Thread by @HikiPTG

okay bitching about LW/rationalism. i should really write this on substack but i prefer that to be much more formal and thought out and well-presented and this is a little too off the cuff for it. i did touch a little on some of this in my existing longposts there

https://twitter.com/333owl/status/1956464573201949031

so, right off the bat, the name "rationalism" comes off as a rather coy kind of branding. any group that adopts that label can imply anyone that disagrees with them is irrational, stupid, and safe to ignore. it's similar to the "good guy squad" thing

the word as a term for a social movement isn't new, we can find it many times since the enlightenment. that's another annoying bit of branding: its connection to that past is tenuous, extremely narrative-laden, and contains in it some "claims" to figures or settings

"rationalism" and its relation with the enlightenment gives it strong association with liberalism. again intentional branding: it implies it's the real progression from then to now and the future, inline with the current system's justification, and other claimants false

it's a kind of narrative forcing to present things that way, a dual approach of saying "we are the natural course of history, the raw, unmuddled, pure thought that everything else corrupted" as well as "we are the drive to beyond, justified beyond the present"

i'm not making that up, you can find that styling constantly throughout their ecosystems, some of them might read that and think "what's wrong with that?" from without, though, you can immediately see how this is an incredibly hostile presentation to any other idea

that's *just from the fucking branding.* i haven't even touched anything inside and already i have the knife out against the extremely broad claim of its justification and standing. anyone that's encountered any of its more militant members knows that's a tame response

so that's my first major point. #1: USING THE NAME "RATIONALISM" FOR YOUR MOVEMENT IS AN ATTEMPT TO HIJACK LANGUAGE/BRANDING FOR SELF-AGGRANDIZATION. while this isn't "disallowed" it certainly isn't endearing or makes me want to engage them in good faith

but branding shouldn't matter for the substance, right? wrong, but w/e. let's take a look inside. i have not read much of the "core" material, my encounters with this community are broadly ad hoc, situational, informal, secondhand

so here's another annoying bit about them: the "core" text and intertext is large, nebulous, insular, and on top of that may only exist as a blob of words to vaguely appeal to for anyone claiming to be part of the "rationalist" community

what i mean should be apparent to the "nietzschean" right, many of whom have not read nietzsche. you can hardly expect most "rationalists" to have read their own material (the sequences or various TESCREAL literature or lesswrong participation) though they claim merit from it

the body of thought is only loosely surrounding those things, or coming off of random lesswrong forum arguments. yet many of them still act like these hold epistemic authority over broader society's "canon" or major literature, and scoff at you for not treating it as such

anyone else recognizes this as ingroup clique bullshit. if a catholic told you you aren't allowed to make any discussions on morality until you've read the whole of the summa theologica or every pope's letters, you'd be right to tell him to fuck off

this is especially true *when even he hasn't read them,* or at least can't articulate them into an argument of his own making in context. it's an appeal to authority, but even more nefarious is that appeal already implies the authority of their ingroup

combined with point #1, you get this annoying behavior: "ugh, i just CAN'T explain to you the entirety of this, it's not my job to teach you. until you read it we just have to assume you're a moron and my view is right." that's a bullshit way to engage in public conversation

"that's just someone you made up" it's anecdotal, but it's something i directly encountered in an unfortunate coworking with a proto-zizian transgender over a decade ago, back when "rationalism" still proudly donned the fedora, where a disagreement was met with...

..."i already considered all possible counterarguments and concluded they are wrong, so i'm not considering any of yours. if you were smart you'd think the same." this was not a cute troll: he was genuinely shocked when leadership called him admiral thundercunt in response

so second major point, #2: THE COMMUNITY WIELDS ITSELF AS AN EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY TO USURP ANY DISAGREEMENTS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE UNRESOLVABLE BY REASON ALONE. this is, in all other settings, identified as power politics, but "rationalism" presumes it has rhetorical supremacy

and it gets offended when other communities simply enforce authority by means other than words (in the previous example, leadership simply ignored the argument). they genuinely think themselves the sole epistemic deciders/understanders by virtue of their canon/community

in the rest of the society, attempting to do this in rejection of existing standards is called cultish, a word i'll be far from the first to attribute to the "rationalist" community (doing so in conformity with society is called reformation or enforcing the status quo)

some of its spinoffs adopt the "cult" label as an aura of mystery, contrarian bravado, or just tongue in cheek. others just take it to its fullest conclusion (EA types, ziz). many use "rationalist" as justification for seeking power/money, even being viciously cutthroat

you likened it to jews. the far-right jewish antipathy, nazi history aside, is that jews frequently operate as a self-serving ingroup, that (presumably) many of us are not part of. in zero sum games (like social power by an institutional position) this inherently is oppositional

this is much of the complaints about indians as well, the frequent nepotism and ingroup favor. for jews though, a large part of the very specific hatred comes from some traits from jewish culture/identity. stuff like racial morphism (being "white" or "ethnic" as it suits them)...

