I’m also loving that blog; it was one of about three in the big “list of LessWronger blogs” discussion post that seemed to be worth working through the archives.
Points 1 and 2 are pretty hard to dispute; my thoughts first turn to the split-corpus-callosum experiments regarding #1 and the difference between abstract and non-abstract Wason selection task results regarding #2.
Point 3 may be slightly wrong. For instance: If you want to show a cohesive group front, you need Schnelling points to rally around, and “this is a rational argument” makes a good such point, which works to the extent that people try to develop ways to distinguish between rational and rationalization. We have incentives to learn to trick people via rationalization, but also incentives to learn how to avoid being tricked.
The first sentence of point 4 is likely wrong, ironically because of point 2, due to the base rate fallacy. If the vast majority of people don’t have broken intellectualism-before-group-identity brains, then the majority of good ideas may still come from them, despite their lower per-capita production of those ideas.
The second sentence corresponds to my experience, but it may often be wrong because point 3 hasn’t been taken far enough: how many iconoclasts are really “group-free”, and how many are just following a different subconscious social pattern like “if you can’t climb the group hierarchy from within, conspicuously oppose it and found a new hierarchy”?
Posting here is the closest I’ve ever come to joining a “rationalist group”, so I can’t usefully comment on point 5.
I’m also loving that blog; it was one of about three in the big “list of LessWronger blogs” discussion post that seemed to be worth working through the archives.
Points 1 and 2 are pretty hard to dispute; my thoughts first turn to the split-corpus-callosum experiments regarding #1 and the difference between abstract and non-abstract Wason selection task results regarding #2.
Point 3 may be slightly wrong. For instance: If you want to show a cohesive group front, you need Schnelling points to rally around, and “this is a rational argument” makes a good such point, which works to the extent that people try to develop ways to distinguish between rational and rationalization. We have incentives to learn to trick people via rationalization, but also incentives to learn how to avoid being tricked.
The first sentence of point 4 is likely wrong, ironically because of point 2, due to the base rate fallacy. If the vast majority of people don’t have broken intellectualism-before-group-identity brains, then the majority of good ideas may still come from them, despite their lower per-capita production of those ideas.
The second sentence corresponds to my experience, but it may often be wrong because point 3 hasn’t been taken far enough: how many iconoclasts are really “group-free”, and how many are just following a different subconscious social pattern like “if you can’t climb the group hierarchy from within, conspicuously oppose it and found a new hierarchy”?
Posting here is the closest I’ve ever come to joining a “rationalist group”, so I can’t usefully comment on point 5.