Perhaps you have conflated correlation and causation. It is possible that loners, or people who are less concerned with group conformity simply have more time and resources to devote to their rationality.
I don’t believe I’ve conflated anything. It’s posed as a question because I don’t know the answer; I’m giving my view and some speculation based on a nagging feeling/set of thoughts. I’m looking for the views and experiences of others who may have observed/felt something similar.
I certainly agree that it can seem that rationalists are lonelier, I’m just posing an alternate reason why. Though, perhaps your post deserves a more thoughtful reply than I gave.
Unfortunately, the question seems to be a difficult one to answer. First, we need to find a way to determine whether or not rationalists truly are more lonely. Loneliness seems like a tricky variable to quantify. Some ideas that spring to mind: You could measure the size of social circles using social network data or self-report surveys. Simply measure self-reported loneliness. Measure loneliness with some sort of psychological screening like you would measure introvertedness or conscientiousness. Record how often someone goes out with friends. Rationality might be easier to measure, except that I think self-report data would be unreliable, as it seems likely that like intelligence or competence at a given task, rationality would be underrated by those that have it and overrated by those who don’t, but I’m sure the folks here at less wrong or elsewhere could write up a survey that measures it fairly well.
Then only once these variables are quantified, would we be able to see if there even is a correlation to begin with. Though it could be explained a number of ways. Rational people are attracted mainly to other rational people, and there are fewer rationalists than non-rationalists. Human social ques are emotionally rather than logically based. Rational people are more likely to be candid about sensitive topics, scaring away non-rationalists. People with psychological traits such as placement on the Asperger’s scale or high introversion could be conducive to rationality and not conducive to social aptitude. Or a combination of any of these. it’s an interesting topic, but I think we are a long way from being able to draw any big rational conclusions about it yet.
An alternative (albeit cynical) interpretation is that people who are already lonely have less to loose by believing things that send bad signals, that say very sociable people, since they have to cover up such beliefs less often as well as derive their sense of self wroth from things other than social interactions and their public image.
Perhaps you have conflated correlation and causation. It is possible that loners, or people who are less concerned with group conformity simply have more time and resources to devote to their rationality.
I don’t believe I’ve conflated anything. It’s posed as a question because I don’t know the answer; I’m giving my view and some speculation based on a nagging feeling/set of thoughts. I’m looking for the views and experiences of others who may have observed/felt something similar.
I certainly agree that it can seem that rationalists are lonelier, I’m just posing an alternate reason why. Though, perhaps your post deserves a more thoughtful reply than I gave.
Unfortunately, the question seems to be a difficult one to answer. First, we need to find a way to determine whether or not rationalists truly are more lonely. Loneliness seems like a tricky variable to quantify. Some ideas that spring to mind: You could measure the size of social circles using social network data or self-report surveys. Simply measure self-reported loneliness. Measure loneliness with some sort of psychological screening like you would measure introvertedness or conscientiousness. Record how often someone goes out with friends. Rationality might be easier to measure, except that I think self-report data would be unreliable, as it seems likely that like intelligence or competence at a given task, rationality would be underrated by those that have it and overrated by those who don’t, but I’m sure the folks here at less wrong or elsewhere could write up a survey that measures it fairly well.
Then only once these variables are quantified, would we be able to see if there even is a correlation to begin with. Though it could be explained a number of ways. Rational people are attracted mainly to other rational people, and there are fewer rationalists than non-rationalists. Human social ques are emotionally rather than logically based. Rational people are more likely to be candid about sensitive topics, scaring away non-rationalists. People with psychological traits such as placement on the Asperger’s scale or high introversion could be conducive to rationality and not conducive to social aptitude. Or a combination of any of these. it’s an interesting topic, but I think we are a long way from being able to draw any big rational conclusions about it yet.
An alternative (albeit cynical) interpretation is that people who are already lonely have less to loose by believing things that send bad signals, that say very sociable people, since they have to cover up such beliefs less often as well as derive their sense of self wroth from things other than social interactions and their public image.