In being ironically guilty of not addressing your actual argument here, I’ll point out that flaws of LW, valid or otherwise, aren’t flaws of rationality. Rationality just means avoiding biases/fallacies. Failure can only be in the community.
I was being facetious, of course I still believe in rationality. But you know, I was reading Slate Star Codex, which basically represents the rationalist community as an amazing group of people committed to truth and honesty and the scientific approach—and though I appreciate how open these discussions are, I am a bit disappointed at how pedantic some of the comments are.
It seems important to be extremely clear about the criticism’s target, though. I agree overanalysis is a failure mode of certain rationalists, and statistically more so for those who comment more on LW and SSC (because of the selection effect specifically for those who nitpick). But rationality itself is not the target here, merely naive misapplication of it. The best rationalists tend to cut through the pedantry and focus on the important points, empirically.
In being ironically guilty of not addressing your actual argument here, I’ll point out that flaws of LW, valid or otherwise, aren’t flaws of rationality. Rationality just means avoiding biases/fallacies. Failure can only be in the community.
Yeah, this is particularly important. LW right now is a bit of a disgrace to rationality if I’m honest.
I was being facetious, of course I still believe in rationality. But you know, I was reading Slate Star Codex, which basically represents the rationalist community as an amazing group of people committed to truth and honesty and the scientific approach—and though I appreciate how open these discussions are, I am a bit disappointed at how pedantic some of the comments are.
It seems important to be extremely clear about the criticism’s target, though. I agree overanalysis is a failure mode of certain rationalists, and statistically more so for those who comment more on LW and SSC (because of the selection effect specifically for those who nitpick). But rationality itself is not the target here, merely naive misapplication of it. The best rationalists tend to cut through the pedantry and focus on the important points, empirically.
What metrics did the SSC commentariat propose, and was your question received better there?
I haven’t posted the question there.