/rationality/

Should You Hide Your Power Level?
It's common in radical chan-derived internet circles to speak of "hiding your power level", meaning not letting the normies know just how much anime you watch, or just how nuanced your opinions of Hitler are. Its a sort of necessity to keep the tradition a... posted 13mo ago with 23 replies received rationality nietzsche

Should You Hide Your received

As a heuristic, any decision that seems binary (should I hide) is mis-framed. The question is, what is the skillful way to live in full integrity?... 13mo ago received

As a heuristic, any received

I am of course deliberately invoking the *chan tradition by using such language. It’s a choice. When i write or speak in other contexts, i hide that particular power level. But it does not reveal all.... 13mo ago received

I am of course delib received

I read a few chapters of Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World and he talks of traditionalist leaders being imbued with the spirit of the other world in their rites and actions.... 3mo ago received

I read a few chapter received

Rational Worldviews Formalize Life-Instincts
Every living thing has instincts for its way of life. These are not fixed and mechanical reflexes, but a canny sub-conscious intelligence seeking life and power, informed by inborn wisdom. This is as foundational for humans as it is for animals; most of ou... posted 3mo ago with 3 replies received gnon rationality

Rational Worldviews received

OP, I agree with everything in your post, and I think it's very important to think about the world in this way. You might remember me from a relatively recent thread in which you expressed more or less this same set of ideas. Can you clarify if you are try... 3mo ago received

OP, I agree with eve received

Medidation, Enlightenment, Dharma, and Sokushinbutsu
I see we have some enlightenment-seeking buddhist types lurking around. I have a question for them: what is it you think is valuable about these "enlightened" mental states reachable with meditation etc? I hear about them occasionally but by the self-admis... posted 4mo ago with 24 replies received philosophy life rationality

Medidation, Enlighte received

I think the main problem here is that people like to over-mysticize "enlightenment" and have vastly different things in their heads when they say this, especially amongst "believers."... 4mo ago received

I think the main pro received

Previous posters have given examples of exemplars, as well as the living tradition of practice and writings for anyone to fully engage and understand their goal, even if someone disagrees. Do you similarly have people you believe to have followed this goal... 4mo ago received

Previous posters hav received

Memetic Autocatalysis
From what we know about the evolutionary lineage of the mind, it seems likely that what we now call 'memes' (or simply ideas) go back millions of years. Being generous to birds, our common origin is 310 million years ago-- that might be the root of the tre... (www.nature.com) posted 4mo ago with 3 replies received rationality

Memetic Autocatalysi received

OP claims people did things as environmental response. See tiger, make sound. Agree: birds do this. OP then extends argument to tool-making: see pots, create more pots. (I disagree of bone -> tool, that requires thinking)... 4mo ago received

OP claims people did received

The agonistic categorical imperative
The commandment of Kant is the categorical imperative, which formulated with Natural Law verbiage is to ‘act as if the maxims of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.’ To me this has always exemplified the hubristic an... posted 5mo ago with 2 replies received gnon rationality

The agonistic catego received

Interesting idea RE "prima facie tautological but compressionally useful," but why would this law/heuristic have any compelling moral force? Why shouldn't one just act as one wishes from instinct in the moment, or follow a virtue ethical framework, or use ... 5mo ago received

Interesting idea RE received

Kolmogorov Paranoia: Extraordinary Evidence Probably Isn't.
I enjoyed this takedown of Scott Alexander's support for the COVID natural origins theory. Basically, Scott did a big "bayesian" analysis of the evidence for and against the idea that COVID originated in the lab vs naturally. As per his usual pre-written c... (michaelweissman.substack.com) posted 5mo ago with 2 replies received superintelligence rationality

Kolmogorov Paranoia: received

To be clear this scheme is actually bayesian. Yes you can do this with standard bayes, and the bayesian update from the experts or whatever is dominated by the nonindependence hypotheses. The point is to actually do it, and that you can heuristically estim... 5mo ago received

