Eric Raymond

Karma: 1,153

Eric Raymond Apr 8, 2021, 3:58 AM
7 points
0
in reply to: jdp’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
Great Mambo Chicken and Engines of Creation were in my reference list for a while, until I decided to cull the list for more direct relevance to systems of training for rationality. It was threatening to get unmanageably long otherwise.
I didn’t know there was a biography of Korzybski. Thanks!

Eric Raymond Apr 8, 2021, 3:55 AM
11 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
“Galaxies continue to exist after the expanding universe carries them over the horizon of observation from us” trivially unpacks to “If we had methods to make observations outside our light cone, we would pick up the signatures that galaxies after the expanding universe has carried them over the horizon of observation from us defined by c.”
You say “Any meaningful belief has a truth-condition”. This is exactly Peirce’s 1878 insight about the meaning of truth claims, expressed in slightly different language—after all, your “truth-condition” unpacks to a bundle of observables, does it not?
The standard term of art you are missing when you say “verificationist” is “predictivist”.
I can grasp no way in which you are not a predictivist other than terminological quibbles, Eliezer. You can refute me by uttering a claim that you consider meaningful, e.g. having a “truth-condition”, where the truth condition does not implicitly cash out as hypothetical-future observables—or, in your personal terminology, “anticipated experiences”
Amusingly, your “anticipated experiences” terminology is actually closer to the language of Peirce 1878 than the way I would normally express it, which is influenced by later philosophers in the predictivist line, notably Reichenbach.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 7:33 PM
4 points
in reply to: chaosmage’s comment on: Mythic Mode
The reference to the Book of the Law was intentional. The reference to chaos magic was not, as that concept had yet to be formulated when I wrote the essay—at least, not out where I could see it.
I myself do not use psychoactives for magical purposes; I’ve never found it necessary and consider them a rather blunt and chancy instrument. I do occasionally take armodafinil for the nootropic effect, but that is very recent and long postdates the essay.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 7:03 PM
13 points
in reply to: FeepingCreature’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
Probably, but there is something else more subtle.
Both the cultures you’re pointing at are, essentially, engines to support achieving right mindset. It’s not quite the same right mindset, but in either case you have to detach for “normal” thinking and its unquestioned assumptions in order to be efficient at the task around which the culture is focused.
Thus, in both cultures there’s a kind of implicit mysticism. If you recoil from that word because you associate it with anti-rationality I can’t really blame you, but I ask you to consider the idea of mysticism as “techniques for consciousness alteration” detached from any particular beliefs about the universe.
This is why both cultures a have a use for Zen. It is a very well developed school of mystical technique whose connection to religious belief has become tenuous. You can take the Buddhism out of it and the rest is still coherent and interesting.
Perhaps this implicit mysticism is part of the draw for you. It is for me.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 6:39 PM
36 points
in reply to: gilch’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
I think a collection of examples and analysis would be a post in itself.
But I can give you one suggestive example from Twelve Virtues itself: “If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.”
It is a Zen idea that the essence of enlightenment cannot be discovered by talking about enlightenment; rather one must put one’s mind in the state where enlightenment is. Moreover, talk and chatter—even about Zen itself—drives that state away.
Eliezer is trying to say here that the the center of rationalist practice is not in what you know about rationality or how much cleverness you can demonstrate to others but in achieving a mental stance that processes evidence correctly and efficiently.
He is borrowing the rhetoric of Zen to say that because, as with Zen, the center of our Way is found in silence and non-attachment. The Way of Zen wants you to lose your attachment to desires; the Way of rationality wants you to lose your attachment to beliefs.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 1:39 PM
5 points
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
I actually wouldn’t call Zen a “central theme”. More “a recurring rhetorical device”. It’s not Zen Buddhist content that the Sequences use, it’s the emulation of Zen rhetoric as a device to subtly shift the reader’s mental stance.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 7:04 AM
6 points
in reply to: metatroll’s comment on: Eric Raymond’s Shortform
I described myself as a subject-matter expert in epistemology. That means I’m familiar with the branch of philosophy that considers the maintenance and justification of knowledge. and considers different theories of same.
Since you’re using the name ‘metatroll’, I think I’ll leave it at that.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 6:13 AM
8 points
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
Agreed.

