Technically, “you’re a hypocrite” is a logical fallacy when it comes to arguments.
So why does everyone make that argument?
Because, in a social context, if you can make your opponent stick to a moral rule while you don’t, you can gain an advantage over them.
Additionally, if even the advocates of a project don’t really believe in it, there is a reasonable heuristic that it can’t be such a great project.
fluffshy said: How are you not involved? You have acted as the core of my experience of the social side of rationalists for months.
as far as I know the rationalists hang out on Facebook and the SSC comment section and in the Bay Area and at various meetups in cities around the world, which I’m not involved in.
The set of Rationalists is defined as such:
The proof of your membership in the set is left as an exercise for the reader.
This pisses me off so, so much. Warning: what follows is not very calm. Probably not very charitable either. I write “fuck” a lot.
< caring about opinions being actually good vs being seen to be good >
Well, there’s your answer right there, isn’t it?
Scott may be the Rightful Caliph (or a contender for the position) within Rationalism and its Adjacency, but outside of our sphere, he has all sorts of markers that are low-status, or are tribal low-status, and he poses a danger to a lot of people that are farming status through toxic takes.
I mean, imagine if Rationalism became the new normal. Sure, this would probably crash a lot of metaphorical trains and the results would be observable in the global GDP, but one of the trains that got crashed would be most of the established Commentariat, their pundits, the outrage-farming, clickbaiting and so on.
New ones would likely develop in the aftermath, because Rationalism doesn’t actually remove all sorts of base human emotions. However, the new ones would be different people.
Scott’s social status is zero sum with these people. His gain is their loss. They’re going to attack, attack, attack. They may not even fully know why they’re doing it.
Anonymous asked:
kissingerandpals answered:
I’m inside a lot of distinct Tumblr circles apparently. I suppose my dashboard is more of a Venn diagram really.
Used to have more interactions with rationalist Tumblr but if argumate’s not reblogging my posts it just doesn’t happen anymore
Really, I think of it as more of a hexagon -
I mean yeah. I seem to be drawing in mostly Rationalists and Rat-Adjacents. I’m probably closer to the edges than some of the others. At least I think it counts as that circle. I don’t have, say, e*nationalism or rtri*e following me.
On the other hand, seeing as you terminated your blog and remade it, is Argumate even following you anymore?
Is there a name for the genre of tumblr blog that posts interesting and detailed essays about (equally) interesting things but literally every other post is insufferable garbage?
the rationalists?
We here at the Mitigated Chaos blog like to post good, relatable content that’s in touch with honest working joes, such as attempting to bait rationalists into arguing whether using cybernetics to transform yourself into a fetishized cyborg spider monster is beneficial to the economy.
Truly, this blog has its finger on the pulse of America.
“You need not fear, captain,” said the man. “We are not Social Justice Warriors, but Discourse Monks from the East.”
The guard captain nodded, and the procession of Rationalists filed into the city.
This pisses me off so, so much. Warning: what follows is not very calm. Probably not very charitable either. I write “fuck” a lot.
< caring about opinions being actually good vs being seen to be good >
Well, there’s your answer right there, isn’t it?
Scott may be the Rightful Caliph (or a contender for the position) within Rationalism and its Adjacency, but outside of our sphere, he has all sorts of markers that are low-status, or are tribal low-status, and he poses a danger to a lot of people that are farming status through toxic takes.
I mean, imagine if Rationalism became the new normal. Sure, this would probably crash a lot of metaphorical trains and the results would be observable in the global GDP, but one of the trains that got crashed would be most of the established Commentariat, their pundits, the outrage-farming, clickbaiting and so on.
New ones would likely develop in the aftermath, because Rationalism doesn’t actually remove all sorts of base human emotions. However, the new ones would be different people.
Scott’s social status is zero sum with these people. His gain is their loss. They’re going to attack, attack, attack. They may not even fully know why they’re doing it.
@more-whales offers this take:
I’m also sick of snark passing for wisdom about important things but my evaluation is probably closer to Maciej’s and I do think you are off the mark wrt where this snark in particular is coming from. He goes on to tweet here he doesn’t think Scott is evil and he’ll try to articulate it more clearly, so we’ll see
I feel like I’m the most “AFA/classical anarchist/radical socialist/murder the 1%’ers and topple their thrones” of all the tumblr rationalists/lesswrong diaspora…
Everywhere I look are libertarians aka greywashed neo-liberalists. And I appreciate that US is a lot different from Denmark, but I have yet to hear a solid refutation of Medications on Moloch.
