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I view this as a political constraint, cf. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboat-games-and-backscratchers https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboat-games-an
by codehotter 1y ago
I view this as a political constraint, cf. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboat-games-and-backscratchers https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboat-games-and-backscra.... One's identity as Academic, Democrat, Zionist and so on demands certain sacrifices of you, sometimes of rationality. The worse the failure of empathy and rationality, the better a test of loyalty it is. For epistemic rationality, it would be best to https://paulgraham.com/identity.html https://paulgraham.com/identity.html, but for instrumental rationality it is not. Consequently, many people are reasonable only until certain topics come up, and it's generally worked around by steering the discussion to other topics.
- Fraterkes 1y agoI don’t really buy this at all: I am more emotionally invested in things that I know more about (and vice versa). If Rationalism breaks down at that point it is essentially never useful.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago> I don’t really buy this at all For what it’s worth, you seem to be agreeing with the person you replied to. Their main point is that this break down happens primarily because people identify as Rationalists (or whatever else). Taken from that angle, Rationalism as an identity does not appear to be useful.
- Fraterkes 1y agoMy reading of the comment was that there was only a small subset of contentious topics that rationalism is unsuited for. But I think you are correct
- voidhorse 1y ago[flagged]
- tome 1y agoI'm curious how you assess, relatively speaking, the shittiness of defence of genocide versus false claims of genocide.
- voidhorse 1y ago[flagged]
- tome 1y agoBut that's not my question. My question was between defence of genocide and false accusations of genocide. (Of course actual genocide is "shittier" -- in fact that's a breathtaking understatement!)
- kombine 1y agoWe have concrete examples of defence of genocide, such as by Scott Aaronson. Can you provide the examples of "false accusations of genocide", otherwise this is a hypothetical conversation.
- tome 1y agoI can certainly agree we have a concrete example of defence of purported genocide and a concrete example of an accusation of purported genocide. Beyond that I'd be happy to discuss further (although it's probably off topic).
- Ar-Curunir 1y ago[flagged]
- tome 1y agoInteresting presumption. Would you like it if I said "Did you find anything else helpful in your marriage, or was it just choosing to stop beating your wife?"? And yes, I have some. One is that false claims of genocide are equally reprehensible to denying true genocide. But I'm not sure why my beliefs are particularly relevant. I'm not the one sitting publicly in judgement of a semi-public figure. That was voidhorse. Did you want to discuss in more detail? I'm happy to, but currently I interpret your comment as an attempt at sniping me with snark. Please do correct me if I've misinterpreted.