This feels very much like an outsider’s take on both Bay-area tech culture and LW rationality. As much as anything they give this away by referring to it as Silicon Valley all the time (locals sometimes talk that way, but the dynamic center of the industry as moved north to San Francisco so that Silicon Valley feels more like the stody place you go to ask for money) and constantly referring to “rationalism” interchangeably with “rationality” and not seeming to realize the LW rationality movement basically never says “rationalism” to avoid the name collision with traditional rationalism in philosophy. This immediately makes me suspicious the author is going to have much of interest to say because they don’t seem to have engaged enough with the thing they’re analyzing to actually understand it.
I also don’t see a lot of evidence that the author’s interpretation of events is even a good summary of what happened. It feels much more like they looked at some headlines, tried to tie it into a narrative that fit their preconceived notions of how the world works, and then spun it as some lesson they could give back to folks in the Bay area and the rationalist community. Even if they are accidentally right, I’m unconvinced because their method appears flawed.
To be fair, I was reviewing their doc, and I even didn’t pick up on how ‘rationalism’ could be confused with the philosophical counterpart (although ‘rationality’ did intuitively click better for me). I would say I’m medium-involved in the rationality community, having attended a CFAR workshop and other gatherings, read a bunch of LW and SSC posts, etc.
Do you happen to have ideas on different methodology? (no worries if you haven’t, don’t want to put you on the spot here!)
This feels very much like an outsider’s take on both Bay-area tech culture and LW rationality. As much as anything they give this away by referring to it as Silicon Valley all the time (locals sometimes talk that way, but the dynamic center of the industry as moved north to San Francisco so that Silicon Valley feels more like the stody place you go to ask for money) and constantly referring to “rationalism” interchangeably with “rationality” and not seeming to realize the LW rationality movement basically never says “rationalism” to avoid the name collision with traditional rationalism in philosophy. This immediately makes me suspicious the author is going to have much of interest to say because they don’t seem to have engaged enough with the thing they’re analyzing to actually understand it.
I also don’t see a lot of evidence that the author’s interpretation of events is even a good summary of what happened. It feels much more like they looked at some headlines, tried to tie it into a narrative that fit their preconceived notions of how the world works, and then spun it as some lesson they could give back to folks in the Bay area and the rationalist community. Even if they are accidentally right, I’m unconvinced because their method appears flawed.
To be fair, I was reviewing their doc, and I even didn’t pick up on how ‘rationalism’ could be confused with the philosophical counterpart (although ‘rationality’ did intuitively click better for me). I would say I’m medium-involved in the rationality community, having attended a CFAR workshop and other gatherings, read a bunch of LW and SSC posts, etc.
Do you happen to have ideas on different methodology? (no worries if you haven’t, don’t want to put you on the spot here!)