posted on April 18, 2021 02:52 AM by
u/SpillTheCheerwine
59
u/tagghuding54 pointsat 1618715539.000000
In opposition to mainstream online culture, which believes that
certain arguments should be off-limits, the rationalsphere wants to be
able to talk about anything. Slate Star Codex — recently renamed Astral
Codex Ten — the most prominent rationalist blog, has caused controversy
by countenancing free-flowing discussion of topics such as race science
and female harassment of men. And because of their devotion to
hyperanalysis, some members of the community can present as arrogant and
lacking in EQ.
I can only imagine the hand-wringing when this came up….
Which is interesting because while it comes across at first glance that their behavior is "hyper analysis" (which is self gratifying for them) in reality it's often *hyper-ignorance*, a commitment to avoiding other forms of knowledge, context, subtext, empathy and perhaps most of all awareness or care for people's rights, needs, and lived reality.
The most fundamental answer is: knowledge acquired through great time and effort by other people, which they can't derive from first principles themselves in the span of a ten-thousand-word blog post. Their revulsions against expertise and lived experience are both manifestations of this. E.g. on race science, they find it rational and preferable to discuss that topic in the complete absence of both racial minorities and geneticists, and if such experts wander in anyway they'll be met with a hostile skepticism that they never show to armchair speculators.
One way to think about it would be objective vs subjective knowledge (we could also say empirical vs phenomenological). As 'rationalists' they obviously have a love affair with the classic markers of objectivity - "pure" natural sciences, mathematics, and analytic-oriented thought traditions. Subjective forms of knowledge, anything intangible, things emerging from people's experiences, from culture, from history; these are all dismissed & discounted or at best misused and abused for certain points without really considering the full weight of what those forms of knowledge fully imply. Only the true objective forms of knowledge are counted for. Or so they claim is their mode of thought.
This distaste for the subjective is why theres a disdain for social sciences & humanistic disciplines. And it's not that they shy away from history or sociology for instance, you'll hear them make historical claims at times, and they often unwittingly use sociological knowledge; but it's always a highly circumscribed form of history or self-serving repackaged social science rather than a holistic or true engagement with that knowledge on its own terms. To the extent that they engage in social science or subjective knowledge its only from the positivist science/mathematical sides of the discipline, and not other areas.
Their obsession with the pursuit of objectivity means they cannot admit that subjective, and what we could call intersubjective (e.g. culture, the summation of all subjective experience) are coexistent and valid forms of knowledge to empirical natural sciences. Social science and humanistic knowledge thrives on these messy spaces, and the scientific method is not the ultimate or only tool when it comes to subjective reality. For them, only their caricature of science, truth, rationality are allowed.
Ironically, they completely fail to recognize how their very inclinations for objectivity and characteristics are rooted in their own subjectivity. They equate their subjective experience as objective because their identity is a rational subject. Their lack of experience in reflective self-critique seems to blind them from this.
Anyone who works in a sciences knows that it is only as objective as the people involved. I have seen more cherry picking of data and ignoring of results that go against the hypothesis, retesting to get the desired results etc.... than I care to admit. The idea that scientists are somehow superhuman and superior and judge all incoming information without bias is laughable.
I think it's notable that rationalists generally aren't scientists, not even hard STEM ones, they're primarily engineers and computer touchers. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I feel like this is maybe because scientists have generally internalised the scientific method/mindset to some degree, which is anaethema to the sort of aristotlean deduction rationalists are fond of. Every scientist who isn't making stuff up knows how fucking messy the whole business is, and how much graft and iteration there is before we get something we can maybe perhaps be somewhat sure about. It may be naive but I feel like being a (decent) scientist requires a certain level of self-questioning. I don't know, maybe this is bullshit.
Right I agree, to be clear what I was describing was how I've seen rationalists and their followers think (and other 'vulgar materialists), not how I or good-faith scientists in general think about this.
What?
Anybody half-way into science knows that objective just means intersubjective, and we wouldn't be studying culture if "anything went" and was relative.
The problem with SSC and whatnot is, ironically, that they are empathetic like a rock and place too much undue weight on their own point of view.
> Astute readers will note that “bathos” is not in the vocabulary of people like Julia Galef, and yet as an epistemic tool it is valuable in puncturing the hifalutin pathos demanded by the rationalist world.
Would you mind unpacking this more for dumb dumbs like me? How does bathos function to deflate rationalism and maybe what is an example of that?
Is this quote evidence of media liberal brain rot, where anyone who says they're a seeker of "knowledge" is to be uncritically praised, or is it evidence of media types being actually sympathetic/aligned to Rationalism?
NY Magazine is one of the most insipid liberal publications in the country imo, but I think it's more the former.
Jonathan Chait of their *Intelligencer* articles, for example actually seems to share a number of traits with the Rationalist-sphere - like his habit of writing nakedly contrarian articles so he can then frame the negative feedback on Twitter as some sort of silencing attempt - and liberal media will always get horny for individuals who can brand themselves as representing controversial truths and standing up against political correctness.
But it seems like, culturally, Rationalists are too weird for respectable journalists to actually want to associate with them.
NYMag wants to be taken seriously by readers who could be featured in some wealth porn article discussing their firm's partnership with a controversial new interior designer who buys multi-million-dollar pieces from auctions *and* hangs skateboards on the wall.
Not West Coast Tech-adjacents who discuss how microdosing on a nude desert walk is a tool for unlocking humanity's peak evolutionary performance potential.
