think about.
It’s a serious problem rationalism that half of the teachings are about how being rational is hard, doesn’t work, and takes lots of effort. It sure sounds nice to be a black belt truth master who kicks and punches through fiction and superstition, but just like a real dojo, the vast majority, upon seeing a real black belt, realize they’ll never stand a chance in a fight against him, and give up.
More broadly, I see a cooperate defect dilemma where everybody’s better off in a society of independent thinkers where everybody else is more wrong, but in diverse ways that don’t correlate, such that truth is the only thing that does correlate. However, the individual is better off being less wrong, by aping wholesale whatever everybody else is doing.
In summary, the pursuit of being as unwrong as possible is a ridiculous goodharting of rationality and doesn’t work at scale. To destroy that which the truth may destroy, one must take up his sword and fight, and that occasionally, or rather, quite frequently, involves being struck back, because lies are not weak and passive entities that merely wait for the truth to come slay them.
My experience is that rationalists are hard headed and immune to evidence?
i’d say more “jumps on one idea and follows it to its conclusion without doing any sanity checks and while refusing to discard the idea when it produces absurd results”.
Not far from this post is a post about how we should care a great deal about fish suffering.
I think you’re treating this as more of a joke than it deserves to be. The epistemic learned helplessness post was serious, and the “take ideas seriously” post was de-endorsed by its author. And the part about non-independent beliefs is another way to say “being in a bubble can be bad”.
There’s also Scott’s post about it being hard to aim advice at the people who need it. There are some people who need to update their beliefs more, but there are some people, especially rationalists, who are too eager to jump on some idea while ignoring Chesterton’s fence, and should learn to update beliefs less.
My experience is that rationalists are hard headed and immune to evidence?
More specifically, I find that the median takeaway from rationalism is that thinking is hard, and you should leave it up to paid professionals to do that for you. If you are a paid professional, you should stick to your lane and never bother thinking about anything you’re not being paid to think about.
It’s a serious problem rationalism that half of the teachings are about how being rational is hard, doesn’t work, and takes lots of effort. It sure sounds nice to be a black belt truth master who kicks and punches through fiction and superstition, but just like a real dojo, the vast majority, upon seeing a real black belt, realize they’ll never stand a chance in a fight against him, and give up.
More broadly, I see a cooperate defect dilemma where everybody’s better off in a society of independent thinkers where everybody else is more wrong, but in diverse ways that don’t correlate, such that truth is the only thing that does correlate. However, the individual is better off being less wrong, by aping wholesale whatever everybody else is doing.
In summary, the pursuit of being as unwrong as possible is a ridiculous goodharting of rationality and doesn’t work at scale. To destroy that which the truth may destroy, one must take up his sword and fight, and that occasionally, or rather, quite frequently, involves being struck back, because lies are not weak and passive entities that merely wait for the truth to come slay them.
i’d say more “jumps on one idea and follows it to its conclusion without doing any sanity checks and while refusing to discard the idea when it produces absurd results”.
Not far from this post is a post about how we should care a great deal about fish suffering.