Music isn’t the sole domain of people that are particular interested in it either but it doesn’t seem “super toxic” that they might consider themselves to be, let alone refer to themselves as, ‘music people’. It seems like a natural shorthand given that that is the topic or subject around which they’ve organized.
And yes, it is – mostly – about the ideas. I’ve only been to a few meetups and generally prefer to read along and occassionally comment, but I’m open to ‘joining the tribe’ (or some ‘band’ closeby) too because it is nice to be able to socialize with people that think similarly and about the same topics.
The examples in the post about people bouncing off the community also seemed to be cases where they were bouncing off the ideas too.
The point is, the analogy fails because there is no “music people tribe” with “music meetups” organized at “MoreMusical.com”. There is no Elizier Yudkowsky of “music tribe” (at most, everyone who appreciates the Western classical music has heard about Beethoven maybe) nor idea that people familiar with main ideas of music have learned them from a small handful of “music sequences” and interconnected resources that reference each other.
Picking at one particular point in the OP, there are no weird sexual dynamics of music (some localized groups or cultures might have, eg. one could talk about sexual culture in rock music in general, and maybe the dynamics at a particular scene, but they are not central to the pursuit of all of music, and even at the local level the culture is often very diffuse).
Music is widespread. There are several cultures of music that intersect with the wider society : no particular societal group has any claim of monopoly on teaching appreciation or practice of music. There is so much music that there are economies of music. There are many academies, even more teachers, untold amount of people who have varying expertise in playing instruments who apply them for fun or sometimes profit. Anyone with talent and opportunity can learn to appreciate music or play an instrument from lots of different resources.
It would be good for rationality to explicitly attempt become like music (or scientific thinking, or mathematics, or such), because then the issue perceived by some of being an insular tribe would simply not exist.
Instead of building a single community, build a culture of several communities. After all, the idea of good, explicit thinking is universally applicable, so there is nothing in it that would necessitate a single community, is there?
The point is, the analogy fails because there is no “music people tribe” with “music meetups” organized at “MoreMusical.com”. There is no Elizier Yudkowsky of “music tribe” (at most, everyone who appreciates the Western classical music has heard about Beethoven maybe) …
Yes, there is no single ‘music people tribe’ but there are very much tribes for specific music (sub-)genres. (Music is huge!)
But as you point out, there are people of ‘similar’ stature in music generally; really much greater stature overall. And ‘music’ is much much much older than ‘rationality’. (Music is older than history!) And I’d guess it’s inherently more interesting to many many more people too.
… nor idea that people familiar with main ideas of music have learned them from a small handful of “music sequences” and interconnected resources that reference each other.
I don’t consider ‘the sequences’ or LW to be essential, especially now. The same insights are available from a lot of sources already and this should be more true in the future. It was, and perhaps is, a really good intro to what wasn’t previously a particularly coherent subject.
Actual ‘rationality’ is everywhere. There was just no one persistently pointing at all of the common phenomena, or at least not recently and in a way that’s accessible to (some) ‘laypeople’.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if there is something like a ‘music sequences’, e.g. a standard music textbook. I’d imagine ‘music theory’ or music pedagogy are in fact “interconnected resources that reference each other”.
Again, if it wasn’t already clear, the LW sequences are NOT essential for rationality.
Picking at one particular point in the OP, there are no weird sexual dynamics of music (some localized groups or cultures might have, eg. one could talk about sexual culture in rock music in general, and maybe the dynamics at a particular scene, but they are not central to the pursuit of all of music, and even at the local level the culture is often very diffuse).
There’s no weird “sexual dynamics” in rationality – based on MY experience. I don’t know why the people that publically write about that thing must define everyone else that’s part of the overall network. I certainly don’t consider any of it central to rationality.
I don’t even know that “weird sexual dynamics” is a common feature of LW meetups, let alone other ‘rationality’-related associations.