I'm relatively new to the sub, but it seems like it also can't be understated how helpful having a conventionally attractive and socially-adjusted/competent spokes*woman* is for the frumpy ass mf's that seem to dominate the community.
Ten years ago, an atheist blogger Galef followed published a list of
14 “Sexy Scientists,” which in more than 1,500 comments on a dozen blogs
was alternately blasted (“fucking skeevdood”) and defended (“just silly
fun”). The next week, the blogger, Luke Muehlhauser, posted an apology,
declaring that publishing the list had been morally wrong. Galef was so
impressed by his willingness to reconsider his position that she emailed
him a fan note. The two are now engaged.
Finding love through cancel culture. You onow that isnt that bad. First of they found each other this way, that is great for them. Hope they are happy. Certainly not something I would sneer at myself.
Unrelated to that, this does blow a lot of the rationalist fears of being labelled a sexist and ending alone forever out of the water.
(What a prime example of new atheism in 2010 however).
So she co-founded an organisation that ran a bunch of workshops. Then
the follow up was unable to verify that the workshops achieved
anything.
The entire project was the application of rigorous ‘scientific
method’ to all areas of life, and to throw away preconceived ideas and
frameworks. So being unable to verify if they were doing anything useful
would naturally lead her to … stop trying to do anything practical and
write a book where she can’t be proved wrong by results.
Even then she found when conducting interviews for research, that
actually listening to people made her realise she was wrong. Guess she
had to stop listening to other people or she’d never have finished
it.
Not the original commenter but I believe you can find most of the info from CFAR’swiki + Galef’s wiki + tweets about her book. Sometime last year, she made a twitter thread that goes like, “I tried referencing a lot of studies but I found them insufficient and instead of taking even more time finishing this book, I’ll just get on with it.”
Just a lurker and I came across the info cos I almost read her book and go down the rabbit hole. Thankfully, you guys exist hah. Why can’t people just publish self-help books w/o sketchy agenda? I’ll just stick to my therapist from now on
Edit: can’t provide the links cos am on mobile. But you can search the tweets by going to twitter and typing her name + book title
It would be a lot more effective to discredit the rationalists by focusing on how hypocritical they are/ fail at their own stated principles by using examples like Galef's workshops and metamed instead of aiming at the "they're nazis" angle (which is true, but requires a lot of digging and requires the audience to understand dogwhistles and layers of shit)
Hell, erin\_nerung is ... Nietzscheanist and *even she* finds the rationalists cringy because they have no sense of aesthetic and are AI worshippers
> Neitzche in the same breath as Nazis
Hope you've not been drinking the Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche koolaid
Sue Prideaux got me stanning that incel sadboi ever since I went to her talk
Only an expert in biology could come up with [so many](https://web.archive.org/web/20191230152951/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n06/adam-mars-jones/larceny) new words for "dick".
The slow descent of formerly respected journalistic institutions into slack jawed yucking at concepts that they are either too stupid or too self absorbed to understand is what first convinced me that we're probably fucked in the long run.
“I often publicly identify as an ‘effective altruist,’ ” she says,
referring to the rationalist spinoff movement focused on optimizing
philanthropy, “because it’s easier to explain, and it doesn’t rub people
the wrong way the way ‘rationalist’ does. It’s simpler and
friendlier.”
Intellectual honesty, an admirable quality to which some people
aspire sometimes, has been nothing less than the organizing principle of
Galef’s life.
Is Intelligencer the Forbes contributor blogs section of NY Mag? I
remember there was a fucking stupid article about how bitcoin mining was
good actually.
I'm not sure whether "yes" or "no" would be the worse answer to that question.
Though it was "The Cut", a different section of *NY Mag,* that ran [the endlessly entertaining story](https://www.thecut.com/article/sex-story-the-woman-whose-husband-is-sleeping-with-her-best-friend.html) which reads (as someone on Mastodon said last year) like Vincent Adultman wrote a sex diary.
given the publicity of the Cade Metz piece, i am kind of surprised
that a relatively respectable publication like NY Mag would give the
“rationalist community” such a puff piece without really talking about
what is actually going on here. this is a press release for
Nazi-adjacency.
I can only imagine the hand-wringing when this came up….
Frame this paragraph
[deleted]
… is neither pop nor intellectual. Discuss
So she co-founded an organisation that ran a bunch of workshops. Then the follow up was unable to verify that the workshops achieved anything.
The entire project was the application of rigorous ‘scientific method’ to all areas of life, and to throw away preconceived ideas and frameworks. So being unable to verify if they were doing anything useful would naturally lead her to … stop trying to do anything practical and write a book where she can’t be proved wrong by results.
Even then she found when conducting interviews for research, that actually listening to people made her realise she was wrong. Guess she had to stop listening to other people or she’d never have finished it.
I’ve been sneering at the NY Mag Intelligencer since 2010 thanks to a point-and-laugh at people doing the hard work of making mathematics interesting story. Much more recently, they ran a cover story that took COVID conspiracy theories seriously. So, overall, yeah: not a fan.
Lol.
Is Intelligencer the Forbes contributor blogs section of NY Mag? I remember there was a fucking stupid article about how bitcoin mining was good actually.
given the publicity of the Cade Metz piece, i am kind of surprised that a relatively respectable publication like NY Mag would give the “rationalist community” such a puff piece without really talking about what is actually going on here. this is a press release for Nazi-adjacency.