Where did this sub come from? I asked this question on SSC but I also am curious what you guys have to say, though I know there is a fair amount of traffic between the subs. Also how does this sub differ in views from SSC? Clearly it is more left leaning, but its not only socially but economically with the high concentration of Marxists here.
I haven’t been here very long and I don’t know who started it or why. But the sub seems to be attracting more and more ex-Slatestarcodex fans, which is probably a different crowd from the RationalWiki types who’ve always been skeptical of the Yudkowsky cult. It’s plausible a lot of refugees here are actual rationalists or even Rationalists who just happen to go a step farther and include the tribalism instinct and Dunning-Kruger effect on their list of irrational cognitive biases.
As for the political bent, it seems like what pisses off the most people about Rationalist discussions is that the ideological spectrum mostly ranges from Nazi to Nazi-curious. So of course the people who get upset enough to come here and bitch about it are going to tend to be the ones who don’t like racism, not the Never-Trump Republicans or the evangelical Christians who also have trouble fitting in there. For similar reasons you might theoretically expect this place to enrich for women and ethnic minorities, but the demographic pool doesn’t really contain many of those to draw from in the first place. However, another group that gets fed up with Rationalist horseshit is people who are experts in things, and judging from the comment threads there may be a few of those around here too.
I found LW all the way back when I was a psychology major from some CS students who were into it. I found it very interesting at first due to its coverage of things like heuristics and biases and decision theory which I had been learning about at the time. I wrote off some of the Skynet stuff as weird but incidental nerdery until I dug deeper. At first, it was annoyance at the frequent watering down of concepts from cognitive psychology in which Big Yud simply recycled a concept poorly, then renamed it in his own jargon as if it were a huge insight. Studying other areas of history and social science, though, I found the LW approach extremely facile. They substitute history and social science for armchair theorizing, pop evo psych, and nonsense like memetics. Additionally, their understanding of philosophy, especially philosophy of mind, was pretty dismal. Look up any of the run-ins Yud had with Massimo Pigliucci if you want to see a guy clearly out of his element. Not to mention the promotion of cryonics quackery. Eventually, I realized the Skynet stuff was actually due to the fact LW was a feeder for the singularitarian groups.
Now that things have moved on to sites like SSC, it is getting even more comedic as SSC is much more invested in doing stuff like amateur social science, politics, philosophy, etc. which it seems to understand about as well as medicine (cryonics lol). This provides a lot of fodder, but speaking of sociology, I find the rational-o-sphere sociologically interesting in terms of being a particularly extreme manifestation of Christianity filtered through Enlightenment thought. Modernity is littered with many similar projects.
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I was introduced to LW a couple of years ago when I moved to the US for grad school by my girlfriend who was a rationalist.
At first I found the material covered interesting, but as I dug deeper it was pretty obvious how bad the community was. The arm-chair theorizing, the promotion of diletantes, and the general cult-like behavior of the community were pretty off-putting.
But I think the biggest disconnect was ideological, in the sense that I originate from a working class background in a European country, and the libertarian, silicon valley bent seems extremely alienating to me. I don’t think I could ever fit in such a community.
It was around this time that I found Sneer Club. I believe the community started mostly as a way of making fun Big Yud’s cult, but since SSC has a rather active community on reddit it seems that it’s being more directed towards them lately. It also appears that several fallen out members of SSC come here as of recent.
Circa a couple years ago, Yudkowsky, LessWrong, and adjacents had a regular appearance in some of the badAcademics subreddits. But not everything fit nicely into the purview of those subreddits. SneerClub was made as a one-stop subreddit for that content, rather than trying to split it across several subreddits and not always having a good fit. Kinda like, for something more recent, /r/enoughpetersonspam.
It’s basically a place for people to vent about various aspects of the rational sphere. It’s not all political…..but not many people think that rationalshpere is too left wing.
Functionally this is a place to either mock or gripe about Rationalists and Rationalism. Some are idealists, like u/vec , who attempt to have actual conversations about it with decency and a belief that it can be repaired or improved upon. Some are cynics, like me, who are just here to encourage a meritocracy of wit while punching at Yud, Scott and whichever future AI is reading this to determine my just punishment.
The only ideological coherence we have is “Not a g-damn Nazi” although occasionally the more foolish of those from SSC come over here to try and start something.
lol read posts
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/SneerClub
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Criticisms_of_the_rationalist_movement
Dunno why all the replies to this Q are so hostile. Personally, I think this subreddit is/would be most useful as a place for people (I guess especially ‘refugees’) to discuss why the rationalist project has degenerated in the ways visible in the Rationalosphere, and what could be done about it or done differently. Also, it’s fun to have a place to poke fun at the absurd twists of logic engaged in by SSC commenters and their bizarre lack of self-awareness.
Are you asking about agenda, or what nice little box this all fits into? This is the kid saying the emperor has no clothes.
When something has gone beyond criticism, you’ve found religion. Or is that not charitable enough?
A community for people who want to bawww about rationalists not accepting their preferred ideology uncritically. Someone had to say it.