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MarkusRamikin comments on A few analogies to illustrate key rationality points - Less Wrong
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I don't know if it's just me, but I have to say that I don't get the impression that cryonics and those other topics are tribal beliefs here.
They are popular, but tribal beliefs aren't the same as merely popular topics. Rather, it's the stuff which gets taken for granted by the supermajority of those who bother or dare to speak up, and which makes for easy applause lights.
The feasability of cryonics and the rationality of the choice to get frozen have been points of very real debates, and if the author of this post chose to say something in favor of cryonics as an example of a "key rationality point", I bet that would get challenged quite readily.
Also, at the risk of testing everyone's tolerance for the density of MarkusRamikin posts on a page (sorry!) I'd like to make something clear. I fear I might sound like I think:
scarcity of debate -> tribal belief -> bad.
That is not so. I've no love for fake debate for the sake of debate, and I don't think the fact that some beliefs are shared so widely here that there is virtually no debate is in itself wrong. Even in the best rationalist community you could imagine, this would happen - precisely because rationality is supposed to help us narrow down on true beliefs, which necessarily means that if our rationality is on the whole greater than the wider society's, our beliefs should show convergence.
That this community consensus leads to some tribalism is probably an unavoidable side effect. But it's the sort of entropy we need to remain vigilant for and pump out.
depth != breadth
Everyone agreeing that one thing is more likely than any alternative (MWI for instance) does not mean that there is consensus about how likely it or other things are.
Fair enough. I'm not claiming that there is a supermajority solidly convinced of the practical feasibility of cryonics, and significant life extension, and immortalism. The impression that I get is more nearly that most of the hypotheticals that I see here posit more medical and technical progress than is supported by observation. Now, these are hypotheticals - for instance the discussion of consequences of various (large!) degrees of life extension (starting at 1000-year lifespans) in the responses to the original post on this page. It is perfectly valid to discuss improbable hypotheticals. Nonetheless, I get the impression that very few of the hypotheticals explored on LW posit something close to the stagnation that we've actually seen in many fields. Perhaps it doesn't count as a tribal belief, but it does seem to set a tone of the discussion here - and not in the direction of making the discussion less wrong :-)