Are you sure you have pinpointed the right culprit? Why exactly "rationality"? "Zooming in" and "zooming out" would lead to potentially different conclusions. E.g. G.K.Chesterton would probably blame atheism[1]. Zooming out even more, for example, someone immersed in Eastern thought might even blame Western thought in general.
It's whatever makes LW different from the wider population, even the wider nerdy-western-liberal-college-educated cluster. The general population of atheists does not have problems with basilisks, and laughs them off when you describe them to them.
Despite receiving vastly disproportionate share of media attention it was such a small part of LessWrong history and thought (by the way, is anything that any LWer ever came up with a part of LW thought?) that it seems to wrong to put the blame on LessWrong or rationality in general.
It also received a disproportionate amount of ex cathedra moderator action. Which things are so important to EY that he feels it necessary to intervene directly and in a massively controversial way? By their actions we can conclude that the Basilisk is much more important to the LW leadership than e.g. the illegitimate downvoting that drove danerys away.
Furthermore, which would you say is better, an ability to formulate an absurd idea and then find its flaws (or, for e.g. mathematical ideas, exactly under what strange conditions they hold) or inability to formulate an absurd ideas at all? Ability to come up with various absurd ideas is an unavoidable side effect of having imagination. What is important is not to start believing it immediately, because in the history of any really new and outlandish idea at the very beginning there is an important asymmetry (which arises due to the fact that coming up with any complicated idea takes time) - an idea itself has already been invented but the good counterarguments do not yet exist (this is similar to the situation where a new species is introduced to an island where it does not have natural predators, which are introduced only later). This also applies to the moment when a new outlandish idea is introduced to your mind and you haven't heard any counterarguments by that moment, one must nevertheless exercise caution. Especially if that new idea is elegant and thought provoking whereas all counterarguments are comparatively ugly and complicated and thus might feel unsatisfactory even after you heard them.
I don't think this addresses the original argument. If these ideas are dangerous to us then we are doing something wrong. If you're saying that danger is an unavoidable cost of being able to generate interesting ideas, then the large number of other groups who seem to come up with interesting ideas without ideas that present a danger to them seems like a counterexample.
Was there really a significant number of people or is this just, well, an urban legend? The fact that some people are affected is not particularly surprising - it seems to be consistent with the existence of e.g. OCD. Again, one must remember that not everyone thinks the same way and the common thing between people affected might have been something other than acquaintance with LW and rationality which you seem to imply (correct me if my impression was wrong).
I don't know, but the LW leadership's statements seem to be grounded in the claim that there were
Which things are so important to EY that he feels it necessary to intervene directly and in a massively controversial way? By their actions we can conclude that the Basilisk is much more important to the LW leadership than e.g. the illegitimate downvoting that drove danerys away.
At the time the Basilisk episode happened Eliezer was a lot more active in general then when the illegitimate downvoting happened.
...If you're saying that danger is an unavoidable cost of being able to generate interesting ideas, then the large number of other groups who seem to
As per a recent comment this thread is meant to voice contrarian opinions, that is anything this community tends not to agree with. Thus I ask you to post your contrarian views and upvote anything you do not agree with based on personal beliefs. Spam and trolling still needs to be downvoted.