DirectedEvolution

Karma: 11,799

Pandemic Prediction Checklist: H5N1

Pandemic Prediction Checklist: Monkeypox

Correlation may imply some sort of causal link.

For guessing its direction, simple models help you think.

Controlled experiments, if they are well beyond the brink

Of .05 significance will make your unknowns shrink.

Replications show there’s something new under the sun.

Did one cause the other? Did the other cause the one?

Are they both controlled by what has already begun?

Or was it their coincidence that caused it to be done?

DirectedEvolution 10 Sep 2025 6:37 UTC
11 points
3
on: AllAmericanBreakfast’s Shortform
Duncan deleted my comment on their interesting post, Obligated to Respond, which is their prerogative. Reposting here instead.
if a hundred people happen to glance at this exchange then ten or twenty or thirty of them will definitely, predictably care—will draw any of a number of close-to-hand conclusions, imbue the non-response with meaning

Plausible, but I am not confident in this conclusion as stated or in its implications given the rest of the post. I can easily imagine other people who are confident in the opposite conclusions. Let’s inventory the layers of assumptions behind this post’s central claim that ignoring an internet comment has very high negative stakes.
- First, it depends on the idea that there’s a default way that nonresponse is interpreted that you can’t really control. But part of the effect of reputation/status is to influence how others perceive your actions, including your choice to respond or not respond. Perhaps it’s possible to cultivate an image as a person who maintains their equilibrium and only engages with comments they find interesting.
- Setting that side, people still have to read the comment, update on what it says, and also update on the fact that you haven’t yet responded to it in order for the comment to have influence. “If a hundred people glance at this exchange” is a big if, and “10-30% of those who glance will care” is a huge assumption.
- Not only do people have to notice you didn’t respond, they have to interpret it as a mark against you, rather than as a positive sign (you didn’t get sucked in to arguing with a dumb comment) or neutral (maybe you had other things to do, hadn’t seen it yet, didn’t feel like responding, etc). Just because people “care” doesn’t mean they think ignoring the comment reflects poorly on you.
- Not only does the comment have to directly negatively impact your reputation, the impact has to outweigh any positive side effects. What if someone else does the arguing for you, or the fact people are commenting at all gets you more positive attention, or you get a positive reputation as a person who’s tolerant of criticism?
From your linked Facebook post:
The vast majority of people—well over half—seem truly crazy and dangerous to me. Like being-trapped-on-a-bus-with-a-gorilla kind of crazy and dangerous—it’s probably going to be fine, especially if I stay very quiet and don’t make any sudden moves, but my continued existence is basically at the whim of this insensible incomprehensible alien entity that cannot actually be predicted or reasoned with and is capable of dismembering me.
I would posit that if you mean this literally, this is a symptom of an extremely unusual and highly dysfunctional anxiety disorder that you may want to seek treatment for if you aren’t already. I think that the advice in your posts needs to be interpreted in the context of being from a person who feels this way. You may want to reflect on how the untested assumptions you’re making about how the world works, especially the social world, may be a product of your extreme anxiety.

DirectedEvolution 3 Sep 2025 3:05 UTC
5 points
1
on: But Have They Engaged With The Arguments? [Linkpost]
The majority of those who best know the arguments for and against thinking that a given social movement is the world’s most important cause… are presumably members of that social movement.
Knowing the arguments for and against X being the World’s Most Important Cause (WMIC) is fully compatible with concluding X is not the WMIC, even a priori. And deeply engaging with arguments about any X being the WMIC is an unusual activity, characteristic of Effective Altruism. If you do that activity a lot, then it’s likely you know the arguments for and against many causes, making it unlikely you’re a member of all causes for which you know the arguments for and against.
If they decide to hear out a first round of arguments but don’t find them compelling enough, they drop out of the process.
The simple hurdle model presented by OP implies that there is tremendous leverage in coming up with just one more true argument against a flawed position. Presented with it, a substantial number of the small remaining number of true believers in the flawed position will accept it and change their mind. My perception is that this is not at all what we typically assume when arguing with a true believer in some minority position—we expect that they are especially resistant to changing their mind.
I think a commonsense point of view is that true believers in flawed positions got there under the influence of systematic biases that dramatically increased the likelihood that they would adopt a flawed view. Belief in a range of conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific views appear to be correlated both in social groups and within individuals, which would support the hypothesis of systematic biases accounting for the existence of minority groups holding a common flawed belief. Possibly, their numbers are increased by a few unlucky reasoners who are relatively unbiased but made a series of unfortunate reasoning mistakes, and will hopefully see the light when presented with the next accurate argument.

