My suspicion is that people see that Eliezer gained a lot of prestige via his writing … and I suspect people make the (reasonable) assumption that if they do something similar maybe they will gain prestige from their writing targeted to other rationalists.
I’d like to emphasize the idea “people try to copy Eliezer”, separately from the “naming new concepts” part.
It was my experience from Mensa that highly intelligent people are often too busy participating at pissing contests, instead of actually winning at life by engaging in lower-status behaviors such as cooperation or hard work. And, Gods forgive me, I believed we (the rationalist community) were better than that. But perhaps we are just doing it in a less obvious way.
Trying to “copy Eliezer” is a waste of resources. We already have Eliezer. His online articles can be read by any number of people; at least this aspect of Eliezer scales easily. So if you are tempted to copy him anyway, you should consider the hypothesis that you actually try to copy his local status. You have found a community where “being Eliezer” is high-status, and you are unconsciously pushed towards increasing your status. (The only thing you cannot copy is his position as a founder. To achieve this, you would have to rebrand the movement, and position yourself in the new center. Welcome, post-rationalists, et al.)
Instead, the right thing to do is:
cooperate with Eliezer, especially if your skills complement his. (Question is, how good is Eliezer himself at this kind of cooperation. I am on the opposite side of the planet, so I have no idea.) Simply said, anything Eliezer needs to get done, but doesn’t have a comparative advantage at, if you do it for him, you free his hands and head to do things he actually excels at. Yes, this can mean doing low-status things. Again, the question is whether your are optimizing for your status, or something else.
try alternative approaches, where the rationalist community seems to have blind spots. Such as DragonArmy, which really challenged the local crab mentality. My great wish is to see other people build their own experiments on top of this one: to read Duncan’s retrospective, to make their own idea of “we want to copy this, we don’t want to copy that, and we want to introduce these new ideas”, and then go ahead and actually do it. And post their own retrospective, etc. So that finally we may find a working model of a rationalist community that actually wins at life, as a community. (And of course, anyone who tries this has to expect strong negative reactions.)
I strongly suspect that internet itself (the fact that rationalists often coordinate as an online community) is a negative pressure. Internet is inherently biased in favor of insight porn. Insights get “likes” and “shares”, verbal arguments receive fast rewards. The actions in real world usually take a lot of time, and thus don’t make a good online conversation. (Imagine that every few months you acquire one boring habit that makes you more productive, and as a cumulative result of ten such years you achieve your dreams. Impressive, isn’t it? Now imagine a blog, that every few months publishes a short article about the new boring habit. Such blog would be a complete failure.) I would expect rationalists living close to each other, and thus mostly interacting offline, to be much more successful.
The only thing you cannot copy is his position as a founder. To achieve this, you would have to rebrand the movement, and position yourself in the new center. Welcome, post-rationalists, et al.
The term post-rationalist was popularized by the diaspora map and not by people who see themselves as post-rationalists and wanted to distinguish themselves.
To the extent that there’s a new person who has a similar founder position right now that’s Scott Alexander and not anybody who self-identifies as post-rationalist.
The term post-rationalist was popularized by the diaspora map and not by people who see themselves as post-rationalists and wanted to distinguish themselves.
The post rats may not have popularised the term as well as Scott did, but I think that’s mostly just because Scott is way more popular than them.
To the extent that there’s a new person who has a similar founder position right now that’s Scott Alexander and not anybody who self-identifies as post-rationalist.
Well, the claim was about what the post rats were (consciously or not) trying to do, not about whether they were successful.
And I think Scott has rebranded the movement, in a relevant sense. There’s a lot of overlap, but SSC is its own thing, with its own spinoffs. E.g. I believe most SSC readers don’t identify as rationalists.
Will Newsome did you the term before, but I’m not aware of it being used to the extent that it’s worthwhile to speak of him as someone who planned on being seen as a founder. If that was his intention he would have written a lot more outside of IRC.
I’d like to emphasize the idea “people try to copy Eliezer”, separately from the “naming new concepts” part.
It was my experience from Mensa that highly intelligent people are often too busy participating at pissing contests, instead of actually winning at life by engaging in lower-status behaviors such as cooperation or hard work. And, Gods forgive me, I believed we (the rationalist community) were better than that. But perhaps we are just doing it in a less obvious way.
Trying to “copy Eliezer” is a waste of resources. We already have Eliezer. His online articles can be read by any number of people; at least this aspect of Eliezer scales easily. So if you are tempted to copy him anyway, you should consider the hypothesis that you actually try to copy his local status. You have found a community where “being Eliezer” is high-status, and you are unconsciously pushed towards increasing your status. (The only thing you cannot copy is his position as a founder. To achieve this, you would have to rebrand the movement, and position yourself in the new center. Welcome, post-rationalists, et al.)
Instead, the right thing to do is:
cooperate with Eliezer, especially if your skills complement his. (Question is, how good is Eliezer himself at this kind of cooperation. I am on the opposite side of the planet, so I have no idea.) Simply said, anything Eliezer needs to get done, but doesn’t have a comparative advantage at, if you do it for him, you free his hands and head to do things he actually excels at. Yes, this can mean doing low-status things. Again, the question is whether your are optimizing for your status, or something else.
try alternative approaches, where the rationalist community seems to have blind spots. Such as Dragon Army, which really challenged the local crab mentality. My great wish is to see other people build their own experiments on top of this one: to read Duncan’s retrospective, to make their own idea of “we want to copy this, we don’t want to copy that, and we want to introduce these new ideas”, and then go ahead and actually do it. And post their own retrospective, etc. So that finally we may find a working model of a rationalist community that actually wins at life, as a community. (And of course, anyone who tries this has to expect strong negative reactions.)
I strongly suspect that internet itself (the fact that rationalists often coordinate as an online community) is a negative pressure. Internet is inherently biased in favor of insight porn. Insights get “likes” and “shares”, verbal arguments receive fast rewards. The actions in real world usually take a lot of time, and thus don’t make a good online conversation. (Imagine that every few months you acquire one boring habit that makes you more productive, and as a cumulative result of ten such years you achieve your dreams. Impressive, isn’t it? Now imagine a blog, that every few months publishes a short article about the new boring habit. Such blog would be a complete failure.) I would expect rationalists living close to each other, and thus mostly interacting offline, to be much more successful.
The term post-rationalist was popularized by the diaspora map and not by people who see themselves as post-rationalists and wanted to distinguish themselves.
To the extent that there’s a new person who has a similar founder position right now that’s Scott Alexander and not anybody who self-identifies as post-rationalist.
Here’s a 2012 comment (predating the map by two years) in which someone describes himself as a post-rationalist to distinguish himself from rationalists: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/p5jwZE6hTz92sSCcY/son-of-shit-rationalists-say#ryJabsxh7m9TPocqS
The post rats may not have popularised the term as well as Scott did, but I think that’s mostly just because Scott is way more popular than them.
Well, the claim was about what the post rats were (consciously or not) trying to do, not about whether they were successful.
And I think Scott has rebranded the movement, in a relevant sense. There’s a lot of overlap, but SSC is its own thing, with its own spinoffs. E.g. I believe most SSC readers don’t identify as rationalists.
(“Rebranding” might be better termed “forking”.)
Will Newsome did you the term before, but I’m not aware of it being used to the extent that it’s worthwhile to speak of him as someone who planned on being seen as a founder. If that was his intention he would have written a lot more outside of IRC.