Tyler Cowen: Well, tell me a little more what you mean. You mean Eliezer Yudkowsky?
Ezra Klein: Yeah, I mean Less Wrong, Slate Star Codex. Julia Galef, Robin Hanson. Sometimes Bryan Caplan is grouped in here. The community of people who are frontloading ideas like signaling, cognitive biases, etc.
Tyler Cowen: Well, I enjoy all those sources, and I read them. That’s obviously a kind of endorsement. But I would approve of them much more if they called themselves the irrationality community. Because it is just another kind of religion. A different set of ethoses. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the notion that this is, like, the true, objective vantage point I find highly objectionable. And that pops up in some of those people more than others. But I think it needs to be realized it’s an extremely culturally specific way of viewing the world, and that’s one of the main things travel can teach you.
I think no one would argue that the rationality community is at all divorced from the culture that surrounds it. People talk about culture constantly, and are looking for ways to change the culture to better address shared goals. It’s sort of silly to say that that means it should be called the “irrationality community.” Tyler Cowen is implicitly putting himself at the vantage point of a more objective observer with the criticism, which I find ironic.
Where Tyler is wrong is that it’s not JUST another kind of culture. It’s a culture with a particular set of shared assumptions, and it’s nihilistic to imply that all cultures are equal no matter from what shared assumptions they issue forth. Cultures are not interchangeable. Tyler would also have to admit (and I’m guessing he likely would admit if pressed directly) that his culture of mainstream academic thought is “just another kind of religion” to exactly the same extent that rationality is, it’s just less self-aware about that fact.
As an aside, I think Lumifer is a funny name. I always associate it with Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast, and with Lucifer. Basically I always picture your posts as coming from a cross between a cartoon candle and Satan.
It’s sort of silly to say that that means it should be called the “irrationality community.”
Notice the name of this website. It is not “The Correct Way To Do Everything”.
it’s not JUST another kind of culture. It’s a culture with a particular set of shared assumptions
Don’t ALL cultures have their own particular set of shared assumptions? Tyler’s point is that the rationalist culture, says Tyler, sets itself above all others as it claims to possess The Truth (or at least know the True Paths leading in that general direction) -- and yet most cultures have similar claims.
Lucifer
Lucifer is the bringer of light (Latin: lux). Latin also has another word for light: lumen (it’s the same root but with the -men suffix). Just sayin’ :-P
But I will also admit that the idea of an all-singing all-dancing candelabra has merit, too :-)
It’s sort of silly to say that that means it should be called the “irrationality community.” Tyler Cowen is implicitly putting himself at the vantage point of a more objective observer with the criticism, which I find ironic.
It did seem to be a pretty bold and frontal critique. And “irrationality community” is probably silly. But I agree LW, et al has at times a religious and dogmatic feel to it. In this way the RC becomes something like the opposite of the label it carries. That seems to be his point.
As an aside, I think Lumifer is a funny name. I always associate it with Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast, and with Lucifer. Basically I always picture your posts as coming from a cross between a cartoon candle and Satan.
Yes. Yes.
If this wasn’t exactly the mental image I had of Lumifer before, then it is now.
No one is more critical of us than ourselves. “LessWrong” is lesswrong for being humble about it. Hopefully that humility sticks around for a very long time.
In the past I could also have pointed to some individuals (who AFAIK were not associated with RW, but they could have been) who I think would have counted. I can’t think of any right now, but I expect they still exist.
I think I would rather say, less superlatively, that we’re unusually good at self-criticism.
(I do note that I’m comparing my inside view of the rationalist community with my outside view of other communities, so I shouldn’t put too much confidence in this.)
(But yes, I agree that I was ignoring the thing that Elo was actually trying to point at.)
A bit tongue-in-cheeck, but how about taking Tyler’s unfair label as a proposal?
We could start the rationality religion, without the metaphysics or ideology of ordinary religion. Our God could be everything we do not know. We worship love. Our savior is the truth. We embrace forgiveness as the game-theoretical optimal modified tit-for-tat solution to a repeated game. And so on.
We thoroughly investigate and aggregate the best knowledge humanity currently has on how to live. And we create Rationality Temples worldwide. There will be weekly congregations, with talks on a sequence, with following discussions, on topics such as signalling, bayesian thinking, cognitive biases. We propose a three step way to heaven on earth: identifying worthwhile causes, charting effective solutions and taking actions to achieve it. Lifetime goal is writing a sequence. Compassion meditation and visualisation prayer once per day. Haha, okay perhaps I’m overdoing it.
Using the well-established concepts, rituals and memes of religion is easy to mock, but what if it is also an effective way to build our community and reach our goals?
what if it is also an effective way to build our community and reach our goals?
It surely is an effective way, since by this mean all kinds of silly causes have been pursued. But creating a religion out of rationality (lowercase) would defeat its purpose: in the span of a year, rationality would become the password to learn by memory and the beginning structures will solidify as an attire. Religions are appealing exactly because they exempt their members from thinking on their own and accepting hard truths: rationality has instead more in common with martial arts, they are mostly a question of training and learning to take many hits.