DirectedEvolution 24 Aug 2025 0:09 UTC
0 points
0
on: Futility Illusions
This easily leads to the impression that “retention is bad everywhere”, because all people hear from other group organizers are complaints about low retention. But this not only involves some reporting bias – groups with better retention rates usually just don’t talk about it much, as it’s not a problem for them.
Implied narrative is that we don’t hear about successful groups, which is obviously false. Alternative model: most groups, products, etc just don’t have much demand/have too much competition. Group founders don’t want to just achieve “growth,” they want a very specific kind of growth that fits their vision for the group they set out to found. What makes you think there’s typically a way to keep the failing group the same on the important traits while improving retention? And if such strategies exist in theory, why do you think that any given group founder should expect they can put them into practice?

DirectedEvolution 23 Aug 2025 23:57 UTC
−1 points
0
on: Futility Illusions
This can particularly make sense in cases where we have already invested a lot of effort into something. But if we haven’t – as is the case to varying degrees in these examples – then it would, typically, be really surprising if we just ended up close to the optimum by default.
Who is “we?” You, personally? All society? Your ancestral lineage going back to LUCA? Selection effects, cultural transmission of knowledge, and instinct all provide ways activities can be optimized without conscious personal effort. In many domains, assuming approximate optimality by default should absolutely be your baseline assumption. And then there’s the metalevel to consider, on which your default assumptions about approximate optimality for any domain you might consider are also optimized by default. Perhaps your prior should be that your optimality assumptions are roughly optimal, then reason from that starting point! If not, why not?

DirectedEvolution 23 Aug 2025 23:44 UTC
2 points
0
on: Futility Illusions
Immutability: Either, the given property is truly entirely fixed, and cannot be changed at all.
Big difference between “cannot be changed at all” and “the distribution is fixed, but with day to day variation.”

DirectedEvolution 23 Aug 2025 8:53 UTC
9 points
10
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Banning Said Achmiz (and broader thoughts on moderation)
What’s your motivation to spend a lot of effort to write up your arguments? If you’re right, both the post and your efforts to debunk it are quickly forgotten, but if you’re wrong, then the post remains standing/popular/upvoted and your embarrassing comment is left for everyone to see
If you didn’t have the motivation to write your arguments, why did you waste your time reading the post? If you debunk the author’s post, they’re unlikely to forget it. If you debunk numerous posts, then you may acquire a reputation. If you debunk a popular post, then many people see the debunking. You’ve also spared yourself the labor of debunking future posts based on the initial flawed idea. The reward for delivering valid and empathetic criticism is cultivating a community of truth seekers in which you and others may be willing and able to participate. Do you lack that vision? Do you have that outled elsewhere? Do you not care about developing community? Do you simply have better things to do and want to freeload on the community that others build?
Writing up a quick “clarifying” question makes more sense from a status/strategic perspective, but I rarely do even that nowadays because I have so little to gain from it, and a lot to lose including my time (including expected time to handle any back and forth)
You took the time to read the post, but you won’t write a “quick” clarifying question because you’re worried about wasting your time, and you think you have little to gain by understanding the content, so you’re depending on commenters like Said to do the job? If you have the time for just the initial question but not the back and forth, just write the first question and read the response. It takes little more time to put a brief friendly signal at the top of the comment than to leave it out. One may also practice writing in a non-contemptuous manner until it comes naturally, learn to skim posts and read only those clearly likely to be worth responding to. It is possible to deliver low-effort criticism without being a flagrant asshole about it.
If you get rid of people like Said or otherwise discourage low-effort criticism, you’ll just get less criticism not better criticism.
How do you know? Have you gathered data on this topic? Have you moderated a community? Have you observed the course of a substantial number of comparable moderation decisions in the past? What exactly is your model of the overall community reaction to such moderation decisions that leads you to this conclusion?
Low-effort and even “unproductive” criticism is an important signal
A signal of what? Important to whom? Are you really interested in what a low-effort troll would have to say in response to what you happen to write and post online?
For example I think any posts by Eliezer will always attract plenty of criticisms due to the status rewards available if someone pointed out a real flaw.
If posts worth criticicizing, due to their intellectual quality and interest of the community, will receive their due criticism, then why can’t weak and uninteresting posts can be ignored or engaged with by a charitable volunteer as a teacher might respond to a student in order to develop their capabilities? Targeting weak and forgettable posts for unwarranted criticism increases their prominence in a quite mechanistic fashion due to the high-variance upvotes, the intrigue of seeing why a comment was strongly downvoted, the fact that the LessWrong homepage boosts new and highly upvoted comments, and because the author may feel attacked and respond in an endless comment chain. There are selection effects on who stays in the community under these conditions. Solve for the equilibrium.