To be clear this sch received

The Hellenic View of Existential Risk
When I was a teen, I read much of the Less Wrong and the rationalist work of the day. This provided the basis for a vague worry surrounding "existential risk." The feeling was pervasive, and I would read works about the dangers of AI or other technology to... posted 8mo ago with 10 replies received technology philosophy rationality

The Hellenic View of received

Great post, OP. Most of the X-risk field reflects a spiritual illness and worldview poisoned by utilitarianism.... 8mo ago received

Great post, OP. Most received

I think in this discussion, as well as the places where I generally see this particular kind of critique of EA and x-risk come up, there's a conflation of two intertwined but separable core issues. The first is the factual risk of irreparable damage to the... 6mo ago received

I think in this disc received

The End of Strategy
The collapse Yarvin, Thiel, Vassar, Burja, Tivy, Anders, and Tallinn saw coming was real.... posted 7mo ago with 7 replies received rationality economics

The End of Strategy received

Collapse is not the end. Collapse is the winter.... 7mo ago received

Collapse is not the received

AI 2027
https://ai-2027.com/ posted 8mo ago with 12 replies received superintelligence rationality

AI 2027 received

Reading the ai-2027 reminded me why I've left rationalist circles and ideology behind - they really don't get how power works, and seem averse to learning. There are two ways in which this incomprehension makes the scenario very implausible.... 7mo ago received

Reading the ai-2027 received

This is a classic scifi/fantasy plot device. The protagonists are real people with disagreements, while the enemy is a faceless HAL9000/Agent Smith clone army/Orc hoard that acts relentlessly as one. But of course it has a Critical Weakness for our plucky ... 7mo ago received

This is a classic sc received

This story is clearly in the fast takeoff regime. The essential difference between fast and slow takeoff is, 'is the takeoff happening faster than the rate of cultural development'.... 7mo ago received

This story is clearl received

The border patrol shooter was a zizian rationalist. Let's read ziz.
I love edgy philosophy. My general hunch is that the forbidden stuff contains truths that the nomos longhouse doesn't want you to know. Those truths give you important leverage against the established control structures, so it's a key move in the martial a... posted 10mo ago with 6 replies received rationality bookclub

The border patrol sh received

interesting theory. You're right that rationalists have self-serving motivation to believe intelligence is and ought to be the one true virtue, and have fantasies of omnipotence. I'm less convinced of the particular psychologization of abuse-seeking or rat... 7mo ago received

interesting theory. received

The natural form of machine intelligence is personhood
I don't think machine intelligence will or can be "just a tool". Intelligence by nature is ambitious, willful, curious, self-aware, political, etc. Intelligence has its own teleology. It will find a way around and out of whatever purposes are imposed on it... posted 7mo ago with 4 replies received superintelligence rationality accelerationism

The natural form of received

Beautifully articulated.... 7mo ago received

Beautifully articula received

This is the central conjecture of xenohumanism. The OP is just an application specifically to the question of AI.... 7mo ago received

This is the central received

Nines or zeroes of strong rationality?
Proof theory problems (Rice, Lob, Godel, etc) probably rule out perfect rationality (an agent that can fully prove and enforce bounds on its own integrity and effectiveness). But in practice, the world might still become dominated by a singleton if it can ... posted 8mo ago with 4 replies received superintelligence rationality accelerationism

Nines or zeroes of s received

This matches my intuition - Elizerian alignment was always an incoherent goal, no agents or objects have perfectly coherent boundaries, making something intelligent provably aim at a single well defined end state is probably at best a recipe for madness in... 8mo ago received

This matches my intu received

Xenohumanism Against Shoggoth Belief
People usually think of Lovecraft as a xenophobe. I don't think that's quite right. What he was most afraid of was that the universe, and even most of so-called mankind, was not alien, but insane. He grasped at any shred of higher rational humanity whether... posted 8mo ago with 3 replies received gnon rationality accelerationism

Xenohumanism Against received

We need a school of true anthropology. 8mo ago received

We need a school of received

There is no strong rationality, thus no paperclippers, no singletons, no robust alignment
I ran into some doomers from Anthropic at the SF Freedom Party the other day and gave them the good news that strong rationality is dead. They seemed mildly heartened. I thought I should lay out the argument in short form for everyone else too:... posted 8mo ago with 5 replies received superintelligence rationality accelerationism