Well, yes, but couldn’t one just make a new religion without those attributes. For example the first of the 10 commandments could be: Question everything, including these texts. Be a student, not a follower. Finding fault in ourself is the highest virtue, free speech etc. ? :-)
Tangential: I think the “four loves” thing is a bit of a cheat, like the “fifty Eskimo words for snow” meme. The Greeks had different words for describing different kinds of positive interpersonal affect—but so do we! We have “affection” and “friendship” and “devotion” and “lust” and “loyalty” and “benevolence” and so on.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with noticing when one of those words (in this case “love”) gets used very broadly, and it doesn’t change the fact that “see how other people classify things” is a useful heuristic. But I am entirely unconvinced that there’s anything very special about the Ancient Greeks, or the notion of love, in this regard—other than various historical contingencies involving C S Lewis, Christianity, and the history of the New Testament.
But I am entirely unconvinced that there’s anything very special about the Ancient Greeks
Well, they were pretty special, being the cradle of the Western civilization ’n’all, but in this specific case all I intended was to give the OP a possible list of specific meanings of the word “love” to consider.
Fair point, well I don’t think romantic love is worthy of sacred status in the irrationality religion. Tough those four neither seemed quite to fit the love I had in mind.
Perhaps something closer the buddhist concept of bodhisattva, meaning altruistic love for all sentient beings?
Ah, Christian love… the kind of altruistic love that makes people tell you that you’re a fallen and depraved creature due to the sin of Adam and thus will be burning in Hell forever unless you “accept Jesus as your savior” by becoming a Christian ASAP. (If precedent is any guide, I can already guess that Roko’s basilisk will be featured prominently in the new “rationality religion”!)
Well, our baseline is what, Buddhist love? There is Buddhist hell) as well and surprise! it doesn’t sound like a pleasant place. You get there through being enslaved by your lusts and desires—unless, of course, you accept the teachings of Buddha ASAP :-P
I would object to calling these “devastating counter-examples”, they’re more like unsolved problems. It seems overly dramatic. I’m not a perfect Bayesian agent, I use my intuitions a lot, but that is not grounds on which to reject Bayesianism, and I think we could say something similar about consequentialism. I may not know how to perfectly measure relative happiness, or perfectly predict the future, but it doesn’t seem like that should be grounds to reject consequentialism entirely, in favor of alternatives which don’t cope with those issues either.
One very common error people make is to treat “utilitarianism” and “consequentialism” as if they were one and the same thing. Utilitarianism makes claims about what is moral and what is not. Consequentialism makes claims about what sort of properties a moral criterion should have. Criticisms about utilitarianism, therefore, are often taken also as criticisms of consequentialism, when in fact the two are distinct concepts!
On the other hand, utilitarianism is a subset of consequentialism, so whereas a criticism of utilitarianism is not necessarily a criticism of consequentialism, the converse is true.
Tyler Cowen and Ezra Klein discuss things. Notably:
I think no one would argue that the rationality community is at all divorced from the culture that surrounds it. People talk about culture constantly, and are looking for ways to change the culture to better address shared goals. It’s sort of silly to say that that means it should be called the “irrationality community.” Tyler Cowen is implicitly putting himself at the vantage point of a more objective observer with the criticism, which I find ironic.
Where Tyler is wrong is that it’s not JUST another kind of culture. It’s a culture with a particular set of shared assumptions, and it’s nihilistic to imply that all cultures are equal no matter from what shared assumptions they issue forth. Cultures are not interchangeable. Tyler would also have to admit (and I’m guessing he likely would admit if pressed directly) that his culture of mainstream academic thought is “just another kind of religion” to exactly the same extent that rationality is, it’s just less self-aware about that fact.
As an aside, I think Lumifer is a funny name. I always associate it with Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast, and with Lucifer. Basically I always picture your posts as coming from a cross between a cartoon candle and Satan.
Notice the name of this website. It is not “The Correct Way To Do Everything”.
Don’t ALL cultures have their own particular set of shared assumptions? Tyler’s point is that the rationalist culture, says Tyler, sets itself above all others as it claims to possess The Truth (or at least know the True Paths leading in that general direction) -- and yet most cultures have similar claims.
Lucifer is the bringer of light (Latin: lux). Latin also has another word for light: lumen (it’s the same root but with the -men suffix). Just sayin’ :-P
But I will also admit that the idea of an all-singing all-dancing candelabra has merit, too :-)
It did seem to be a pretty bold and frontal critique. And “irrationality community” is probably silly. But I agree LW, et al has at times a religious and dogmatic feel to it. In this way the RC becomes something like the opposite of the label it carries. That seems to be his point.
Yes. Yes.
If this wasn’t exactly the mental image I had of Lumifer before, then it is now.
Maybe a bit more Satan than cartoon
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(posted mostly for the challenge of writing this properly in markdown syntax. actually, it was quite easy)
Razib Khan also offers a comment.
No one is more critical of us than ourselves. “LessWrong” is lesswrong for being humble about it. Hopefully that humility sticks around for a very long time.