DirectedEvolution 18 Aug 2025 4:22 UTC
−12 points
3
on: Church Planting: When Venture Capital Finds Jesus
This post gathers useful information that would likely be hard to assemble on church planting, a powerful institution that needs to be understood better not only by Christians, but by others who share political, social and geographic space with them. It’s clear and well-written, and the analogy with venture capital is intriguing. Further exploring the links between founding churches and businesses would be of interest.
A central part of the implied narrative is that church planters are problematically narcissistic. In addition to being insulting, this claim is inadequately supported or conceptually considered. Although you give at least one example of a narcissistic church planter, the founder of Mars Hill, and find ways to spin church planter activities in a way that seems narcissitic, this comes across as antagonistic rhetoric rather than a well-considered or supported characterization of church planters. Ultimately, it undermines the credibility of the research, because it suggests that you may have been motivated in your research and writing decisions by dislike of evangelicals and a desire to write a piece damaging their image.
On a conceptual level, it might be beneficial to consider the idea of heathly narcissism, which seems like a useful frame for rationalists to absorb and one that is highly aligned with typical rationalist self-improvement goals: “healthy narcissism reflects an abundance of agentic/self-enhancing features and a relative absence of antagonistic/other-derogating elements.” Even if church planters (or startup founders) are, to some extent, motivated by narcissism, does that reflect unusual and unhealthy level of narcissism relative to leaders in other institutions? Is narcissism always a problem? Why exactly is a 24 year old unqualified to give advice on the Bible or other religious texts, or why would it demonstrate narcissism for them to try?

DirectedEvolution 14 Aug 2025 15:44 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: CstineSublime’s comment on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
This was an interesting read. Thank you for sharing your information. I personally wouldn’t have been worried about why you have all this information, as it simply reads to me like an essay by somebody who’s done research on an important topic.
The way your comment is written, the underlying narrative is that the only risk to consider with coming out online is turning a reader into a stalker due to that post in isolation, and that this risk is insubstantial. I think your argument is plausible for that specific risk. However, I am considering a wider variety of risks, including:
- A person with a larger body of online writings who comes out.
- A person who publishes their post to an audience or on a platform that’s more likely to generate unwanted attention.
- A person who is being investigated and/or stalked online as a result of real-world activities, such as applying for a job or pursuing political office.
- A person for whom coming out will create friction in pursuing real-world activities in the future that oughtweighs the benefits they gain from coming out online.
- A potential sense of paranoia about having disclosed potentially embarrassing information online.
- The reputational and perceptions risk for a controversial community of its high-status members advocating that its low-status members post embarrassing information online.
LessWrong and the rationalist community already has a controversial reputation and is often accused of being a cult. It is an online platform, which is capable of spawning hate-readers like r/sneerclub. It is also a real-world community with a notorious history of deeply exploitative behavior and what seems to be a higher-than-average fraction of self-identified participants or ex-participants with deep mental health issues. It has a history of scandal and has generated a substantial amount of negative media coveage, considering its small size.
Considering all of this, I believe that the LessWrong and rationalist community is not well-positioned to reduce the risks of coming out beyond the normal level available in the wider culture. In other words, if there’s an X that you don’t feel safe to come out about, then I don’t think LessWrong/rationalism in its current form is capable of helping you feel more safe about coming out about X. This is a heuristic, not a general rule, and if other people do feel LessWrong/rationalism helps them come out about their personal characteristics in a way other communities don’t, I’m interested to hear it. But for this reason, I think that high-status LessWrong members should not be encouraging others to come out in public about more things with little regard for risks. That seems irresponsible and likely to result in damage both to members and to the community as a whole.
I do think that it would be beneficial if LessWrong/rationalism worked to think through this problem and become the sort of community that is capable of effectively supporting its members in “coming out” in a way that improved the community, its relations with the rest of the world, and the health and wellbeing of its members. Basically, I like the vision of “generalized coming out,” but I don’t like the strategy John proposes in his OP for getting there for LessWrong/rationalism.

