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Rationalizationism
2022-Nov-16, Wednesday 09:14
You might have heard of the collapse of FTX, a crypto trading firm that went from a $32 billion valuation to zero in under a week. This post is only about that tangentially, because I found an article linking to Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison's Tumblr, and reading through it I found this post about interacting with non-rationalists which links to this post by someone else about the differences between approaches to rationalism, those who think "I have discovered a new approach to human thinking, I shall revolutionize the world!! 
" and "I have discovered a new approach to human thinking, but maybe there's a reason there's no long historical record of people acting this way."
And that led me to thinking--what are the actual successes of rationalists? Their stated principles involve trying to use reason instead of appeals to tradition or emotion in order to guide human behavior, but what social ills have they alleviated? What government reforms have they proposed? What companies have they founded that effectively reduce suffering? Are there any billionaires who have pledged to give most of their wealth away (following the "earning to give" effective altruism proposal) that are actually less rich than when they made the pledge? I admit that I'm biased here, because from my point of view the primary output of rationalists is long blog posts, but one could make a reasonable argument here that the problem is crypto, not rationalism or effective altruism. There are plenty of other crypto exchanges or projects that have gone bankrupt or stolen their customers' funds with no tie to rationalism at all.
On the other hand, rationalism does seem to keep reinventing bog-standard bigotry from "first principles." I remember the SlateStarCodex reddit banning discussion of trans issues outside the designated Culture War threads, despite several trans people commenting that these were real issues that effected their lives, not just a political issue--and that tells me that in 1930s Germany they would have been having serious discussions on the Jewish Question, and in 1870s America about whether freed slaves should be full members of society. The linked Tumblr above repeats uncritical claims about how the entire gender pay gap is explained by work experience and job choice, and while you can explain that by noting Ellison is a self-described former aspiring Catholic tradwife who became an agnostic rationalist, how much Catholic tradwifery is still influencing her thoughts?
Plus there's the whole "AI will go rogue and kill us all!
" obsession among rationalists despite there being no evidence that AGI will happen on any reasonable timeframe or is even possible. And I'm not even talking about soulless machines here--human cognition is inextricable from human biology and absent that biology, how would one emulate cognition? This is not an unsolvable problem but it is an extremely difficult one!
I am curious if there are any famous examples I'm missing.
Edit: This interview with Bankman-Fried about how most of his public statements were bullshit and done for PR reasons also seems relevant.
" and "I have discovered a new approach to human thinking, but maybe there's a reason there's no long historical record of people acting this way."And that led me to thinking--what are the actual successes of rationalists? Their stated principles involve trying to use reason instead of appeals to tradition or emotion in order to guide human behavior, but what social ills have they alleviated? What government reforms have they proposed? What companies have they founded that effectively reduce suffering? Are there any billionaires who have pledged to give most of their wealth away (following the "earning to give" effective altruism proposal) that are actually less rich than when they made the pledge? I admit that I'm biased here, because from my point of view the primary output of rationalists is long blog posts, but one could make a reasonable argument here that the problem is crypto, not rationalism or effective altruism. There are plenty of other crypto exchanges or projects that have gone bankrupt or stolen their customers' funds with no tie to rationalism at all.
On the other hand, rationalism does seem to keep reinventing bog-standard bigotry from "first principles." I remember the SlateStarCodex reddit banning discussion of trans issues outside the designated Culture War threads, despite several trans people commenting that these were real issues that effected their lives, not just a political issue--and that tells me that in 1930s Germany they would have been having serious discussions on the Jewish Question, and in 1870s America about whether freed slaves should be full members of society. The linked Tumblr above repeats uncritical claims about how the entire gender pay gap is explained by work experience and job choice, and while you can explain that by noting Ellison is a self-described former aspiring Catholic tradwife who became an agnostic rationalist, how much Catholic tradwifery is still influencing her thoughts?
Plus there's the whole "AI will go rogue and kill us all!
" obsession among rationalists despite there being no evidence that AGI will happen on any reasonable timeframe or is even possible. And I'm not even talking about soulless machines here--human cognition is inextricable from human biology and absent that biology, how would one emulate cognition? This is not an unsolvable problem but it is an extremely difficult one!I am curious if there are any famous examples I'm missing.
Edit: This interview with Bankman-Fried about how most of his public statements were bullshit and done for PR reasons also seems relevant.
