And Dominic Cummings, who is about to be elevated to one of the very
highest positions in the Government, lists only members of this group in
his blogroll.
When did Lipton, Regan and Tao become Rationalists? They literally
only blog mathematics.
Yeah I was confused about that too, although tbf advertising that you read a bunch of mathematics blogs with 0 background in the subject is an extremely rationalist thing to do.
the above comment is a good worked example of the sort of disingenuous weaseling bullshit that rationalists come out with when called out directly on their bullshit - in this case a handwave about surveys, despite Yudkowsky's clear directive:
>If you can afford kids at all, you can afford to sign up your kids for cryonics, and if you don't, you are a lousy parent.
evidently sir [needs to reread the Sequences](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hiDkhLyN5S2MEjrSE/normal-cryonics)
He didn't say Yudkowsky supports all those statements, he explicitly said, and I quoted, that the majority of people will defend all of those statements.
That is false and disingenuous.
Don't be disingenuous, this is the statement as *actually* quoted:
>Spending money on cryogenics is good, though. Putting your spare money into making sure your corpse is frozen after your death is almost as good as giving it to Yudkowsky.
You contrasted that with people, quote "signed up for cryonics", which is obviously a very different thing.
I would certainly say it seems likely that the majority of rationalist-as-in-actually-in-the-rationalist-community types would on balance defend giving money to cryonics even if not personally signed up.
(not, of course, that you've provided a source even for your disingenuous survey claim)
It should be pretty obvious that many of those claims are exaggerated.
I don't think the majority of rationalists think that giving money to Yudkowsky is the best use of money or close, and the number of people who both believe that and that spending money on cryonics is close to optimal but have not signed up themselves has to be vanishingly small.
There are other claims that are even more preposterous but this is one that can be reasonably quantified.
And no, not providing a link to surveys when it's an easy Google search away doesn't make my argument any weaker. You're just nitpicking at that point.
Look, if it had said many people believe, or several of the prominent people/founders of the community believe, I'd be more comfortable with it.
Although even that wouldn't be accurate for some of the claims. I don't think anyone prominent in the community would endorse the claim about anything producing profit being good, even Hanson who's probably the closest to stuff like that.
> It should be pretty obvious that many of those claims are exaggerated.
That one, however, isn't.
But go on, attach rockets to your goalposts. What was your next one?
This one was, but I can see debate is useless with someone who thinks a blog post by Yudkowsky is dispositive to evaluating a claim about what a community as a whole believes/defends
When did Lipton, Regan and Tao become Rationalists? They literally only blog mathematics.
That list of statements that would be “defended by the majority” is just dumb.
Some can even be disproven easily, like the one about cryonics: no survey has found a majority of people signed up for cryonics or even close to that.