DirectedEvolution 13 Aug 2025 23:28 UTC
19 points
4
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
My core belief on this topic is that coming out is, in fact, a risky practice in America and world wide. It’s risky to come out about your kinks, your sexual gender orientation, your political beliefs, and your historical affiliations with groups or types of groups that have controversial reputations.
Coming out can be net beneficial under controlled circumstances. Generally, it is better to have a world in which people have the ability to achieve those benefits. That starts by being aware of and working to mitigate those risks. The queer community is an excellent example of a group of people who’ve done that and reaped the rewards.
My central problem with your OP and responses here is that you seem to be rejecting the need for consideration or mitigation of those risks. This flies in the face of the historical experience of queers, apostates, atheists, political, radicals, and other groups who’ve come out in ways that failed to control those risks and suffered for it. By encouraging people to just come out without considering or taking steps to mitigate risks, you encourage them to make themselves vulnerable in ways that may make them more dependent on the rationalist community as the place where you’re seeking to enact this attitude toward coming out.
In my view, there is an enormous volume of historical experience of a wide variety of groups that backs up the profound risks of coming out. These risks include ostracism, exclusion from job opportunities, public humiliation, and physical violence. Again, those risks can be mitigated and the reward for doing so are great. But flat out denying those risks strikes me as foolish when it’s done by an individual, and cult-inducing when it becomes a community norm.

DirectedEvolution 13 Aug 2025 15:37 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
Dude, that doesn’t make any sense. People making their secrets public is the opposite of what blackmailers want.
This logic is so bad that I think it should be a flag to you that you are clearly motivatedly reasoning real hard here.
I want to flag that you are unilaterally escalating this conversation rhetorically, and making accusations about my psychological state that I really do not appreciate. Let’s keep it civil and focused on the object-level topic.
Literally, on a surface level, you are correct that publicly posting dirty secrets online pre-empts some blackmail threats, although it still exposes the poster to the risk that those posts will be distorted or amplified in ways they didn’t intend.
Functionally, my argument is plausible and logically sound that the outcome of blackmail and publicly posting secrets can be very similar. Both practices can result in an individual being trapped in the group/cult by the perception that their action (handing over blackmail threats or posting embarrassing secrets online) has now cut off or created friction for pathways to careers and relationships outside the community.
Furthermore, if the group acquires an even stronger perception of being a cult than it has as a result of adopting the practice of encouraging members to post dirty secrets about themselves online, then that perception will further taint the reputation of and isolate its members. These sorts of ideas can be a way of gradually converting a formerly healthy community into a cult.

DirectedEvolution 13 Aug 2025 14:30 UTC
8 points
5
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
You are not considering how the manner in which you gain fame constrains the options for your ambition. If your personal sexual details are online, that may constrain your options for political office, executive and academic leadership, for example.
Being hated is rarely helpful for ambition. It’s a consequence of pursuing ambition—making some people unhappy to make others happy. If you do stuff that garners ambition-undermining hate without giving you a greater base of ambition-serving support, then it’s not helpful for this goal. I continue to not see the case for how posting sexual kinks and other taboo info online will advance people’s ambitions for the vast majority of people and ambitions.

