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Every rationalist I’ve met has been nice and smart and deserved better. These are nerds and not in a bad way, but in a way that gets them bullied and shamed and gaslit. And in practice I can come to agreement with them on lots of issues.
On this issue I can never pin them down – responding with what I think are reasonable questions gets me shut down with what I believe is thought-stopping behavior. They rarely state the actual reasons and the actual reasons are always slippier when they have to verbalize them to people who don’t agree.
No doubt if you’re a cynical manipulator, “having your followers lie about what you believe” works for you. But a lot of these are going to be nice normal guys who are tired of being laughed at and, worryingly, tired of being made to think.
In this respect they have a lot in common with, say, high school kids who became communists in part to piss off their parents. I’m not saying that to mock those kids, because I was one of them – and I think there’s a huge part of this that they’re not wrong about and they’re entitled to demand to be taken seriously, and precious few people do take nerds seriously. And for that matter, there’s philosophically sophisticated people doing the same work as them.
I don’t know how we get them into spaces where something is actually done – if not for humanity or whatever, for people very close to them who actually need it – and where the seduction of ego and money isn’t like, so readily and constantly available.
Not every rationalist I’ve met has been nice or smart ^^.
I think it’s hard to grow up in our society, without harboring a kernel of fascism in our hearts, it’s easy to fall into the constantly sold “everything would work better if we just put the right people in charge”. With varying definitions of who the “right people” are:
- Racism
- Eugenics
- Benevolent AI
- Fellow tribe,
- The enlightened who can read “the will of the people” or who are able to “carve reality at the joints”
- Some brands of “sovereign citizen” or corporate libertarianism (I’m the best person in charge of me!).
- The positivist invokers of ScientificProgress™
Do they deserve better? Absolutely, but you can’t remove their agency, they ultimately chose this. The world is messy and broken, it’s fine not to make too much peace with that, but you have to ponder your ends and your means more thoughtfully than a lot of EAs/Rationalists do. Falling prey to magical thinking is a choice, and/or a bias you can overcome (Which I find extremely ironic given the bias correction advertising in Rationalists spheres)
i concur that rationalist “niceness” is paper thin
repeatedly pointing out that they are the other ten guys at the table breaking bread with literal fucking Nazis worked well to get rid of the TPOT smol bean uwu race scientists on Bluesky, even after they had been personally invited there by Bsky’s founders
I think it’s hard to grow up in our society, without harboring a kernel of fascism in our hearts
Absolutely, and this is unfortunately a deep and far reaching thing that requires tons of unlearning. That’s why I will never let my kids watch paw patrol
Do you reckon it’s a flaw in our society, or is it a human thing?
Both. Humans are fundamentally a social animal, Rousseau’s “State of nature” doesn’t really exist.
Both society and humans are also the cure though:
- All individuals have the ability to discern and to choose good
- Society can teach what is good, and our tendencies to watch out for, and for the most part it also does this.
I don’t believe the flaw can be eliminated, nor that the attempt would be ethical. Perfect is the enemy of good, you should teach people as best you can, but in the end still let them choose, anything else is thought-stopping cultish totalitarianism.
I like the quote from Terry Pratchett, (Granny Weatherwax)
And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
I think the worst parts of society, and innate “laziness” leads people to treat others (or yourself) as things, but that it’s also innate to “know” not to treat others (or yourself) as things.
I don’t believe the flaw is hopeless, even if it stays with us forever (at the individual and societal level).
Amen to all of this. Based and Granny-Pilled.
As far as I know, the only way to prevent people from joining a cult is a) warn people it’s a cult and b) make the cult less powerful and attractive.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. I didn’t realize they were so explicit about it.
Link to Mollie Gleiberman’s dissertation cited in the article
