playinghardtolistento asked: i dont have much interest in rationalism-as-thought-techniques because from what i've observed it doesn't seem to have uniquely benefited people who subscribe to it in ways that a general purpose self-help book and associated social support structure wouldn't have, with the added detriment of being tangled up in rationalism-as-techno-libertarianism. if there actually are "one weird tricks" employed by rationalists that would be helpful to leftists i'd love to hear about them tho
oligopsony-deactivated20160508:
I’ll have to think about this because it’s important, but my facial impression is indeed that there aren’t really any superpowers or whatever - I just like discussing weird ideas and some versions of The Community are good places to do that
well, I DO think everyone reading “how to do things with words” (I think that’s the title?“) would nip a lot of the dumber arguments we keep having in the bud, like for instance the definition of socialism or whatever, but the basic insights aren’t unique? There’s probably a number of small things like that that ppl are likely to point out in the comments
Then there’s CFAR which seems to be “self-help, except we try to apply ~optimization~ to it, which is 100% more optimization than other self-help things”
Rationality checklists and deliberate de-biasing (I’ve been working on trying to recognize when my brain does something unsavory and bring it to my own conscious attention instead of letting it fester unnoticed, and like “why doesn’t anyone else anywhere even recognize that this is a thing”)
Then there’s that thing which makes people really likely to turn out trans and I suspect is at least partially modulated by the same transhumanist-y “optimize everything” morphological freedom attitude which makes people also use nootropics and sign up for cryonics even though all of them may be perceived as weird by the general population, and partially by the emphasis on changing one’s mind and not getting tangled up in silly things such as whether or not one’s non-doll-playingwithness in childhood makes using estrogen in 20-somethings verboten or not
Then there’s the parts of “technolibertarianism” that are positive instead of normative and thus would be very good for leftists to understand and use, such as public choice theory, behavioral economics, the corrupted hardware problem, group and individual irrationality, the impossibility of efficiently regulating things one doesn’t understand (and the diaspora is very much linked to things that are regulated by people who don’t understand them, such as nootropics, transhumanism, cryonics, transgenderism, urban planning, etc. and it might help illuminate the reasons why regulating things excessively and not respecting autonomy is extremely harmful), the need to deal with the coming post-labor future in which traditional ideas don’t work even to the very small degree they currently work and thus things like “who owns the robots” are even more important than presently, and so on
In addition the diaspora’s technolibertarianism is overwhelmingly social-technolibertarianism and the non-libertarian right is basically a rounding error, suggesting that either rationalism turns people non-rightist or repulses the mainstream right to begin with, and that in turn suggests that leftists should be interested in why these “technolibertarians” nonetheless aren’t what people usually think of when they hear the word “technolibertarian” even though they sure look like it, and that people like Thiel are more outliers than median examples of the wider rationalist-adjacent population
Then there’s Effective Altruism which is basically applied communism, in a way that is not vulnerable to the failure modes of working for a revolution (such as “Lenin” or “the fiftieth anniversary of the discuss the imminent revolution and never actually get shit done club”); eg. GiveDirectly is redistributing capital to people who don’t have capital and these “technolibertarians” routinely claim this redistribution of capital is one of the best and most important humanitarian interventions in the world, usually only outclassed by things like “not having people die and suffer from diseases that are really cheap to prevent, simply because they are too poor to afford even the really cheap prevention”
Then there’s the fact that the community has managed to derive a lot of significant leftist-associated insights from first principles and in the process repackage them as something the STEM class can understand and hopefully even apply in action occasionally
1 month ago · tagged #i am worst capitalist · 27 notes · .permalink
almostcoralchaos reblogged this from soundlogic2236
jkadlubowska reblogged this from nibblrrr
ilzolende liked this
slatestarscratchpad liked this
myramblingness reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin- myramblingness liked this
woodswordsquire liked this
soundlogic2236 reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:CFAR: Well, I can hardly blame you for lack of money. What am I supposed to say? “Go win the lottery?” Trans: Good,...
rusalkii liked this
argumate liked this
2centjubilee liked this
nibblrrr reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin- nibblrrr liked this
metagorgon liked this
collapsedsquid liked this
socialjusticemunchkin liked this- collapsedsquid said: I think the “rationalist powers” thing is pretty much Tetlock, since his work is used as the justification that their ideas are solid, even if he isn’t affiliated.
nostalgebraist said: “a human’s guide to words,” most usefully indexed by “37 ways that words can be wrong,” and yeah, it’s the closest to being an actual “one weird trick” thing IMO. the ideas /are/ common but are rarely stated explicitly, instead taken to be either false or obvious, depending on the social circle
hpgross liked this
dazedwinter liked this
playinghardtolistento liked this