I believe there’s a lot we can learn about rationalism from this saga, and I’m anxious to write a full article dissecting some of the lessons. There’s something like the failure of the Information Hypothesis, and the problem of “smarter” and more educated people tending to become polarized more easily.
A point David made towards the end (paraphrasing) “if you know anything about human psychology, you know that shaming people doesn’t change their minds” should be surfaced as discussed more often. I’ve seen this phenomenon where people, when attacked, just dig in their heels more. I feel a bit like there should be a term for this, but I’m not currently aware of one.
Anyway—I feel like that’s what’s happened with Bret, Heather and other rationalist-adjacent people here: they’re very smart, educated, and heterodox thinkers, but they were attacked in a vicious way and became more polarized. It reminds me a bit of effort justification or sunk cost, but it’s not exactly either of those.
If you’ve been following the FLCCC/Ivermectin story, this interview with Eric Osgood and David Fuller will likely be interesting to you. Eric was part of the FLCCC and recently left over their views on Covid vaccines. https://rebelwisdom.podbean.com/e/ivermectin-the-backstory-of-the-flccc-eric-osgood/
I believe there’s a lot we can learn about rationalism from this saga, and I’m anxious to write a full article dissecting some of the lessons. There’s something like the failure of the Information Hypothesis, and the problem of “smarter” and more educated people tending to become polarized more easily.
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/36/9587
A point David made towards the end (paraphrasing) “if you know anything about human psychology, you know that shaming people doesn’t change their minds” should be surfaced as discussed more often. I’ve seen this phenomenon where people, when attacked, just dig in their heels more. I feel a bit like there should be a term for this, but I’m not currently aware of one.
Anyway—I feel like that’s what’s happened with Bret, Heather and other rationalist-adjacent people here: they’re very smart, educated, and heterodox thinkers, but they were attacked in a vicious way and became more polarized. It reminds me a bit of effort justification or sunk cost, but it’s not exactly either of those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effort_justification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost