TL;DR: What are some movements you would put in the same reference class as the Rationality movement? Did they also spend significant effort trying not to be wrong?
Context: I’ve been thinking about SSC’s Yes, We have noticed the skulls. They point out that aspiring Rationalists are well aware of the flaws in straw Vulcans, and actively try to avoid making such mistakes. More generally, most movements are well aware of the criticisms of at least the last similar movement, since those are the criticisms they are constantly defending against.
However, searching “previous ” in the comments doesn’t turn up any actual exemples.
Full question: I’d like to know if anyone has suggestions for how to go about doing reference class forcasting to get an outside view on whether the Rationality movement has any better chance of succeeding at it’s goals than other, similar movements. (Will EA have a massive impact? Are we crackpots about Cryonics, or actually ahead of the curve? More generally, how much weight should I give to the Inside View, when the Outside View suggests we’re all wrong?)
The best approach I see is to look at past movements. I’m only really aware of Logical Positivism, and maybe Aristotle’s Lyceum, and I have a vague idea that something similar probably happened in the enlightenment, but don’t know the names of any smaller schools of thought which were active in the broader movement. Only the most influential movements are remembered though, so are there good examples from the past ~century or so?
And, how self-critical were these groups? Every group has disagreements over the path forward, but were they also critical of their own foundations? Did they only discuss criticisms made by others, and make only shallow, knee-jerk criticisms, or did they actively seek out deep flaws? When intellectual winds shifted, and their ideas became less popular, was it because of criticisms that came from within the group, or from the outside? How advanced and well-tested were the methodologies used? Were any methodologies better-tested than Prediction Markets, or better grounded than Bayes’ theorem?
Motive: I think on average, I use about a 50⁄50 mix of outside and inside view, although I vary this a lot based on the specific thing at hand. However, if the Logical Positivists not only noticed the previous skull, but the entire skull pile, and put a lot of effort into escaping the skull-pile paradigm, then I’d probably be much less certain that this time we finally did.
The skeptic/debunker movement within science popularization (Carl Sagan, Martin Gardner, James Randi).
General Semantics is possibly the closest to the stated LW (and CFAR) goals of improving human rationality, since it aimed at improving human thought through adopting explicit techniques to increase awareness of cognitive processes such as abstraction. “The map is not the territory” is a g.s. catchphrase.
It’s hard to find the reference class because our rationality movement lends it’s existence to the internet.
If you take a pre-internet self-development movement like Landmark education it’s different in many ways and it would be hard for me to say that it’s in the same reference class as our rationality movement.
atheists—they usually have “reason” as their applause light (whether deservedly or not)
I think there a variety of different people who are atheists. Marx was an atheist but he’s not in the same movement as Richard Dawkins.
The same goes for the terms mathematician and philosopher.
I mostly agree, however… although Marx is not in the same movement as Dawkins, I think even Marx somewhat belongs to the rationalist reference class (just not in the same way as Dawkins).
But this is merely a question of degree—when two things are far enough in the thingspace that it doesn’t make sense to consider them the same cluster anymore. Dawkins is closer to LW than Marx is, but both are closer than… uhm… people who don’t even try to use reason / math / reductionism; so it depends on how closely you zoom in to the picture. I tried to err on the side of inclusion.
TL;DR: What are some movements you would put in the same reference class as the Rationality movement? Did they also spend significant effort trying not to be wrong?
Context: I’ve been thinking about SSC’s Yes, We have noticed the skulls. They point out that aspiring Rationalists are well aware of the flaws in straw Vulcans, and actively try to avoid making such mistakes. More generally, most movements are well aware of the criticisms of at least the last similar movement, since those are the criticisms they are constantly defending against.
However, searching “previous ” in the comments doesn’t turn up any actual exemples.
Full question: I’d like to know if anyone has suggestions for how to go about doing reference class forcasting to get an outside view on whether the Rationality movement has any better chance of succeeding at it’s goals than other, similar movements. (Will EA have a massive impact? Are we crackpots about Cryonics, or actually ahead of the curve? More generally, how much weight should I give to the Inside View, when the Outside View suggests we’re all wrong?)
The best approach I see is to look at past movements. I’m only really aware of Logical Positivism, and maybe Aristotle’s Lyceum, and I have a vague idea that something similar probably happened in the enlightenment, but don’t know the names of any smaller schools of thought which were active in the broader movement. Only the most influential movements are remembered though, so are there good examples from the past ~century or so?
And, how self-critical were these groups? Every group has disagreements over the path forward, but were they also critical of their own foundations? Did they only discuss criticisms made by others, and make only shallow, knee-jerk criticisms, or did they actively seek out deep flaws? When intellectual winds shifted, and their ideas became less popular, was it because of criticisms that came from within the group, or from the outside? How advanced and well-tested were the methodologies used? Were any methodologies better-tested than Prediction Markets, or better grounded than Bayes’ theorem?
Motive: I think on average, I use about a 50⁄50 mix of outside and inside view, although I vary this a lot based on the specific thing at hand. However, if the Logical Positivists not only noticed the previous skull, but the entire skull pile, and put a lot of effort into escaping the skull-pile paradigm, then I’d probably be much less certain that this time we finally did.
Just a few groups that have either aimed at similar goals, or have been culturally influential in ways that keep showing up in these parts —
The Ethical Culture movement (Felix Adler).
Pragmatism / pragmaticism in philosophy (William James, Charles Sanders Peirce).
General Semantics (Alfred Korzybski).
The Discordian Movement (Kerry Thornley, Robert Anton Wilson).
The skeptic/debunker movement within science popularization (Carl Sagan, Martin Gardner, James Randi).
General Semantics is possibly the closest to the stated LW (and CFAR) goals of improving human rationality, since it aimed at improving human thought through adopting explicit techniques to increase awareness of cognitive processes such as abstraction. “The map is not the territory” is a g.s. catchphrase.
Note to self, in case I come back to this problem: the Vienna Circle fits the bill.
It’s hard to find the reference class because our rationality movement lends it’s existence to the internet.
If you take a pre-internet self-development movement like Landmark education it’s different in many ways and it would be hard for me to say that it’s in the same reference class as our rationality movement.
There is always going to be some difference, so I am going to ignore medium-sized differences here and cast a wide net:
scientists—obviously, right?
atheists—they usually have “reason” as their applause light (whether deservedly or not)
“social engineers” of all political flavors, including SJWs—believe themselves to know better than the uneducated folks
psychoanalysts
behaviorists
mathematicians
philosophers
I think there a variety of different people who are atheists. Marx was an atheist but he’s not in the same movement as Richard Dawkins. The same goes for the terms mathematician and philosopher.
I mostly agree, however… although Marx is not in the same movement as Dawkins, I think even Marx somewhat belongs to the rationalist reference class (just not in the same way as Dawkins).
But this is merely a question of degree—when two things are far enough in the thingspace that it doesn’t make sense to consider them the same cluster anymore. Dawkins is closer to LW than Marx is, but both are closer than… uhm… people who don’t even try to use reason / math / reductionism; so it depends on how closely you zoom in to the picture. I tried to err on the side of inclusion.
The question was about movements. Whether or not someone is in the same movement isn’t just a question of whether they are close to each other.