To keep track of the discussion so far, it seems like there are at least three dimensions of disagreement:
1. Mainstream vs. Rationalists Cage Match
1A. Overall, the rationality community is way better than mainstream society.
1B. The rationality community is about as good as mainstream society.
1C. The rationality community is way worse than mainstream society.
My model is that I, Connor, Anna, and Vassar agree with 1A, and hypothetical-Said-commenter agrees with 1C. (The rationalists are pretty weird, so it makes sense that 1B would be a less common view.)
2. Psychoticism vs. Anti-Psychoticism
2A. The rationality community has a big, highly tractable problem: it’s way too high on ‘broadly psychoticism-adjacent characteristics’.
2B. The rationality community has a big, highly tractable problem: it’s way too low on those characteristics.
2C. The rationality community is basically fine on this metric. Like, we should be more cautious around drugs, but aside from drug use there isn’t a big clear thing it makes sense for most community members to change here.
My model is that Connor, Anna, and hypothetical-Said-commenter endorse 2A, Vassar endorses 2B, and I currently endorse 2C. (I think there are problems here, but more like ‘some community members are immunocompromised and need special protections’, less like ‘there’s an obesity epidemic ravaging the community’.)
Actually, I feel a bit confused about Anna’s view here, since she seems very critical of mainstream society’s (low-psychoticism?) culture, but she also seems to think the rationalist community is causing lots of unnecessary harm by destabilizing community members, encouraging overly-rapid changes of belief and behavior, etc.
If I had to speculate (properly very wrongly) about Anna’s view here, maybe it’s that there’s a third path where you take ideas incredibly seriously, but otherwise are very low-psychoticism and very ‘grounded’?
The mental image that comes to mind for me is a 60-year-old rural east coast libertarian with a very ‘get off my lawn, you stupid kids’ perspective on mainstream culture. Relatively independent, without being devoid of culture/tradition/community; takes her own ideology very seriously, and doesn’t compromise with the mainstream Modesty-style; but also is very solid, stable, and habit-based, and doesn’t constantly go off and do wild things just because someone tossed the idea out there.
(My question would then be whether you can have all those things plus rationality, or whether the rationality would inherently ruin it because you keep having to update all your beliefs, including your beliefs about your core identity and values. Also, whether this is anything remotely like what Anna or anyone else would advocate?)
3. Rationality Community: Good or Bad?
There are various ways to operationalize this, but I’ll go with:
3A. The rationality community is doing amazing. There isn’t much to improve on. We’re at least as cool as Dath Ilan teenagers, and plausibly cooler.
3B. The rationality community is doing OK. There’s some medium-sized low-hanging fruit we could grab to realize modest improvements, and some large high-hanging fruit we can build toward over time, but mostly people are being pretty sensible and the norms are fine (somewhere between “meh” and “good”).
3C. The rationality community is doing quite poorly. There’s large, known low-hanging fruit we could use to easily transform the community into a way way better (happier, more effective, etc.) entity.
3D. The rationality community is irredeemably bad, isn’t doing useful stuff, should dissolve, etc.
My model is that I endorse 3B (‘we’re doing OK’); Connor, Anna, and Vassar endorse 3C (‘we’re doing quite poorly’); and hypothetical-Said-commenter endorses 3D.
This maps pretty well onto people’s views-as-modeled-by-me in question 2, though you could obviously think psychoticism isn’t a big rationalist problem while also thinking there are other huge specific problems / low-hanging fruit for the rationalists.
I guess I’m pretty sympathetic to 3C. Maybe I’d endorse 3C instead in a different mood. If I had to guess at the big thing rationalists are failing at, it would probably be ‘not enough vulnerability / honesty / Hamming-ness’ and/or ‘not enough dakka / follow-through / commitment’?
I probably completely mangled some of y’alls views, so please correct me here.
A lot of the comments in response to Connor’s point are turning this into a 2D axis with ‘mainstream norms’ on one side and ‘weird/DIY norms’ on the other and trying to play tug-of-war, but I actually think the thing is way more nuanced than this suggests.
Proposal:
Investigate the phenomenon of totalization. Where does it come from, what motivates it, what kinds of people fall into it… To what extent is it coming from external vs internal pressure? Are there ‘good’ kinds of totalizing and ‘bad’ kinds?
Among people who totalize, what kinds of vulnerabilities do they experience as a result? Do they get exploited more by bad actors? Do they make common sense mistakes? Etc.
I am willing to bet there is a ‘good’ kind of totalizing and a ‘bad’ kind. And I think my comment about elitism was one of the bad kinds. And I think it’s not that hard to tell which is which? I think it’s hard to tell ‘from the inside’ but I… think I could tell from the outside with enough observation and asking them questions?
A very basic hypothesis is: To the extent that a totalizing impulse is coming from addiction (underspecified term here, I don’t want to unpack rn), it is not healthy. To the extent that a totalizing impulse is coming from an open-hearted, non-clingy, soulful conviction, it is healthy.
I would test that hypothesis, if it were my project. Others may have different hypotheses.
I want to note that the view / reasoning given in my comment applies (or could apply) quite a bit more broadly than the specific “psychoticism” issue (and indeed I took Connor’s top-level comment to be aimed more broadly than that). (I don’t know, actually, that I have much to say about that specific issue, beyond what I’ve already said elsethread here.)
I do like the “rural east coast libertarian” image. (As far as “can you have that and also rationality” question, well, why not? But perhaps the better question is “can you have that and Bay Area rationalist culture”—to which the answer might be, “why would you want to?”)