This seems untrue. For example, RationalWiki.
In the past I could also have pointed to some individuals (who AFAIK were not associated with RW, but they could have been) who I think would have counted. I can’t think of any right now, but I expect they still exist.
That’s fair, but I also think it largely misses the point of Elo’s comment. Here, have (an attempt at) a rephrase:
No community is as prone to self-criticism as the rationalist community.
I think I would rather say, less superlatively, that we’re unusually good at self-criticism.
(I do note that I’m comparing my inside view of the rationalist community with my outside view of other communities, so I shouldn’t put too much confidence in this.)
(But yes, I agree that I was ignoring the thing that Elo was actually trying to point at.)
yes. the fact that we know of RW, and this mention, and try to understand what is going on here. is a good start.
Humility is good, but calibration is better.
A bit tongue-in-cheeck, but how about taking Tyler’s unfair label as a proposal?
We could start the rationality religion, without the metaphysics or ideology of ordinary religion. Our God could be everything we do not know. We worship love. Our savior is the truth. We embrace forgiveness as the game-theoretical optimal modified tit-for-tat solution to a repeated game. And so on.
We thoroughly investigate and aggregate the best knowledge humanity currently has on how to live. And we create Rationality Temples worldwide. There will be weekly congregations, with talks on a sequence, with following discussions, on topics such as signalling, bayesian thinking, cognitive biases. We propose a three step way to heaven on earth: identifying worthwhile causes, charting effective solutions and taking actions to achieve it. Lifetime goal is writing a sequence. Compassion meditation and visualisation prayer once per day. Haha, okay perhaps I’m overdoing it.
Using the well-established concepts, rituals and memes of religion is easy to mock, but what if it is also an effective way to build our community and reach our goals?
It surely is an effective way, since by this mean all kinds of silly causes have been pursued. But creating a religion out of rationality (lowercase) would defeat its purpose: in the span of a year, rationality would become the password to learn by memory and the beginning structures will solidify as an attire.
Religions are appealing exactly because they exempt their members from thinking on their own and accepting hard truths: rationality has instead more in common with martial arts, they are mostly a question of training and learning to take many hits.
Well, yes, but couldn’t one just make a new religion without those attributes. For example the first of the 10 commandments could be: Question everything, including these texts. Be a student, not a follower. Finding fault in ourself is the highest virtue, free speech etc. ? :-)
Literally God of the Gaps! :-)
Which love?
Tangential: I think the “four loves” thing is a bit of a cheat, like the “fifty Eskimo words for snow” meme. The Greeks had different words for describing different kinds of positive interpersonal affect—but so do we! We have “affection” and “friendship” and “devotion” and “lust” and “loyalty” and “benevolence” and so on.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with noticing when one of those words (in this case “love”) gets used very broadly, and it doesn’t change the fact that “see how other people classify things” is a useful heuristic. But I am entirely unconvinced that there’s anything very special about the Ancient Greeks, or the notion of love, in this regard—other than various historical contingencies involving C S Lewis, Christianity, and the history of the New Testament.
Well, they were pretty special, being the cradle of the Western civilization ’n’all, but in this specific case all I intended was to give the OP a possible list of specific meanings of the word “love” to consider.
Fair point, well I don’t think romantic love is worthy of sacred status in the irrationality religion. Tough those four neither seemed quite to fit the love I had in mind.
Perhaps something closer the buddhist concept of bodhisattva, meaning altruistic love for all sentient beings?
Sounds like the plain old Christian love, but with a new cool label :-/
Ah, Christian love… the kind of altruistic love that makes people tell you that you’re a fallen and depraved creature due to the sin of Adam and thus will be burning in Hell forever unless you “accept Jesus as your savior” by becoming a Christian ASAP. (If precedent is any guide, I can already guess that Roko’s basilisk will be featured prominently in the new “rationality religion”!)
Well, our baseline is what, Buddhist love? There is Buddhist hell) as well and surprise! it doesn’t sound like a pleasant place. You get there through being enslaved by your lusts and desires—unless, of course, you accept the teachings of Buddha ASAP :-P
Bryan Caplan responded to this exchange here
I would object to calling these “devastating counter-examples”, they’re more like unsolved problems. It seems overly dramatic. I’m not a perfect Bayesian agent, I use my intuitions a lot, but that is not grounds on which to reject Bayesianism, and I think we could say something similar about consequentialism. I may not know how to perfectly measure relative happiness, or perfectly predict the future, but it doesn’t seem like that should be grounds to reject consequentialism entirely, in favor of alternatives which don’t cope with those issues either.
One very common error people make is to treat “utilitarianism” and “consequentialism” as if they were one and the same thing. Utilitarianism makes claims about what is moral and what is not. Consequentialism makes claims about what sort of properties a moral criterion should have. Criticisms about utilitarianism, therefore, are often taken also as criticisms of consequentialism, when in fact the two are distinct concepts!
On the other hand, utilitarianism is a subset of consequentialism, so whereas a criticism of utilitarianism is not necessarily a criticism of consequentialism, the converse is true.