I’m here for only a couple of months, and I didn’t have any impression of cultishness. I saw only a circle of friends doing a thing together, and very enthusiastic about it.
What I also did see (and still do) is specific people just sometimes being slightly crazy, in a nice way. As in: Eliezer’s threatment of MWI. Or way too serious fear of weird acausal dangers that fall out of currently best decision theories. Note: this impression is not because of craziness of the ideas, but because of taking them too seriously too early. However, the relevant posts always have sane critical comments, heavily upvoted.
I’m slightly more alarmed by posts like How would you stop Moore’s Law?. I mean, seriously thinking of AI dangers is good. Seriously considering nuking Intel’s fabs in order to stop the dangers is… not good.
The conclusions don’t seem crazy (well, they seem “crazy-but-probably-correct”, just like even the non-controversial parts of quantum mechanics), but IIRC the occasional emphasis on “We Have The One Correct Answer And You All Are Wrong” rang some warning bells.
On the other hand: Rationality is only useful to the extent that it reaches conclusions that differ from e.g. the “just believe what everyone else does” heuristic. Yet when any other heuristic comes up with new conclusions that are easily verified, or even new conclusions which sound plausible and aren’t disproveable, “just believe what everyone else does” quickly catches up. So if you want a touchstone for rationality in an individual, you need to find a question for which rational analysis leads to an unverifiable, implausible sounding answer. Such a question makes a great test, but not such a great advertisement...
Choosing between mathematically equivalent interpretations adds 1 bit of complexity that doesn’t need to be added. Now, if EY had derived the Born probabilities from first principles, that’d be quite interesting.
Yes to well bonded. People here seem to understand each other far better than average on the net, and it is immediately apparent.
Thankyou. It is good to be reminded that these things are relative. Sometimes I forget to compare interactions to others on the internet and instead compare them to interactions with people as I would prefer them to be or even just interactions with people I know in person (and have rather ruthlessly selected for not being annoying).
I’m here for only a couple of months, and I didn’t have any impression of cultishness. I saw only a circle of friends doing a thing together, and very enthusiastic about it.
What I also did see (and still do) is specific people just sometimes being slightly crazy, in a nice way. As in: Eliezer’s threatment of MWI. Or way too serious fear of weird acausal dangers that fall out of currently best decision theories.
Note: this impression is not because of craziness of the ideas, but because of taking them too seriously too early. However, the relevant posts always have sane critical comments, heavily upvoted.
I’m slightly more alarmed by posts like How would you stop Moore’s Law?. I mean, seriously thinking of AI dangers is good. Seriously considering nuking Intel’s fabs in order to stop the dangers is… not good.
Agreed, except the treatment of WMI does not seem the least bit crazy to me. But what do I know—I’m a crazy physicist.
The conclusions don’t seem crazy (well, they seem “crazy-but-probably-correct”, just like even the non-controversial parts of quantum mechanics), but IIRC the occasional emphasis on “We Have The One Correct Answer And You All Are Wrong” rang some warning bells.
On the other hand: Rationality is only useful to the extent that it reaches conclusions that differ from e.g. the “just believe what everyone else does” heuristic. Yet when any other heuristic comes up with new conclusions that are easily verified, or even new conclusions which sound plausible and aren’t disproveable, “just believe what everyone else does” quickly catches up. So if you want a touchstone for rationality in an individual, you need to find a question for which rational analysis leads to an unverifiable, implausible sounding answer. Such a question makes a great test, but not such a great advertisement...
Choosing between mathematically equivalent interpretations adds 1 bit of complexity that doesn’t need to be added. Now, if EY had derived the Born probabilities from first principles, that’d be quite interesting.
That’s a positive impression. People really look that enthusiastic and well bonded?
Yes to well bonded. People here seem to understand each other far better than average on the net, and it is immediately apparent.
Enthusiastic is a wrong word, I suppose. I meant, sure of doing a good thing, happy to be doing it, etc, not in the sense of applauding and cheering.
Thankyou. It is good to be reminded that these things are relative. Sometimes I forget to compare interactions to others on the internet and instead compare them to interactions with people as I would prefer them to be or even just interactions with people I know in person (and have rather ruthlessly selected for not being annoying).