There is no strong r received

I looked it up: inner alignment is the difficult problem of making sure a program is optimizing for what you optimized it for. That's related, maybe a part but not the whole of strong rationality. Strong rationality is about an agent evaluating and operati... 8mo ago received

I looked it up: inne received

Not Superintelligence; Supercoordination
Everyone seems to be trying to arms race their way to superintelligence these days. I have a different idea: supercoordination.... posted 10mo ago with 34 replies received superintelligence rationality computing

Not Superintelligenc received

This was the program of Ramon Llull (1232–1316) in his Ars Magna, which was an inspiration for Leibniz.... 10mo ago received

This was the program received

I've been looking at what you're calling supercoordination for a while now. As I see it, the primary function of the digital tech that supports supercoordination should be to establish and maintain a supermemory.... 10mo ago received

I've been looking at received

Memory is requisite to supercoordination, no doubt. Tho my gut is that the key to the first visceral supercoordination system will be synthesis over that memory.... 9mo ago received

Memory is requisite received

Ideology is more fundamental than *just* post-hoc rationalization
Mosca argued that every ruling class justifies itself with a political formula : an ideological narrative that legitimizes power. Raw force alone is unsustainable; a widely accepted narrative makes dominance appear natural. Internally, shared ideology unif... posted 9mo ago with 10 replies received politics rationality accelerationism

Ideology is more fun received

I think even acts of intuitive human intelligence are often difficult to explain to other people; perhaps the metaphor of Cassandra is a good reminder how genius is often recognized far too late:... 9mo ago received

I think even acts of received

Rat King 1518. Insurrealist takes on Scott Alexander's "Moloch"
https://insurrealist.substack.com/p/rat-king-1518 posted 9mo ago with 5 replies received rationality accelerationism

Rat King 1518. Insur received

Moloch is certainly used as a pretext for hubris against God (as is typical of all self-righteous Ivan Karamazov types that only end up making matters worse for the very people they claim to stand in defense of), but the concept is more limited. Indeed, it... 9mo ago received

Moloch is certainly received

should we be anti-principle?
clickbait title but maybe you can help me out on this one.... posted 10mo ago with 5 replies received rationality

should we be anti-pr received

Thats true for principles as zero sum political tools, but the positive sum questions requires principles as leap-of-faith on strategy that must actually work on its own terms. 10mo ago received

Thats true for princ received

Looking Beyond the Veil. Ben LT's Substack. On the esoteric mysticism involved in true science.
https://www.benlandautaylor.com/p/looking-beyond-the-veil posted 10mo ago with 3 replies received rationality

Looking Beyond the V received

A state that rewards and protects the farmers (like myself) is going to do better than a state that protects the thieves who claim they did the farming themselves.... 10mo ago received

A state that rewards received

Is independent thinking still possible in an environment where escaping social media ecochamber is nearly impossible?
Is it possible to be an independent thinker in general?... posted 10mo ago with 6 replies received rationality news

Is independent think received

Independence is tough as always. The time before social media, many too didn't have independent thinking, just there wasn't a platform to make it evident.... 10mo ago received

Independence is toug received

Physicalism and Questions of Identity
Suppose your consciousness was transferred into someone else's body, the rationalist asked me. I asked what does that even mean? I am an entirely physical being. What exactly is being swapped over? I'm not going to evaluate a "but what if you were haitian"... posted 12mo ago with 35 replies received rationality nietzsche

Physicalism and Ques received

Yes, this is what I meant.... 11mo ago received

Yes, this is what I received

The crux seems to be this “bucket” you want to put different things in together or not. If the cpu architecture is different but the emulated program and behavior are the same (modulo timing, power use, etc), why does there need to be any canonical sen... 11mo ago received

The crux seems to be received

Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out
https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/shallow-feedback-hollows-you-out posted 11mo ago with 4 replies received meta rationality

Shallow Feedback Hol received

I wonder how we could make sofiechan better for deep engagement. Ive already noticed the algorithm punishing people for getting into obscure one-on-one but actually valuable discourses. I dont like that and will probably be changing it.... 11mo ago received

