They really aught not to, though, Living forever, like polyamory, is a preference which hinges strictly on a person’s utility function. It’s perfectly possible for a rational agent to not want to live forever, or be polyamorous.
Even if someone considers polyamory and cryonics morally wrong… in this community we often use rational and bayesian interchangeably, but let’s revert to the regular definition for a moment. People who condemn polyamory or cryonics based on cached thoughts are not rational in the true English sense of the word (rational—having reason or justification for belief) but they are not any less epistemically bayesian...it’s not like they have a twisted view of reality itself.
Atheism...well that’s a proposition about the truth, so you could argue that it says something about the individual’s rationality. Trouble is, since God is so ill defined, atheism is poorly defined by extension.
So you’d get someone like Einstein claiming not to be an atheist on mostly aesthetic grounds.
Because of our semantic idiocy atheism implies adeism as well, even though deists, atheists, and pantheists have otherwise identical models about observable reality...so I’d hesitate to say that deism/pantheism imply irrationality.
Edit: Also, let’s not confuse intelligence with bayesian-ness. Intelligence correlates with all the beliefs mentioned above largely because it confers resistance to conformity, and that’s the real reason that polyamory and atheism is over-represented at lesswrong. Cryonics...I think that’s a cultural artifact of the close affiliation with the singularity institute.
Intelligence correlates with all the beliefs mentioned above largely because it confers resistance to conformity, and that’s the real reason that polyamory and atheism is over-represented at lesswrong.
Regarding polyamory, it could also be founder effect — given that several of the top contributors are openly poly, that both men and women are among them, and so on.
Alicorn used to be mono, and I think so did Eliezer; and the fraction of poly respondents was about the same in the last two surveys, which… some part of my brain tells me is evidence against your hypothesis, but now that I think about it I’m not sure why.
They really aught not to, though, Living forever, like polyamory, is a preference which hinges strictly on a person’s utility function. It’s perfectly possible for a rational agent to not want to live forever, or be polyamorous.
But we’re talking about probability, not possibility. It’s possible for a mammal to be bipedal; but evidence for quadrupedalism is still evidence for being a mammal. Similarly, it’s possible to be irrational and polyamorous; but if the rate of polyamory is greater among rationalists than among non-rationalists, then polyamory is evidence of rationality, regardless of whether it directly causally arises from any rationality-skill. The same would be true if hat-wearing were more common among rationalists than among non-rationalists. It sounds like you’re criticizing a different attitude than is TheOtherDave.
They really aught not to, though, Living forever, like polyamory, is a preference which hinges strictly on a person’s utility function. It’s perfectly possible for a rational agent to not want to live forever, or be polyamorous.
Even if someone considers polyamory and cryonics morally wrong… in this community we often use rational and bayesian interchangeably, but let’s revert to the regular definition for a moment. People who condemn polyamory or cryonics based on cached thoughts are not rational in the true English sense of the word (rational—having reason or justification for belief) but they are not any less epistemically bayesian...it’s not like they have a twisted view of reality itself.
Atheism...well that’s a proposition about the truth, so you could argue that it says something about the individual’s rationality. Trouble is, since God is so ill defined, atheism is poorly defined by extension. So you’d get someone like Einstein claiming not to be an atheist on mostly aesthetic grounds.
Because of our semantic idiocy atheism implies adeism as well, even though deists, atheists, and pantheists have otherwise identical models about observable reality...so I’d hesitate to say that deism/pantheism imply irrationality.
Edit: Also, let’s not confuse intelligence with bayesian-ness. Intelligence correlates with all the beliefs mentioned above largely because it confers resistance to conformity, and that’s the real reason that polyamory and atheism is over-represented at lesswrong. Cryonics...I think that’s a cultural artifact of the close affiliation with the singularity institute.
Regarding polyamory, it could also be founder effect — given that several of the top contributors are openly poly, that both men and women are among them, and so on.
Alicorn used to be mono, and I think so did Eliezer; and the fraction of poly respondents was about the same in the last two surveys, which… some part of my brain tells me is evidence against your hypothesis, but now that I think about it I’m not sure why.
But we’re talking about probability, not possibility. It’s possible for a mammal to be bipedal; but evidence for quadrupedalism is still evidence for being a mammal. Similarly, it’s possible to be irrational and polyamorous; but if the rate of polyamory is greater among rationalists than among non-rationalists, then polyamory is evidence of rationality, regardless of whether it directly causally arises from any rationality-skill. The same would be true if hat-wearing were more common among rationalists than among non-rationalists. It sounds like you’re criticizing a different attitude than is TheOtherDave.