...or their solidarity around a perception of being inherently nationless/persecuted (both zionism, cosmopolitanism, AND left-wing anarchist alignments of them all derive from this cultural myth of theirs)

from without, though, all these disparate forms are unified in opposition to non-jewish identity structures (zionists, cosmopolitans, and ancoms all oppose a nationalist identity of non-jews) and comes off as subversive...
(cont. hit threading limit on one post)

...or even pompous, as jewish supremacy ideas become very common in some of this (even left-wing ones still hold it in some forms, "racial supremacy doesn't exist as a moral requirement for me to say, but when it does exist we have it precisely because we 'don't want it'")

the "rationalist" community starts resembling some of those stylings towards ingroup favor, power-seeking, and smarmy explanations for how they're above such barbarous understandings of authority and rule. in or out of this community it asserts its right to be above you

because within, you've already submitted to its ideas and authorities. without, it claims you don't have any right to question it (or no reason why they should care, at least), but wielding #1 and #2 in such a way to give them the right to impress upon you and your milieus

the rationalist community and its many offshoots use a kind of morphism and exist within both poles of the culture war (nominally, at least), but aren't committed to any except as opportunity or advantage. this makes much of their participation bad faith

"that's not necessarily true, they can have different priors and ends but still genuinely argue in favor of your goals" up until the point where they think they can seize anything for their ends. the partisan coalitional alliances rather look down on that and see it as betrayal

this in itself is just par for the course in any coalitional politics but from the right, the "rationalist" community often bases its ultimate justifications on futurity, potentials, "how the world should be." while parts of the far-right really like futurism...

...this avenue has, historically and currently, been the way to launder left-wing utopian views into the right or worm some ex-socialist (maybe not even ex) into influence. i can't speak for the left, but they often do capitalist apology or compromise due to belief in tech as key

you can see readily their open and major participation in current AI hype, and insistence that they spearhead all "alignment" and "safety" efforts, parking themselves as custodians and curators of development, discourse, even capital distribution if they can

often accompanied with bullshit such as "hurry! you have to let us do this before ASI destroys us all! if you don't give us power immediately we won't get power!" #3: THE COMMUNITY HAS A STRONG DESIRE TO SHIFT REAL POWER TO ITSELF, AND IS AN OPPONENT TO ANY OTHER POWER INTEREST

so unless your ultimate aims are aligned with this "rationalism" (which would probably mean you are already within their circles) they are not your friends, they are opportunists which might be temporarily aligned at best

"but that doesn't condemn it any more than any other power interest which behaves the same way!" well, except for the status quo (let's call it "capitalism" if we must), which has the reality principle on its side. "other interests are wrong because we are already right"

this often leads them to revolutionary or accelerationist mindsets, believing the system as it stands doesn't allow for their vision to be realized and has to be destroyed or destroy itself. even many """right-wing""" rationalist offshoots still hold left-accelerationist mindsets

which is basically "we must accelerate capitalist dystopia so it destroys/abolishes itself and then real socialism can be tried." anyone genuinely on the right should feel confronted, because some of what they're including as "capitalist dystopia" are key things the right wants

like, for instance, ethnonationalist ideas are widespread on the far-right but largely not believed by the rationalist community as meaningful or important. and much of the right at large wants to restore a more rightful authority/traditional hierarchy and setting to society

an idea which most of the rationalists would identify as a fail condition for their desires. i mentioned before they justify themselves from the future, a utopian or more ideal vision of society ordered by their way of thinking

most people do this (consider "what do you want to be when you grow up" or "where do you see yourself in five years?"). the right has its own futurists and the idyll, even if drawn from the past, still casts itself in the future ("retvrn" is still a command to go forward in time)

again i haven't read the core material of le rationalists, so i'm not going to get into details of what i understand of "timeless decision theory" or other similar things. what i do know, and should be very familiar with anyone that has seen any LW discussions, is...

...their frequent invocation of thought experiments, often with incredibly elaborate stuff like perfect predictors, indefinite iterations, future ASI/basilisks, etc., to show some particular approach to a problem violates a prior moral paradigm or value system

this is how they claim they have a meaningful right to current epistemic authority, that they "reasoned it out" and had a fuller, more consistent approach than any other (see #2 again). this, they reason, is why their power plays are more just than mere authoritarianism or egoism

not so long ago i was going on about "mathematical constructivism," and i also mentioned it in my substack longpost about thought experiments. it's a philosophy of math thing that would take a long time to explain in full (yes, i know what i said around #2), but...

...mathematics and logic were deeply examined in the 19th/early 20th century in order to establish a more unified and complete system of math (mathematics was a lot of disparate ideas, proofs, theorems prior to then based on naive assumptions which were not consistent)

a debate back then was between "intuitionism" (a subset of constructivism) vs "formalism," about what "truth" really means relative to logical proofs. an extremely simplified form of the point of contention is constructivism doesn't think something is "true" unless...

