… if THE CLAIM is true then it brings to mind some potentially unkind questions about the psychological heath of a seemingly significant portion of the ‘rationality community’.
So I think we have much stronger evidence of psychological health issues with the rationality community (which I assume is the same thing as the ‘rationality community’ though I’m uncertain) via things like the LW and SSC surveys. Perhaps you do not trust surveys because of self-report issues? But in that case I’d probably look at proxies like common correlates of mental health issues, or maybe suicide rates within the community and see if it’s above baseline.
I’m personally pretty convinced that psychological issues in the rationalist community is substantially above baseline[1], but I would not want to trust a fairly complex causal assignment ascribed to a specific cause, that likely has politically motivated reporting, above more mundane instruments like surveys and other observational data.
[1] The main source of hesitation for me is uncertainty about the baseline; it’s plausible but unlikely to me that “normal people” are very crazy in the clinical sense but for some reason this is mostly unreported.
Agreed. On priors I would expect above-baseline rates of mental health issues in the community even in the total absence of any causal arrow from the community to mental health issues (and in fact even in the presence of fairly strong mental health benefits from participation in the community), simply through selection effects. Which people are going to get super interested in how minds work and how to get theirs to work better? Who’s going to want to spend large amounts of time interacting with internet strangers instead of the people around them? Who’s going to be strongly interested in new or obscure ideas even if it makes the people around them think they’re kind of weird? I think people in this community are both more likely to have some pre-existing mental health issues, and more likely to recognise and acknowledge the issues they have.
@Linch: My observations (based on an admittedly limited set of observations and my lack of psychological training) agree with your “I’m personally pretty convinced that psychological issues in the rationalist community is substantially above baseline.
I’m surprised, given the claimed truth-seeking and evidentiary rigor values of ‘the rationalist community’, that there is not a magiteral data-laden LessWrong essay that addresses “psychological issues in the rationalist community” that is cited when discussion turns to this topic. Can anyone point to such an essay?
So I think we have much stronger evidence of psychological health issues with the rationality community (which I assume is the same thing as the ‘rationality community’ though I’m uncertain) via things like the LW and SSC surveys. Perhaps you do not trust surveys because of self-report issues? But in that case I’d probably look at proxies like common correlates of mental health issues, or maybe suicide rates within the community and see if it’s above baseline.
I’m personally pretty convinced that psychological issues in the rationalist community is substantially above baseline[1], but I would not want to trust a fairly complex causal assignment ascribed to a specific cause, that likely has politically motivated reporting, above more mundane instruments like surveys and other observational data.
[1] The main source of hesitation for me is uncertainty about the baseline; it’s plausible but unlikely to me that “normal people” are very crazy in the clinical sense but for some reason this is mostly unreported.
Agreed. On priors I would expect above-baseline rates of mental health issues in the community even in the total absence of any causal arrow from the community to mental health issues (and in fact even in the presence of fairly strong mental health benefits from participation in the community), simply through selection effects. Which people are going to get super interested in how minds work and how to get theirs to work better? Who’s going to want to spend large amounts of time interacting with internet strangers instead of the people around them? Who’s going to be strongly interested in new or obscure ideas even if it makes the people around them think they’re kind of weird? I think people in this community are both more likely to have some pre-existing mental health issues, and more likely to recognise and acknowledge the issues they have.
@Linch: My observations (based on an admittedly limited set of observations and my lack of psychological training) agree with your “I’m personally pretty convinced that psychological issues in the rationalist community is substantially above baseline.
I’m surprised, given the claimed truth-seeking and evidentiary rigor values of ‘the rationalist community’, that there is not a magiteral data-laden LessWrong essay that addresses “psychological issues in the rationalist community” that is cited when discussion turns to this topic. Can anyone point to such an essay?
What does “magiteral” mean here?
At any rate, you’re free to be the change you want to see in the world. :)