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komponisto comments on Reply to Holden on The Singularity Institute - Less Wrong
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Your paraphrase of me was:
But I didn't think that what Holden got wrong was a confusion between one's own goals and "success in Western society" goals. Many of SI's own goals include "success in Western society" goals like lots of accumulated wealth and power. Instead, what I thought Holden got wrong was his estimate of the relation between rationality and success.
Re: the testing. LWers hadn't trained specifically for the battery of tests given them that day, but they outperformed every other group I know of who has taken those tests. I agree that these data aren't as useful as the data CFAR is collecting now about the impact of rationality training on measures of life success, but they are suggestive enough to support a weak, qualified claim like the one I made, that "it seems" like LWers are more rational than the general population.
It occurs to me that Holden's actual reasoning (never mind what he said) is perhaps not about rationality per se and instead may be along these lines: "Since SI staff haven't already accumulated wealth and power, they probably suffer from something like insufficient work ethic or high akrasia or not-having-inherited-billions, and thus will probably be ineffective at achieving the kind of extremely-ambitious goals they have set for themselves."
It may or may not be Holden's, but I think you've put your finger on my real reasons for not wanting to donate to SI. I'd be interested to hear any counterpoint.