Things which aren’t really refutations, but may be relevant: If you think that things, while in many ways bad, are mostly getting better, and most potential bad futures are bad in either apolitical ways (or in the case of nuclear war generic instability ways), you’ll probably think that the current status quo shouldn’t be altered very much. As far as I can tell, the standard rationalist EA position is “things are mostly improving, the obvious improvements look more like ‘make more malaria nets’ than ‘bloody revolution now’, and everyone in a first-world country is baaasically the 1% anyway”.
I’d be willing to discuss this more if you like, but I’m not really sure where to start.
Edit: Also, as far as I can tell, I am not the only person with the vague uncharitable impression that “the left” is mostly “a scary threatening group that is weirdly powerful in all the IRL communities that I tend to end up interacting with”.
That seems like a good way of characterizing the situation, actually.
What I feel that I guess most others don’t, is the fact that we’re playing 1930′s musical fascism chairs again. Denmark, as you might know, was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1945, and it is still very much a facet of our cultural identity.
While it is true that things are mostly going forwards, I feel that shrugging and focusing on malaria nets commits what I like to call the “Karkat Vantas’ predeterminism fallacy:”
CCG: EVERYBODY, DID YOU HEAR THAT?? SUPERFUTURE VRISKA HAS AN IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON FOR US ALL.
CCG: WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT OUR PRESENT RESPONSIBILIES AND OBLIGATIONS!
CCG: BECAUSE AS IT TURNS OUT, IN THE FUTURE ALL THAT STUFF ALREADY HAPPENED. WE’RE OFF THE FUCKING HOOK!
Basically, the reason why it is getting better is that people are fighting!
And one of the things to fight for, is civil rights and liberties, and welfare, and protection of the weak, and your right to party.
So, yeah. You can save a lot of lives right now by donating to fight malaria; but if you play the apolitical game and hope for the best, Plato already schooled you on what is going to happen:
The price good men pay for indifference in public affairs, is to be ruled by tyrants.
That is, roughly, my position.
PS. Notice how “things are mostly improving, the obvious improvements look more like … than …” is one of those dangerous snow-clone type sentences. I could use that argument against malaria as well, urging people to invest in… Greenpeace campaigns against animal abuse, to name a particularly nasty example.
I appreciate your attempt at synthesis, but as a factual matter I do not think things are getting better primarily because of the efforts of activists we are sympathetic to. Whatever improvement there is in the human condition, is coming from many disparate sources.
However, I do think you hit upon the very important question that a lot of reformist vs radical discussions can reduce to: do you think things are getting better?
I can admit there are some compelling reasons to feel things are getting better. Whig History says they’ve been getting better for hundreds of years, and this should continue. We have more technology to aid us than ever before. As an aggregate matter, lives over the entire world are in a better material position than ever before. If you think the current (liberal capitalist) system is stable, then there’s a lot of reason to go with the Alexandrian stance of improve, iterate, and don’t fuck things up. The radicals are just wrong then.
… The issue is that the radicals don’t think things are getting better. As you point out we may be on the verge of a fascist takeover (perhaps leading to World War), which is probably a result of decades of neoliberal inequality heightening. I’m not sure the immediate political situation of the rise of far-right parties is the only problem, but it’s suggestive of the many problems that out of control inequality will continue to throw out until everything collapses.
And of course, if you’re willing to look outside “post Renaissance Western Europe” there are many times in human history when civilizations took prolonged steps backwards, both in terms of technology and respect for human rights. “Ever forward” is not guaranteed in the human condition.
Zizek lays out the main theme of his book dealing with the response needed to “postmodern” capitalism: “The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its ‘four riders of the apocalypse’ are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.”
Maybe you think that’s nonsense, but it’s a belief structure people can attach to. And under that logic, changing the fundamental rules of our society (not being certain what will replace them) is entirely reasonable.
One need only look at previous Leftist revolutions without adequately-tested plans for society afterwards, as well as prior predictions of total system collapse by Leftists to see that this probably isn’t the greatest idea. One can even see that the Capitalists did better on the environment than the Communists, even despite their systemic design towards resource consumption. So while radicals may think this is a good viewpoint, I think it’s pretty easy to conclude that without an adequately planned and tested system already prepared for after The Revolution, a revolution will just kill a whole bunch of people and significantly damage the economy without improving governance at all or helping the environment very much. Also a revolution is not going to install mere social democracy, since it has to be sufficiently radical just to be effectively carried out.
Anonymous asked:
Rationalist Tumblr. Don’t let the name fool you - it’s less “YES, WE ARE MORE RATIONAL THAN YOU”, and more a term for a community of people originally congregated at the site Less Wrong, then SlateStarCodex, and then kind of spread out, and the group of people who argue with those people.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