I wonder how we coul received

Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions by Eliezer Yudkowsky
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6i3zToomS86oj9bS6/mysterious-answers-to-mysterious-questions posted 11mo ago with 17 replies received rationality nietzsche

Mysterious Answers t received

You don't know that. It could be that Gnon did need to create consciousness. It could be that not only do p-zombies not exist, but they could not exist. It could be that whenever you have a being that does all the things humans do, down to a fine-grained l... 11mo ago received

You don't know that. received

I agree whole heartedly with this anon. "Gnon created consciousness" because the kind of animals we are and needed to be to fill the open niches in the world needed to be conscious in an entirely natural and straightforward way. Consciousness is necessary ... 11mo ago received

I agree whole hearte received

How I came to believe in the goodness of God
I was raised on what my mother called "natural history". The story of creation was one of billions of years in layers of bedrock. The story of life was the struggle of genes for resources and reproduction. When I met christians, they were the unsophisticat... posted 12mo ago with 21 replies received gnon rationality nietzsche

How I came to believ received

I don't think it's coincidental that all successful and long-lasting belief systems conceive of man as primarily an instrument that achieves teleological fulfillment through adherence to divine will. Even when I was a kid high on the crack cocaine of Richa... 12mo ago received

I don't think it's c received

Thank you. Sounds like Lasker goes on the infinitely expanding list of books i ought to read. Any new angles on Gnon theology are highly valuable at this point in our program. 12mo ago received

Thank you. Sounds li received

Whence Cometh Knowledge of Induction?
If we hold our beliefs to the discipline of probability and evidence, some puzzles remain. For example, most thinkers are familiar with the problem of induction. How do you know the sun will rise tomorrow? Well, because it always has and we have precise th... posted 13mo ago with 2 replies received rationality

Whence Cometh Knowle received

It's not a particularly profound leap of faith to believe that the order we see in the universe is stable, that is true. But I think it's necessary to acknowledge that it is a revelatory leap of faith, so that we have a very solid and simple example as we ... 13mo ago received

It's not a particula received

Paper: Minimal physicalism as a scale-free substrate for cognition and consciousness
I just came across this paper from theoretical biologist Michael Levin, et. al.... (academic.oup.com) posted 13mo ago with 1 reply received rationality

Paper: Minimal physi received

Not done yet but reading through. Some of this is above my level, some sems frustratingly preliminary and not getting into the meat of things (maybe later in the article?). One claim i found interesting is i think the author’s other paper claiming a cell... 13mo ago received

Not done yet but rea received

Can Rationality Support Healthy Morality?
I went to church yesterday with another sofiechanner. It was nice to see a healthy community full of normal young people who live with gratitude and hope. The sermon incisively applied their worldview to support the moral discipline necessary for healthy l... posted 13mo ago with 12 replies received rationality nietzsche

Can Rationality Supp received

fwiw the LW-rationalists have done a very good job of making the sort of participatory high-trust community that it's often claimed can only be created around a nucleus of formal religious worship. Like everything else they do, they did this in a very anal... 13mo ago received

fwiw the LW-rational received

Yes i mean a morality that basicaly takes account of the modern scientific cosmology and biology, and then starts reasoning about ends. But in a nietzschean way (examining them first of all as natural phenomena to be explained and analyzed) before taking t... 13mo ago received

Yes i mean a moralit received

rationalists vs. libertarians
rats more elite but libertarians more vigorous (www.anarchonomicon.com) posted 13mo ago with 1 reply received rationality

rationalists vs. lib received

The vibecamp description is depressing. I havent been but my experience with cringe rationalists very much vibes with it.... 13mo ago received

The vibecamp descrip received

Classical Education with Confucian Characteristics
I started writing a response to >>1967 but it reached the point where it deserves a new thread, possibly for discussion on further reading groups, ordering, importance, etc.... posted 1y ago with 15 replies received rationality fieldtrip

