Worried that typical commenters at LW care way less than I expected about good epistemic practice. Hoping I’m wrong.
Software developer and EA with interests including programming language design, international auxiliary languages, rationalism, climate science and the psychology of its denial.
Looking for someone similar to myself to be my new best friend:
❖ Close friendship, preferably sharing a house ❖ Rationalist-appreciating epistemology; a love of accuracy and precision to the extent it is useful or important (but not excessively pedantic) ❖ Geeky, curious, and interested in improving the world ❖ Liberal/humanist values, such as a dislike of extreme inequality based on minor or irrelevant differences in starting points, and a like for ideas that may lead to solving such inequality. (OTOH, minor inequalities are certainly necessary and acceptable, and a high floor is clearly better than a low ceiling: an “equality” in which all are impoverished would be very bad) ❖ A love of freedom ❖ Utilitarian/consequentialist-leaning; preferably negative utilitarian ❖ High openness to experience: tolerance of ambiguity, low dogmatism, unconventionality, and again, intellectual curiosity ❖ I’m a nudist and would like someone who can participate at least sometimes ❖ Agnostic, atheist, or at least feeling doubts
Speaking for myself: I don’t prefer to be alone or tend to hide information about myself. Quite the opposite; I like to have company but rare is the company that likes to have me, and I like sharing, though it’s rare that someone cares to hear it. It’s true that I “try to be independent” and “form my own opinions”, but I think that part of your paragraph is easy to overlook because it doesn’t sound like what the word “avoidant” ought to mean. (And my philosophy is that people with good epistemics tend to reach similar conclusions, so our independence doesn’t necessarily imply a tendency to end up alone in our own school of thought, let alone prefer it that way.)
Now if I were in Scott’s position? I find social media enemies terrifying and would want to hide as much as possible from them. And Scott’s desire for his name not to be broadcast? He’s explained it as related to his profession, and I don’t see why I should disbelieve that. Yet Scott also schedules regular meetups where strangers can come, which doesn’t sound “avoidant”. More broadly, labeling famous-ish people who talk frequently online as “avoidant” doesn’t sound right.
Also, “schizoid” as in schizophrenia? By reputation, rationalists are more likely to be autistic, which tends not to co-occur with schizophrenia, and the ACX survey is correlated with this reputation. (Could say more but I think this suffices.)