Music is widespread. There are several cultures of music that intersect with the wider society : no particular societal group has any claim of monopoly on teaching appreciation or practice of music. There is so much music that there are economies of music. There are many academies, even more teachers, untold amount of people who have varying expertise in playing instruments who apply them for fun or sometimes profit. Anyone with talent and opportunity can learn to appreciate music or play an instrument from lots of different resources.
Rationality, in the LW sense, could be all of these things. At least give it a few hundred years! Music is old.
And no one has a monopoly on rationality. If anything, LW-style rationality is competing with everything else; almost everything else is implicitly claiming to help you either believe truths or act effectively.
It would be good for rationality to explicitly attempt become like music (or scientific thinking, or mathematics, or such), because then the issue perceived by some of being an insular tribe would simply not exist.
I agree! We should definitely try to become ‘background knowledge’ or at least as diffuse or widespread as mathematics! I think this is already happening and that it was more widely known that it was. I may have assumed that anyone reading my comment knew (or believed) that too.
Instead of building a single community, build a culture of several communities. After all, the idea of good, explicit thinking is universally applicable, so there is nothing in it that would necessitate a single community, is there?
I agree! And again, I think this has already happened to an extent. I’m not a part of any rationality ‘community’; not in the sense you’ve described. I think that’s true for most of the people interested in this.
But, in case it’s still not clear, I do NOT think rationality should or must be ‘a single community’.
What I was pointing out is that if there was something named “music club” or you observed someone describe themselves as a ‘music lover’, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
I also wrote that “I’m open to ‘joining the tribe’ (or some ‘band’ closeby)”. I meant ‘tribe’ in the sense I think you mean ‘culture’ in “a culture of several communities”. I meant ‘band’ in the sense of some – not the – real-world group of people that at least meetup regularly (and are united by at least a common interest in rationality).
Now I’m wondering where people get the idea that ‘rationality’ is any kind of IRL organization centered around, or run by, Elizier Yudkowsky. I think there’s way more of us that aren’t a member of such an organization, beyond being users of this site or readers of ‘the diaspora’.
I do not feel like writing a point by point response, it seems we are in agreement over many issues but maybe not all.
Some paragrah-sized points I want to elaborate on, however:
1 If it is not clear, in my comment I attempted not to argue against your positions in particular. It was more in the support of the idea expressed upthread that building too much of the attitude of there being an identifiable “Rationality Tribe” is a net negative.
(1b Negative both to the objective of raising general societal sanity waterline and the tribespeople’s ability of it. Especially I feel the point—cant find link to comment with my phone—how in a close-knit society where many opinons obtained by explicit thought are expressed, it can become difficult disengtangle which of my individual opinions I have obtained by my own explicit thought and agreeing with others because I agree with the logic, or which opinions I am agreeing with because of my social mind wants agree or disagree with some specific individuals or “group consensus”)
2 One of the reasons I picked the sexual dynamics because OP mentions it in a figure caption as a joke. Nevertheless, it is an indication that at least in the OP the Tribe in question is not thought as existing in eg some abstract idea space but as a specific group of people living near each other enough to have sexual dynamics.
3 I find myself disagreeing with the idea that rationality-in-general (in contrast with LW-originated social group) is a new innovation. In near history perspective the first example that comes to mind, John Allen Paulos published Innumecary in 1988 ; I read it as a kid in 00s when I had no internet and LW did not exist, but it tickled the same parts of my brain as many ideas about putting numbers on arguments floating in LW-adjacent thoughtspace. In long-term history perspective, I’d make an argument that attempt at improving human ability at rational thought is part of the grand scientific project and tradition that goes back to Socrates.
4 I also I think that having social groups over common interests is good. I got started in local area SSC meetups because I was interested in talking with with people interested in AI, science, philosophy, and other such things Iassumed people reading SSC the blog would be interested in. (Maybe this would be “joining a band” in the metaphor.)
5 Writing and disseminating resources that help with better thinking is a good thing and worthwhile project. It is also quite natural that liked-minded people seek each other’s company, resulting in a community. (Of which there are and can be many kinds: up until late-20th century, there was an intellectual community of “men of letters” primarly writing letters to each other if they did not live near enough for regular in-person discussion.)
