But in order to disagree with most of the world, I have to have good reason to think that I'm more rational than everyone I disagree with
You're more rational than the vast majority of people you disagree with. There, I told you up front. Is that reason enough? I can understand why you'd doubt yourself, but why should you doubt me?
That's only true if I'm looking for rationalizations, instead of real explanations, right? If so, noted, and I'll try to be careful.
I'm not saying that you should deliberately stay ignorant or avoid thinking about it, but I suspect that some of the mental health effects of spending lots of time analyzing away other people's disagreements would happen to you even if you miraculously zeroed in on the true answer every time. Which you won't. So it may not be wise to deliberately invest extra thought-time here.
Or maybe divide healthy and risky as follows: Healthy is what you do when you have a serious doubt and are moving to resolve it, for example by reading more of the literature, not to fulfill a duty or prove something to yourself, but because you seriously think there may be stuff out there you haven't read. Risky is anything you do because you want to have investigated in order to prove your own rationality to yourself, or because it would feel too immodest to just think outright that you had the right answer.
The only reason I referred to people who are crazier than average is to explain why "people are crazy, the world is mad" is not one of those explanations.
It is if you stick to the object level. Does it help if I rephrase it as "People are crazy, the world is mad, therefore everyone has to show their work"? You just shouldn't have to spend all that much effort to suppose that a large number of people have been incompetent. It happens so frequently that if there were a Shannon code for describing Earth, "they're nuts" would have a single-symbol code in the language. Now, if you seriously don't know whether someone else knows something you don't, then figure out where to look and look there. But the answer may just be "4", which stands for Standard Explanation #4 in the Earth Description Language: "People are crazy, the world is mad". And in that case, spending lots of effort in order to develop an elaborate dismissal of their reasons is probably not good for your mental health and will just slow you down later if it turns out they did know something else. If by a flash of insight you realize there's a compact description of a mistake that a lot of other people are making, then this is a valuable thing to know so you can avoid it yourself; but I really think it's important to learn how to just say "4" and move on.
I will come as a surprise to few people that I disagree strongly with Eliezer here; Wei should not take his word for the claim that Wei is so much more rational than all the folks he might disagree with that he can ignore their differing opinions. Where is this robust rationality test used to compare Wei to the rest of the intellectual world? Where is the evidence for this supposed mental health risk of considering the important evidence of the opinions of other? If the world is crazy, then very likely so are you. Yes it is a good sign if you can show some of your work, but you can almost never show all of your relevant work. So we must make inferences about the thought we have not seen.
Last summer, 15 Less Wrongers, under the auspices of SIAI, gathered in a big house in Santa Clara (in the SF bay area), with whiteboards, existential risk-reducing projects, and the ambition to learn and do.
Now, the new and better version has arrived. We’re taking folks on a rolling basis to come join in our projects, learn and strategize with us, and consider long term life paths. Working with this crowd transformed my world; it felt like I was learning to think. I wouldn’t be surprised if it can transform yours.
A representative sample of current projects:
Interested, but not sure whether to apply?
Past experience indicates that more than one brilliant, capable person refrained from contacting SIAI, because they weren’t sure they were “good enough”. That kind of timidity destroys the world, by failing to save it. So if that’s your situation, send us an email. Let us be the one to say “no”. Glancing at an extra application is cheap, and losing out on a capable applicant is expensive.
And if you’re seriously interested in risk reduction but at a later time, or in another capacity -- send us an email anyway. Coordinated groups accomplish more than uncoordinated groups; and if you care about risk reduction, we want to know.
What we’re looking for
At bottom, we’re looking for anyone who:
Bonus points for any (you don’t need them all) of the following traits:
If you think this might be you, send a quick email to jasen@intelligence.org. Include:
Our application process is fairly informal, so send us a quick email as initial inquiry and we can decide whether or not to follow up with more application components.
As to logistics: we cover room, board, and, if you need it, airfare, but no other stipend.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Anna
ETA (as of 3/25/10): We are still accepting applications, for summer and in general. Also, you may wish to check out http://www.singinst.org/grants/challenge#grantproposals for a list of some current projects.