...you can demonstrate ("construct") it. this was in opposition to proofs of existence based on a contradiction derived from assumption of nonexistence - constructivists believed this didn't actually demonstrate "proof" of a truth and only observes a still-unresolved problem

while formalists think that the logical system we developed is a fundamental, universal truth and the law of the excluded middle means something real and true was proven that way. MOST of the time, this distinction is irrelevant because you can usually still construct that thing

however, some things involving infinite cannot be constructed meaningfully (formalist mathematics would come up with ideas of qualities of infinite, for example) that constructivism thinks lacks meaningful truth. and even as far back as aristotle he acknowledged...

...the limitations of logic concerning future contingent reasoning (which was another aspect of the intuitionist vs formalist argument). the argument from back then was incredibly important and had very noteworthy mathematicians on both sides, but...

...formalism, due to its easier methods of proof and the usual irrelevance of this debate to most reasoning, became the assumed standard of logic. and most people don't know philosophy of math and use naive assumptions of reasoning that resemble formalism as well

but it's important to remember formalism didn't "prove" its merit over constructivism, just that mathematics didn't see a reason to uphold the constructivist criterion (the "existence" criterion or "witness") - "proving" an unconstructable truth didn't necessarily have any effect

why am i bringing this autism up? because many of those LW thought experiment ideas are unconstructable or deal with future contingent truths *and are advocating real behaviors/consequences based on them.* now the intuitionist/formalist debate is meaningful again

and the claim to these ideas being "rational" or the most thought out and therefore most agreeable/correct by thought and enlightenment moral ideas is called into question. no one actually won this debate by reason, so what gives?

this was something largely expressed by my longpost in substack, that there is a lot more room for skepticism and uncertainty as part of an authentic rationalism and these thought experiments trying to bypass that "timelessly" or from the future are often meaningless

they ridicule such doubt as failure to conceive their ideas or stupidity when this is horseshit - they're abusing a convenience, not actually engaging in reason. so #4: THE RATIONALIST COMMUNITY RELIES ON SWEEPING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC THAT OFTEN GO UNEXAMINED

and we can relitigate the whole formalist/intuitionist thing again about what "truth" means or whether we have a right to declare some problems are solvable or not, but this debate normally falls by the wayside because most people participating already have a conclusion they want

the modern rationalist community comes from all sorts of backgrounds but a big feed into it was the fedora thing from so long ago. people forget how seriously that was taken, "i am euphoric, not by any phony god, but because i am enlightened by my own intelligence"

there is a lot of resentment built over the takedown of that socially, like it was "unfair" (mocking neckbeards and social awkwardness). the original fedoraism even was built on resentment about bush era religious fundamentalism (see young sheldon's popularity)

and one of the more consistent tethers to the past come from the socialist line of "scientific socialism," even going back to the jacobins and the "cult of reason." i'm repeating old conservative points, but fair's fair, they're repeating old socialist ones

coming to "the rationalist community" isn't a matter of being "more rational," it's a matter if you fell into cliques that saw it as a proper retort/escape from problems or criticisms. a big one is "i need to be part of 'the smart people' because those assholes made me feel dumb"

my first encounters with some of this came from fedoras on proofs against god/society. that same transgender thought he was the smartest dickwad in the world with "god doesn't exist because that violates thermodynamics" and got angry when people didn't think that was brilliance

a similar one was in some site that explored thought experiments the moor and i found years ago. tried to demonstrate the "inconsistency" of theism and we both laughed when dinged "rationally" because "your reasoning is consistent, but you seem to think killing can be justified"

a lot of it was retreat from critique that didn't blindly accept the same priors (formalism a huge one). that's where community insularity becomes a problem, as safety blanket for egotistical neurotics that couldn't bear being made fun of by who they believed were their lessers

that's where a lot of the "reddit" association with some of it comes from. #5: THE COMMUNITY HAS A LOT OF AESTHETIC OR CONTEXTUAL RESENTMENT AGAINST WHAT THEY PERCEIVE AS WRONGFUL TAKEDOWNS PREVIOUSLY. at least from my experience with many of them

of course, any individual can and will deny generality based on a steelman of what the idea could "ideally" be. i have issues with assumption of ideal or potential states justifying current or ambiguous ones but that's not worth getting into here besides what's already been said

so that's largely my problem with it, not to mention aesthetics or opportunistic associations within that that are endemic to any social organization. what i think annoys a lot of people about them is, on top of their forcing of dominance/assumptions...

...built in to their esoterica, you find yourself wondering "isn't this all bullshit?" but feel like you can't express that "reasonably." i think a lot of people are intuitively thinking that but are cued into the social faux pas saying that alone would be, and stay silent

but your intuition is pretty on the mark if you feel that way: a lot of it is bullshit. this is why