6 The part that seems problematic (and the complaint this comment thread is about) is the point where it looks like the Bay Area community (or some members thereof) treats itself as having a kind-of weird cultural or intellectual monopoly over principles of rationality as the Rationality Community With Capital Letters, whose members tacitly assume after learning about Rationality, others would want join exactly their “tribe”, instead of assuming more pluralistic outcomes.
This brings me back to your analogy that inspired me to claim rationality is not yet like music: some people most focused in tribes and communities do not talk in terms of having a music community in Bay Area, but of The Music Community.
Music isn’t the sole domain of people that are particular interested in it either but it doesn’t seem “super toxic” that they might consider themselves to be, let alone refer to themselves as, ‘music people’. It seems like a natural shorthand given that that is the topic or subject around which they’ve organized.
And yes, it is – mostly – about the ideas. I’ve only been to a few meetups and generally prefer to read along and occassionally comment, but I’m open to ‘joining the tribe’ (or some ‘band’ closeby) too because it is nice to be able to socialize with people that think similarly and about the same topics.
The examples in the post about people bouncing off the community also seemed to be cases where they were bouncing off the ideas too.
The point is, the analogy fails because there is no “music people tribe” with “music meetups” organized at “MoreMusical.com”. There is no Elizier Yudkowsky of “music tribe” (at most, everyone who appreciates the Western classical music has heard about Beethoven maybe) nor idea that people familiar with main ideas of music have learned them from a small handful of “music sequences” and interconnected resources that reference each other.
Picking at one particular point in the OP, there are no weird sexual dynamics of music (some localized groups or cultures might have, eg. one could talk about sexual culture in rock music in general, and maybe the dynamics at a particular scene, but they are not central to the pursuit of all of music, and even at the local level the culture is often very diffuse).
Music is widespread. There are several cultures of music that intersect with the wider society : no particular societal group has any claim of monopoly on teaching appreciation or practice of music. There is so much music that there are economies of music. There are many academies, even more teachers, untold amount of people who have varying expertise in playing instruments who apply them for fun or sometimes profit. Anyone with talent and opportunity can learn to appreciate music or play an instrument from lots of different resources.
It would be good for rationality to explicitly attempt become like music (or scientific thinking, or mathematics, or such), because then the issue perceived by some of being an insular tribe would simply not exist.
Instead of building a single community, build a culture of several communities. After all, the idea of good, explicit thinking is universally applicable, so there is nothing in it that would necessitate a single community, is there?
Yes, there is no single ‘music people tribe’ but there are very much tribes for specific music (sub-)genres. (Music is huge!)
But as you point out, there are people of ‘similar’ stature in music generally; really much greater stature overall. And ‘music’ is much much much older than ‘rationality’. (Music is older than history!) And I’d guess it’s inherently more interesting to many many more people too.
I don’t consider ‘the sequences’ or LW to be essential, especially now. The same insights are available from a lot of sources already and this should be more true in the future. It was, and perhaps is, a really good intro to what wasn’t previously a particularly coherent subject.
Actual ‘rationality’ is everywhere. There was just no one persistently pointing at all of the common phenomena, or at least not recently and in a way that’s accessible to (some) ‘laypeople’.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if there is something like a ‘music sequences’, e.g. a standard music textbook. I’d imagine ‘music theory’ or music pedagogy are in fact “interconnected resources that reference each other”.
Again, if it wasn’t already clear, the LW sequences are NOT essential for rationality.
There’s no weird “sexual dynamics” in rationality – based on MY experience. I don’t know why the people that publically write about that thing must define everyone else that’s part of the overall network. I certainly don’t consider any of it central to rationality.
I don’t even know that “weird sexual dynamics” is a common feature of LW meetups, let alone other ‘rationality’-related associations.
Rationality, in the LW sense, could be all of these things. At least give it a few hundred years! Music is old.