DirectedEvolution 13 Aug 2025 14:22 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
We could quantify some of these risks, such as the base rate of risks associated with stalking, the frequency with which hiring managers research potential hires on Google or social media, and so on. In fact, it would be trivial to pull together a preliminary report using one of the deep research AI products. What level of marginal risk do you think it’s worth taking to post your taboo personal details online, considering the range of risks this potentially exposes you to?
I’d also note that doings stuff like this, and encouraging others to do so, rhymes with cult behavior. Other cults collect dirty details and keep them secret as blackmail. If rationalism establishes a culture of high-status members encouraging others to post potentially embarrassing personal/sexual info online, that can easy be, and be seen as, a way to indoctrinate and trap people within the community.

DirectedEvolution 13 Aug 2025 4:14 UTC
4 points
−3
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
Few people will see your post, but the ones who do see it might be exactly the people who can hurt you the most — those who specifically sought it out in order to gain information on you. This matters even more if you have ambition, because the incentive to dig up dirt in you increases the more of a public facing role you seek. Putting out this kind of stuff early in your career is a good way to limit what you can achieve, or at least create unnecessary friction, potentially without realizing the impact.
I’d also note that if few people see your post, then that makes it even easier to come out to just them. That more or less eliminates the downside risk while giving you the same benefits.
I really don’t see the benefit unless posting your secrets online happens to scratch a quirky psychological itch, or you’re aiming to use a big megaphone, get a large readership, and find opportunities you couldn’t get any other way. Overall, it seems to me like an area where you should be cautious, clear on your motives, and slow-moving, directly analogous to, say, posting a sex tape online.

DirectedEvolution 12 Aug 2025 23:31 UTC
50 points
27
on: Generalized Coming Out Of The Closet
Your tools for selecting your audience when posting in public are limited and unreliable. You can share information on LessWrong, only to have it, or quotes from it, linked on Hacker News, Reddit, or even the New York Times. Your future boss, future AI, future blackmailer, or future murderer can discover and exploit that information. I just met a queer activist in a rural county who keeps her address a secret, because she’s worried someone will show up to kill her if her address gets around. During the woke era, we had numerous examples of people losing their jobs over un-PC comments they’d made on social media many years ago.
Furthermore, coming out provides a “kernel of truth” around which a hostile audience can spin a lie or play a game of telephone that exaggerates what you shared, when they might not have made up that lie or talked about that topic at all had you not shared it in the first place. If you are somebody’s enemy, there’s no limit to the extent to which they might exaggerate. The New York Time’s efforts to associate Scott Alexander with the far-right are an example. He had to quit his job and start his own business as a result.
These are serious problems that you particularly expose yourself to when coming out either to large groups of people in a gossipy environment or online. You can substantially limit your exposure to these downside risks by coming out to a small group of trusted friends or to a therapist. You talk about the benefits of coming out to your “community,” and I think a natural place to start is an in-person, in-confidence conversation with those chosen people.
Your post here primarily focuses on how to not provoke a negative reaction (and how to provoke a positive reaction) by the primary intended readers of your internet post—the “happy path” of internet communication. I think that the overwhelmingly most important aspect of a “theory of generalized coming-out” would be to deal with the “unhappy path” in which an unintended audience takes hold of your initially well-received post and uses it to do you harm.

DirectedEvolution 10 Aug 2025 5:47 UTC
27 points
9
on: A Self-Dialogue on The Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships
My view is that the value proposition of romantic relationships is that they fulfill the widespread human instinct to pair-bond. If you don’t feel an instinct to pair-bond, are a highly capable person, and already have reliable access to sex, childrearing opportunities, company, and other benefits people seek from relationships, then I don’t expect that relationships would offer much extra value for you.
Personally, I’ve always had a very strong, probably dysfunctionally strong, pair-bonding instinct, and this has been a serious impediment for me obtaining the concrete benefits of a romantic relationship. I get attached too easily to a partner, then stay too long in the relationship because of the simple fact that I’ve pair-bonded with them, despite the many shortcomings in the relationship. It also, paradoxically, impairs my ability to improve the relationship, because I get worried about losing even a highly problematic relationship. I would not wish on others the full extent of my strong drive to pair-bond or the high “value” it assigns to my existing relationships. Despite intellectually acknowledging this, I still feel that my relationships are meaningful and valuable. That’s how pair-bonding works.
It doesn’t surprise me that when people try to offer concrete explanations of the benefits they receive from relationships, that it seems to fall short of worthwhile. I think they’re trying to rationalize their pair-bonding instinct, and their attempts will only convince other people who already share that instinct.
My suspicion is that the way the pair-bonding instinct works is that it induces us to not only rationalize it, but it reorients our feelings and actions in order to support those rationalizations. Pair-bonding induces a sort of ideology about one’s relationship with one’s mate, complete with propaganda. The aim of the ideology is survival and reproduction: most people aren’t that capable, they really do need the support from their partner, and pair-bonding holds together mates in order to promote having children. And while this is all a very abstract, demoralizing and cynical-sounding view, I actually think it’s fine and reasonably healthy for the vast majority of people to live this way without worrying about it too much. Pair-bond the way you want, and enjoy the experience for what it is. Or, if you’re an unusual person, don’t pair-bond, and enjoy the better alternative you believe you’ve found for yourself.

