Pretty much the title. I am seeing horrible things from people related to LW, SSC and Yud. I thought that the union of rational, instrumental thoughts/analysis was very interesting when I first found these blogs. They even helped me with my biases. It reminded me of “Thinking: Fast and Slow” but applied to everything.
I did not see beefy stuff like economics and social policies and politics, I stuck myself to the blander, more abstract and strangely related topics. Might be because I always filtered dicey topics, but now I see the problems. I did not follow these blogs, I got to them accidentally too, but some of the content was appealing to me.
Help me overcome my bias.
edit: so, I’ve been looking through other “articles” on the blogs (as I didn’t steer away from the basic stuff) and I get why they get shitted on. It gets worse.
edit 2: oh my fucking shit, it’s really worse than I thought. I’m glad I found the sneerclub.
To be somewhat helpful, I think SSC/Rationalist types suffer from what I’ve heard colloquially called “Engineer’s disease”, basically the idea that because they’re smart/competant in one field then those skills will automatically transfer to other fields.
At best this leads a lot of discussions which have simply been unknowingly rehashed from other fields while inventing their own jargon. Essentially re-inventing the wheel, calling it the “rounded movement device”, and bragging about how smart they are when it does indeed roll.
At worst it leads to Rationalists wading into areas in which they have zero knowledge (say, political theory), misunderstanding simple terms, not understanding debates within the field, not understanding the history of these debates, etc etc basically tripping over their own shoelaces and defecating in their pants at every opportunity while still having the arrogance to write 10,000 word articles about it.
Both of these problems could be solved by having some basic humility and cracking open a 101-level textbook or (heaven forbid) reading widely on said issue before writing long essays about it.
Of course, there are many many more problems with the Rationalist community, but I think that’s one of the big problems that sits at the heart of the community and informs/intensifies the other problems they have.
imo part of the problem is that Yudkowsky isn’t as rational as he thinks he is. For god’s sake, he tried to get a Hugo for his fun-but-essentially-insipid Harry Potter fanfiction.
another part is that SSC likes to promote fringe theories. he’s linked to a guy who believes that male homosexuality is caused by a virus transmitted from man to man quite a few times (side note: I don’t think I’ve heard anyone explicitly make the jump to “gay pride is a virus” but if someone claimed that without also commenting on the catholic church they should be assumed to be arguing in bad faith.)
there’s another interesting note to be made in that Robin Hanson, Yudkowsky’s ideological brother, has made comments intimating that cuckoldry is worse than rape, and that it’s useful to determine levels of moral nuance for situations such as slavery or nazi germany
and of course you can’t forget the utter arrogance of some rationalist projects. Look up metamed. it was an attempt to use “rationality” to solve medicine. that sounds like a sneer but it’s also a fair description. it was also an utter failure.
if you think that LW, SSC, and Yud have useful ideas, you should look for the sources from which they took those ideas. there are several threads about that floating around. the common truism around here is that the good stuff isn’t original and the original stuff isn’t good. Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is recommended, I believe.
I think the RationalWiki on LessWrong has it pretty right about the whole LW sphere: The good bits are not original and the original bits are not good.
So sure, some of the content appeals to you. But, mate, the bad runs the gamut from re-inventing weaker wheels in its own jargon (e.g. “steelmanning,” a less-clever-than-it-sounds version of the principle of charity) to rationalizing nonsense and bigotry.
when we do serious posts here we like to label them NSFW
Sneer more
you did a speedrun of this journey
Welcome! You’re in good company.
The breaking point for me was when all but one of them feigned complete ignorance–and categorically denied the existence–of any modern societal conception of “ideal masculinity” whatsoever, and then had the gall to turn around and call me condescending for not assuming they actually knew all of my potential arguments and had already dismissed them as beneath consideration.
I knew they had biases before then, but I didn’t realize how far they would take them until that particular exchange. I’m glad you found your way out.
lotta folks hit the nail on the head
there are certainly some good/great articles on SSC (the actual website not the subreddit), and I still find it useful to read it, but the surrounding community is…yea just don’t
it’s often similar to Youtube comments in terms of HOT TAKES but just slathered in “rational” justifications
Get the fuck out, wrongthinker.