And no one has a monopoly on rationality. If anything, LW-style rationality is competing with everything else; almost everything else is implicitly claiming to help you either believe truths or act effectively.
I agree! We should definitely try to become ‘background knowledge’ or at least as diffuse or widespread as mathematics! I think this is already happening and that it was more widely known that it was. I may have assumed that anyone reading my comment knew (or believed) that too.
I agree! And again, I think this has already happened to an extent. I’m not a part of any rationality ‘community’; not in the sense you’ve described. I think that’s true for most of the people interested in this.
But, in case it’s still not clear, I do NOT think rationality should or must be ‘a single community’.
What I was pointing out is that if there was something named “music club” or you observed someone describe themselves as a ‘music lover’, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
I also wrote that “I’m open to ‘joining the tribe’ (or some ‘band’ closeby)”. I meant ‘tribe’ in the sense I think you mean ‘culture’ in “a culture of several communities”. I meant ‘band’ in the sense of some – not the – real-world group of people that at least meetup regularly (and are united by at least a common interest in rationality).
Now I’m wondering where people get the idea that ‘rationality’ is any kind of IRL organization centered around, or run by, Elizier Yudkowsky. I think there’s way more of us that aren’t a member of such an organization, beyond being users of this site or readers of ‘the diaspora’.
I do not feel like writing a point by point response, it seems we are in agreement over many issues but maybe not all.
Some paragrah-sized points I want to elaborate on, however:
1 If it is not clear, in my comment I attempted not to argue against your positions in particular. It was more in the support of the idea expressed upthread that building too much of the attitude of there being an identifiable “Rationality Tribe” is a net negative.
(1b Negative both to the objective of raising general societal sanity waterline and the tribespeople’s ability of it. Especially I feel the point—cant find link to comment with my phone—how in a close-knit society where many opinons obtained by explicit thought are expressed, it can become difficult disengtangle which of my individual opinions I have obtained by my own explicit thought and agreeing with others because I agree with the logic, or which opinions I am agreeing with because of my social mind wants agree or disagree with some specific individuals or “group consensus”)
2 One of the reasons I picked the sexual dynamics because OP mentions it in a figure caption as a joke. Nevertheless, it is an indication that at least in the OP the Tribe in question is not thought as existing in eg some abstract idea space but as a specific group of people living near each other enough to have sexual dynamics.
3 I find myself disagreeing with the idea that rationality-in-general (in contrast with LW-originated social group) is a new innovation. In near history perspective the first example that comes to mind, John Allen Paulos published Innumecary in 1988 ; I read it as a kid in 00s when I had no internet and LW did not exist, but it tickled the same parts of my brain as many ideas about putting numbers on arguments floating in LW-adjacent thoughtspace. In long-term history perspective, I’d make an argument that attempt at improving human ability at rational thought is part of the grand scientific project and tradition that goes back to Socrates.
4 I also I think that having social groups over common interests is good. I got started in local area SSC meetups because I was interested in talking with with people interested in AI, science, philosophy, and other such things Iassumed people reading SSC the blog would be interested in. (Maybe this would be “joining a band” in the metaphor.)
5 Writing and disseminating resources that help with better thinking is a good thing and worthwhile project. It is also quite natural that liked-minded people seek each other’s company, resulting in a community. (Of which there are and can be many kinds: up until late-20th century, there was an intellectual community of “men of letters” primarly writing letters to each other if they did not live near enough for regular in-person discussion.)
6 The part that seems problematic (and the complaint this comment thread is about) is the point where it looks like the Bay Area community (or some members thereof) treats itself as having a kind-of weird cultural or intellectual monopoly over principles of rationality as the Rationality Community With Capital Letters, whose members tacitly assume after learning about Rationality, others would want join exactly their “tribe”, instead of assuming more pluralistic outcomes.
This brings me back to your analogy that inspired me to claim rationality is not yet like music: some people most focused in tribes and communities do not talk in terms of having a music community in Bay Area, but of The Music Community.