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All of ideasthete's Comments + Replies

Open Thread Fall 2024
ideasthete40

Hello,

Longtime lurker, more recent commenter. I see a lot of rationality-type posters on Twitter and in the past couple of years became aware of "post-rationalists." It's somewhat ill-defined but essentially they are former rationalists who are more accepting of "woo" to be vague about it. My question is: 1) What level of engagement is there (if any) between rationalists and post-rationalists and 2) Is there anyone who dabbled or full on claimed post-rationalist positions and then reverted back to rationalists positions? What was that journey like and what made you switch between these beliefs?

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1ZY
I am interested in learning more about this, but not sure what "woo" means; after googling, is it right to interpret as "unconventional beliefs" of some sort?
2ChristianKl
One aspect of LessWrongers is that they often tend to hold positions that are very complex. If you think that there are a bunch of positions that are rationalist and a bunch of positions that are post-rationalist and there are two camps that each hold the respective positions, you miss a lot of what rationalism is about. You will find people at LessWrong from whom doing rituals like the Solstice events or doing Circling (which for example people at CFAR did a lot) feels too woo. Yet, CFAR was the primer organization for the development of rationality and for the in person community the Winter Solstice event is a central feature. In the recent LessWrong Community Weekend in Europe, Anna Riedl give the keynote speech about 4E-rationality. You could call 4E-rationality post-rational, in the sense that it moves past the view of rationality you find in the sequences on LessWrong. 
2Screwtape
From my observations it's fairly common for post-rationalists to go to rationalist events and vice-versa, so there's at least engagement on the level of waving hello in the lunchroom. There's enough overlap in identification that some people people in both categories read each other's blogs, and the essays that wind up at the intersection of both interests will have some back and forth in the comments. Are you looking for something more substantial than that? I can't think of any reverting rationalists off the top of my head, though they might well be out there.
Rashomon - A newsbetting site
ideasthete10

Hey Adam, thanks for checking it out. I do have a JS script that's supposed to prevent straight copying and pasting but yes, cheating would be hard to regulate. I had one thought that the winnings don't go to you, but to a charity of your choosing to try to reduce the incentive to cheat as much, but I'm still skeptical as to how much that would work. But good point, something I'm still trying to figure out.

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Rashomon - A newsbetting site
ideasthete10

Thanks for checking it out Jonny! And yes, that is an issue I've noticed as well. I do have a filter to try to remove identifying info in the article but it's pretty spotty. This is one of the things I'd like to improve if I had time and money. But cheers! Appreciate the insight

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Interest in Leetcode, but for Rationality?
Answer by ideasthete21

I like this leetcode style aspect of the idea. Maybe if you identify the "Blind 75" of cognitive biases, that might be a good start. Or take practice problems from this course: https://callingbullshit.org/. Maybe if you identify which problems you want to train on, you can use an LLM to continuously rewrite them to prevent users from simply memorizing an answer and force them to think critically. There's several ways to implement this sort of thing and I can easily imagine the high school version of myself falling down this rabbit hole. 

Not to self pr... (read more)

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Rashomon - A newsbetting site
ideasthete11

Hey Lucas! 

Thanks for the kind words. I'm still finding my bearings on this site, but I'd absolutely be down to chat. I took a look at adj.news and you clearly have a better eye for design than I do! Would love to exchange ideas soon. 

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1Lucas Kohorst
just sent you a message!