DirectedEvolution 9 Aug 2025 3:45 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: No, Rationalism Is Not a Cult
These are good ideas. I like the idea of offering tutoring or classes as a way to engage a broader community. I also think having formal orgs that interface with media and have official leaders who speak on behalf of their membership seems like a good idea. However, to work, I think these orgs are going to have to officially put the brakes on some of the divergent lifestyle choices of membership and on some of the more radical statements by rationalist figures, and it may not be compatible with the culture of rationalists to submit to constraining, assimilative norms in that way.
The web of trust is also something I’ve wanted for the world of science. The way I picture it is that you need a way to subscribe to other people or organizations whose judgments you trust. Each participant can privately rate their trust level in other participants. The trust level they observe reflects the aggregate trust levels of the participants they subscribe to. Would love to see such a technology.

DirectedEvolution 8 Aug 2025 15:37 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: No, Rationalism Is Not a Cult
I articulate a fake framework for thinking about strategies by which groups can fight for status as a legitimate culture-in-good-standing. This fight is a long-term struggle, not a guaranteed victory or defeat. Groups are always damned by many, but can aim to be damned by fewer over the long run by being organized and strategic about how they respond to criticism.
Core to this strategy is taking offense at being called a cult while assimilating into the broader culture in ways that do not sacrifice your core values but are crucial issues for others.
For example, to assimilate, Mormons dropped polygamy and repudiated violent behavior of people who claim to be Mormons in the strongest terms, now frame themselves as Christians or the Church of Latter-day Saints (or LDS) rather than the more loaded “Mormon.” In fact, the Mormon at my PhD program just refers to “his church” without even mentioning LDS. They also take offense with public media for misrepresenting their faith or their current stance on the problems in the religion’s past, which they acknowledge and condemn. They don’t try to explain why they’re different from a cult according to a list of abstract criteria, the way OP is doing here.
Being lighthearted is not a suitable strategy for a group that is being subjected to serious sustained cult accusations. It’s a strategy for small odd and harmless groups to acknowledge their difference from the broader culture, creating space for a person who feels a momentary question or discomfort to bring it up, and then move on. It’s what to do for small new-age meditative communities, the Odd Fellows, etc.
If rationalists wanted to adopt a Mormon-like strategy, they’d need to define what are the core values of a rationalist. They’d need a formal leadership that can interact with media and pre-emptivey sanction subgroups and individuals who give rationalism a bad name. They’d need to make visible demonstrations of assimilation. And they’d need to demand respect and take offense at disrespect, insisting on being viewed as a positive cultural and community association. That’s very far from rationalist trends, and I don’t expect it will happen. But I do think it’s the strategy that every long-lived religion and major cultural group lands on.

DirectedEvolution 8 Aug 2025 1:59 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: No, Rationalism Is Not a Cult
That’s an entirely valid interest. One point I want to make is that when people spin a narrative accusing a group of being a cult, the points of evidence they raise are often post-hoc rationalizations rather than true reports on how they concluded the group was a cult. In this case, I doubt the guy truly finds the building is ominous, any more than I find pictures of the art in Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion ominous. They take on an ominous feeing because of prior assumptions about the group that are being mapped on to things associated with it.