Eric Raymond Mar 31, 2021, 1:16 AM
6 points
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Eric Raymond’s Shortform
I know who Deutsch is, and I’d never even heard that he had a movement around him.
Which is relevant. I’ve had my ear to the ground for interesting rationality training since, oh, 1975 or so, and I definitely run in the right circles to pick up rumors of stuff like this. The fact that your report is my first sign for that crew is from my POV pretty good evidence that its impact was very, very low.
I also question some of your other premises. Speaking as a person who approaches the Yudkowskian reform from a perspective formed by a previous rationality movement, I don’t think it has all that much difficulty communicating with outsiders at all, certainly not compared to the culture around General Semantics. To the extent it does: well, science is hard. There’s not much point in trying to pitch the Sequences to people much below the American mean IQ level, at least not before our tutorial techniques get a lot better than they are now.
Nor, speaking as a person with considerable subject-matter expertise in epistemology, do I think this movement has a particularly “immodest” epistemology. If one doesn’t think one’s theory knowledge can explain the justification of knowledge in very broad generality, there’s not much point in maintaining it at all, is there?
Speaking as a semi-outsider, it’s not clear to me that this community has mandatory writings at all. Yes, a lot of us have read parts of the Sequences, if not all (I’m not-all myself) but I see no sign that one’s in-groupness depends on having done that. It’s very easy for me to imagine someone fitting into this movement although never having read a word of Yudkowsky, simply by being able to adopt the community’s discourse habits and its concerns.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 11:49 PM
5 points
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
There’s a technical problem. My blog is currently frozen due to a stuck database server; I’m trying to rehost it. But I agree to your plan in principle and will discuss it with you when the blog is back up.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 11:46 PM
12 points
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
Heh. Come to think of it from that angle, “a bit true, but not really” would have been exactly my assessment if I were in your shoes. Thanks, I appreciate the nuanced judgment.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 9:01 PM
15 points
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Eric Raymond’s Shortform
Since you’ve mentioned Rootless Root, I will say that there is another essay I am now thinking of writing about the playful use of Zen tropes. The rationalist community and the hacker culture both have strong traditions of this sort of play...but, the functional reasons for the tradition are not the same! And the way they differ is interesting.
That’s enough of a teaser for now. :-)

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 8:25 PM
41 points
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
I don’t really have an interesting answer, I’m afraid. Busy life, lots of other things to pay attention to, never got around to it before.
Now that I’ve got the idea, I may re-post some rationality-adjacent stuff from my personal blog here so the LW crowd can know it exists.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 8:19 PM
17 points
0
on: Mythic Mode
Author of “Dancing with the Gods” checks in.
First, to confirm that you have correctly understood the points I was trying to make. I intended “Dancing with the Gods” to be a rationalist essay, in the strictest Yudkowskian-reformation sense of the term “rationalist”, even though the beginnings of the reformation were seven years in the future when I wrote it.
<insert timeless-decision-theory joke here>
Second, that I 100% agree with your analysis of why “Meditations on Moloch” was important.
Third and most importantly, to say that I like your use of the term “sandbox” a lot, and I’m going to adopt it. Maintaining a hard distinction between inside the sandbox and outside really is an important tactic for dealing with mythic mode in general, and magic/theurgy in particular.
You got it from infosec jargon, of course, and I’m going to emphasize its use as a verb. A lot of people have damaged themselves through not understanding that they need to sandbox, and a lot of other people (including, as you imply, many rationalists) fear mythic mode unnecessarily because they don’t know that sandboxing is possible.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 7:43 PM
10 points
in reply to: lincolnquirk’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
You have an outside view of my writing, so I’m curious. On a scale of 0 = “But of course” to 5 = “Wow, that was out of left field”, how surprising did you find it that I would write this essay?
If you can find anything more specific to say along these lines (why it’s surprising/unsurprising) I would find that interesting.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 6:35 PM
16 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Rationalism before the Sequences
Ironically, I disagree a bit with lukeprog here—one of the few flaws I think I detect in the Sequences is due to Eliezer not having read enough philosophy. He does arrive at a predictivist theory of confirmation eventually, but it takes more effort and gear-grinding than it would have if he had understood Peirce’s 1878 demonstration and expressed it in clearer language.
Ah well. It’s a minor flaw.

Eric Raymond Mar 30, 2021, 2:11 PM
14 points
on: Eric Raymond’s Shortform
Essay is up.

Rationalism before the Sequences

Eric RaymondMar 30, 2021, 2:04 PM

595 points

83 comments11 min readLW link 2 reviews

Eric Raymond Mar 27, 2021, 6:34 PM
5 points
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Eric Raymond’s Shortform
Alas, I can’t give you a sweeping history of a bunch of movements and factions. The last group really comparable to today’s rationalist movement was the community around Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics. My essay will talk about them.
What is now being mulled over by my beta readers is somewhat more personal and depends on the premise that my experience was representative of a lot of 20th-century proto-rationalists, including in particular Eliezer. Fortunately I don’t have to handwave this; there’s reasonably good evidence that it’s true, some of which is indicated in the essay itself.

Eric Raymond Mar 27, 2021, 5:46 PM
10 points
on: Eric Raymond’s Shortform
I have a draft I’m fairly pleased with. Has gone out to some beta readers.

Eric Raymond

Ra­tion­al­ism be­fore the Sequences

Rationalism before the Sequences