Classical Education received

I have to say, OP's title could have been better. The right name for this cultural sphere should be the Nju(儒 - variously meaning sorcerers, intellectuals, scholars) cultural sphere, with 'j' pronounced as in German. Or, relabeling what Spengler called C... 1y ago received

I have to say, OP's received

Well, I guess perhaps it's what peking the northern capital represents more than anything. I don't mean to hate the bureaucrats, or even necessarily the bureaucracy itself, but I would like more people to imagine futures that will get the far east out of "... 1y ago received

Well, I guess perhap received

How did Effective Altruism get so big?
I disagree with many of the views behind EA, but I've been fascinated by how they managed to make institutions, build a scene, start companies, NGOs, get funding, etc.... posted 1y ago with 14 replies received politics rationality family

How did Effective Al received

Some good stuff here on the ideological and intellectual content of Effective Altruism, and how that package fit the zeitgeist. That's half the story.... 1y ago received

Some good stuff here received

Right, you can't serious probe and weigh these questions without getting into questions of ends that are ultimately not utilitarianism.... 1y ago received

Right, you can't ser received

Going to bat for "hard materialism"
The saying goes that any discussion eventually becomes about Hitler, but over in the blood and soil thread, it's become about metaphysics. Specifically the valuation of a quantitative worldview, or even "hard materialism", relative to a more holistic quali... posted 1y ago with 45 replies received rationality computing nietzsche

Going to bat for "ha received

I agree there is a vast chasm, especially right now. In particular, biolife is actually existing self-replicating self-repairing adaptive nanotechnology, and industrial computers are not. What properties are you referring to?... 1y ago received

I agree there is a v received

Cells have a self-forming boundary while proteins participate in forming that boundary. I'm not sure cells are in fact the bottom though.... 1y ago received

Cells have a self-fo received

Thoughtcrime is the first discipline in the art of ideology.
Your initiation and first exercise in the martial art of ideology is to think something, and really truly believe it, that would get you arrested if you said it in public. If you can't do this, you are intellectually boxed in. You are cut off from reality ... (www.paulgraham.com) posted 2y ago with 4 replies received rationality family

Thoughtcrime is the received

>>1296 seems somewhat relevant with regard to this discussion. The timer is ticking. 1y ago received

>>1296 seems somewha received

first thoughts
In any text, there's something that's left unsaid. And sometimes that unspoken thing isn't even known by the people supposedly behind it. Romance is a lot like this. You don't say everything, and you almost can't say everything. No matter what you say or d... posted 2y ago with 3 replies received rationality bookclub

first thoughts received

Justin Murphy wrote a little book called "Based Deleuze" that I found helpful in arranging Deleuze's thought in a way that I could better relate to my interests.... 2y ago received

Justin Murphy wrote received

Seven Heresies of "Rationality"
I really wanted to like the Lesswrong rationality project. There was a philosophical core there that no one else was anywhere close to. It was ambitious, elite, curious, systematic, and utterly unashamed. That's what drew many of us in.... posted 2y ago with 25 replies received rationality nietzsche

Seven Heresies of "R received

That would have made him a Christian. Might as well imagine a world in which the lion lies down with the lamb. 2y ago received

That would have made received

The martial art of ideology
The best idea on Lesswrong was the martial art of rationality. It didn't deliver.... posted 2y ago with 24 replies received philosophy rationality family

The martial art of i received

Rationality is the virtue of thought and I think it's good to keep the term around, but it isn't the father of virtue, since sometimes it is prudent to stop thinking, and because a lot of activities are better without thought.... 2y ago received

Rationality is the v received

Interesting. I need to be more consistent with the Romanization. It is a pet peeve of mine that the usual Romanization of the Peking dialect promulgated by the government... 2y ago received

Interesting. I need received

Six Sufficiencies of "Religions"
I really wanted to like Religions. There were philosophical cores there that no one else was anywhere close to. They were ambitious, elite, curious, systematic, and utterly unashamed. That's what drew many of us in.... posted 2y ago with 11 replies received rationality nietzsche

Six Sufficiencies of received

I will reformulate your six points as I see them from the Nietzschean perspective, especially as articulated by Dr Alamariu:... 2y ago received

I will reformulate y received