This matters because it’s important to accurately distinguish the real evidence someone’s drawing on to form their conclusion that a group is a cult from the narrative they’re spinning to make an accusation or insult. In this case, the quip about the building is the insult, not the evidence. It’s still fine to not take the insult seriously. But usually we evaluate people’s evidence and reasoning process to decide whether to take them seriously. In this case, we’d want to know how the guy truly first came to the conclusion that rationalism was a cult. Maybe he heard a bunch of stories about the Zizians and was exposed to some salacious Metz quotes of Scott’s writing and Tyler Cowen’s quotes of Eliezer. Maybe he heard from his friend they’re a cult and saw some weirdly dressed people going to a party and heard about Aella doing sex work to pay for IVF. Or maybe he applied the cult criteria differently than OP here and decided the rationalists fit the bill. Some reasons may be good, others bad, but in any case, this is where I’d look to decide whether to take him seriously. If I just wanted to defend rationalism I’d say “this guy is a bigot, a rationalist-phobe, and a hypocrite. He should be ashamed of himself. Would he talk this way about a religious community or an ethnic group or a hobby community? No? Then what makes it OK to talk about us this way? It’s unacceptable.” Etc.

DirectedEvolution 7 Aug 2025 20:47 UTC
16 points
12
on: No, Rationalism Is Not a Cult
I believe that there are four main strategies groups use to respond to accusations of being a cult: defense, offense, assimilation, and acceptance. This article is representative of the typical rationalist strategy of mounting an intellectual defense. Religious and ethnic groups tend to assimilate or play offense. Nonthreatening but unusual hobbyist, spiritual, or community groups often jokingly pretend to accept, or at least entertain, the accusation.
It seems to me that a defensive strategy is often what genuinely threatening groups often use to justify their existence. They may claim that technically, the group doesn’t fit the characteristics of a cult, or that technically some other group that is an accepted part of society does fit the characteristics of a cult, and therefore that society, by its own standards, must accept the group. But this is false! Society doesn’t have to use this standard, and often doesn’t. It comes across as trying to undermine the often unspoken norms of the society, make them legible so the group can manipulate them in order to achieve its ends. That feels threatening. Multi-level marketing schemes try to frame themselves as technically legitimate businesses. Right-wing extremists try to frame themselves as legitimate well-organized militias. White nationalists and neo-Nazis try to frame themselves as ordinary ethnic and cultural groups. And rationalists try to frame themselves as ordinary community associations. This pattern-matching, I claim, is part of why rationalists are so vulnerable to cult accusations.
Compounding this is what rationalists do take offense at. Rationalists don’t take offense at being called cults. They did take offense at having the real name of one of their community leaders revealed. That is very much the sort of thing a secret society or cult might do. If rationalists took loud offense at being insulted by “cult” accusations while also making moves to show up in wider society as well-assimilated, upstanding members of it, then over time, that would tamp down on the cult accusations. But rationalists very much don’t seem to be assimilating. They incorporate seemingly every weird strain of Silicon Valley culture and don’t seem to do almost anything the “normal way,” from dress, to food, to housing, to relationships, to art, to conversation, to work, to politics.
So no assimilation, not taking offense at being called cults, not accepting the cult accusation lightheartedly, just mounting intellectual defenses against meeting some self-chosen technical criteria of what it means to be a “cult.” Sounds like the kind of thing a cult might do, in order to attract more of the kind of people who buy into this way of thinking and isolate them from the rest of society through an indoctrination into their weird culture!
Having some affinity for rationalism, I think I understand why rationalists do this. They’ve had a history of, inconsistently, rejecting what they call the Dark Arts and “asymmetric weapons,” and trying to stick with a facts-and-logic approach to every debate. Focusing on a strategy based on intellectual defense is in line with that. It suits the self-chosen morality of rationalists. But sticking to that so consistently is, again, a refusal to assimilate. So I think that as long as rationalists persist in this strategy, so long will they be perceived as a cult.

DirectedEvolution 1 Aug 2025 6:16 UTC
4 points
0
on: Follow-up to “My Empathy Is Rarely Kind”
Do you really mean “suspension of disbelief” here? If empathy is suspending disbelief in another’s moral agency, that would mean that empathy involves temporarily indulging in a fantasy that they do have moral agency. That seems like the opposite of what you’re implying in the rest of the post.