Yeah, I disagree with that view.
To keep track of the discussion so far, it seems like there are at least three dimensions of disagreement:
1. Mainstream vs. Rationalists Cage Match
1A. Overall, the rationality community is way better than mainstream society.
1B. The rationality community is about as good as mainstream society.
1C. The rationality community is way worse than mainstream society.
My model is that I, Connor, Anna, and Vassar agree with 1A, and hypothetical-Said-commenter agrees with 1C. (The rationalists are pretty weird, so it makes sense that 1B would be a less common view.)
2. Psychoticism vs. Anti-Psychoticism
2A. The rationality community has a big, highly tractable problem: it’s way too high on ‘broadly psychoticism-adjacent characteristics’.
2B. The rationality community has a big, highly tractable problem: it’s way too low on those characteristics.
2C. The rationality community is basically fine on this metric. Like, we should be more cautious around drugs, but aside from drug use there isn’t a big clear thing it makes sense for most community members to change here.
My model is that Connor, Anna, and hypothetical-Said-commenter endorse 2A, Vassar endorses 2B, and I currently endorse 2C. (I think there are problems here, but more like ‘some community members are immunocompromised and need special protections’, less like ‘there’s an obesity epidemic ravaging the community’.)
Actually, I feel a bit confused about Anna’s view here, since she seems very critical of mainstream society’s (low-psychoticism?) culture, but she also seems to think the rationalist community is causing lots of unnecessary harm by destabilizing community members, encouraging overly-rapid changes of belief and behavior, etc.
If I had to speculate (properly very wrongly) about Anna’s view here, maybe it’s that there’s a third path where you take ideas incredibly seriously, but otherwise are very low-psychoticism and very ‘grounded’?
The mental image that comes to mind for me is a 60-year-old rural east coast libertarian with a very ‘get off my lawn, you stupid kids’ perspective on mainstream culture. Relatively independent, without being devoid of culture/tradition/community; takes her own ideology very seriously, and doesn’t compromise with the mainstream Modesty-style; but also is very solid, stable, and habit-based, and doesn’t constantly go off and do wild things just because someone tossed the idea out there.
(My question would then be whether you can have all those things plus rationality, or whether the rationality would inherently ruin it because you keep having to update all your beliefs, including your beliefs about your core identity and values. Also, whether this is anything remotely like what Anna or anyone else would advocate?)
3. Rationality Community: Good or Bad?
There are various ways to operationalize this, but I’ll go with:
3A. The rationality community is doing amazing. There isn’t much to improve on. We’re at least as cool as Dath Ilan teenagers, and plausibly cooler.
3B. The rationality community is doing OK. There’s some medium-sized low-hanging fruit we could grab to realize modest improvements, and some large high-hanging fruit we can build toward over time, but mostly people are being pretty sensible and the norms are fine (somewhere between “meh” and “good”).
3C. The rationality community is doing quite poorly. There’s large, known low-hanging fruit we could use to easily transform the community into a way way better (happier, more effective, etc.) entity.
3D. The rationality community is irredeemably bad, isn’t doing useful stuff, should dissolve, etc.
My model is that I endorse 3B (‘we’re doing OK’); Connor, Anna, and Vassar endorse 3C (‘we’re doing quite poorly’); and hypothetical-Said-commenter endorses 3D.
This maps pretty well onto people’s views-as-modeled-by-me in question 2, though you could obviously think psychoticism isn’t a big rationalist problem while also thinking there are other huge specific problems / low-hanging fruit for the rationalists.
I guess I’m pretty sympathetic to 3C. Maybe I’d endorse 3C instead in a different mood. If I had to guess at the big thing rationalists are failing at, it would probably be ‘not enough vulnerability / honesty / Hamming-ness’ and/or ‘not enough dakka / follow-through / commitment’?
I probably completely mangled some of y’alls views, so please correct me here.
A lot of the comments in response to Connor’s point are turning this into a 2D axis with ‘mainstream norms’ on one side and ‘weird/DIY norms’ on the other and trying to play tug-of-war, but I actually think the thing is way more nuanced than this suggests.
Proposal:
Investigate the phenomenon of totalization. Where does it come from, what motivates it, what kinds of people fall into it… To what extent is it coming from external vs internal pressure? Are there ‘good’ kinds of totalizing and ‘bad’ kinds?
Among people who totalize, what kinds of vulnerabilities do they experience as a result? Do they get exploited more by bad actors? Do they make common sense mistakes? Etc.
I am willing to bet there is a ‘good’ kind of totalizing and a ‘bad’ kind. And I think my comment about elitism was one of the bad kinds. And I think it’s not that hard to tell which is which? I think it’s hard to tell ‘from the inside’ but I… think I could tell from the outside with enough observation and asking them questions?
A very basic hypothesis is: To the extent that a totalizing impulse is coming from addiction (underspecified term here, I don’t want to unpack rn), it is not healthy. To the extent that a totalizing impulse is coming from an open-hearted, non-clingy, soulful conviction, it is healthy.
I would test that hypothesis, if it were my project. Others may have different hypotheses.
I want to note that the view / reasoning given in my comment applies (or could apply) quite a bit more broadly than the specific “psychoticism” issue (and indeed I took Connor’s top-level comment to be aimed more broadly than that). (I don’t know, actually, that I have much to say about that specific issue, beyond what I’ve already said elsethread here.)
I do like the “rural east coast libertarian” image. (As far as “can you have that and also rationality” question, well, why not? But perhaps the better question is “can you have that and Bay Area rationalist culture”—to which the answer might be, “why would you want to?”)