I can't find anything in that treatment I'd actually want to argue with. This sounds pretty much exactly right to me.
That said, here is as good an example as I am aware of for why the left-leaning world finds rationalists so outrageously exhausting. Including footnotes (footnotes!), this is a seven thousand word treatise on what can only be called a minor quibble. A psychiatrist wrote an anonymous blog, got outed, and doesn't actually seem to have been harmed much in practice. He's back to writing rationalist stuff under his own name.
Yet... this is somehow an existential thing we need to revisit (pg himself tweeted out this story this morning) again and again and again?
This is where the rest of us just throw up our hands. The whole idea of the rationalist perspective is that it's supposed to be detached from parochial loyalty. It's supposed to be about real problems and real solutions that affect real people in real ways.
And... when push comes to shove, it's not. It's just another tribe, waging just another tribal war. The fact that Alexander was wronged here is real. The idea that his wronging is of existential importance is just not remotely "rationalist". At all.
His life was upended. He gave up his full time practice and moved on to writing as his #1 source of income.
That’s because he managed the situation spectacularly well. Imagine if NYT had gone ahead with the doxx earlier: it could have disrupted his life a lot more.
Rationalists are angry about the principles/norms being violated. The outcome doesn’t negate the criticisms.
On the other hand, it’s clear that the Left is willing to throw principles under the bus in pursuit of outcomes desirable to them.
Oddly enough, I noticed the verbosity of the "rationalists" but only put it off as an amusing characteristic and not a flaw. Anybody who enjoys reading the New Yorker has no right to complain. ;-)
>>> The whole idea of the rationalist perspective is that it's supposed to be detached from parochial loyalty. It's supposed to be about real problems and real solutions that affect real people in real ways.
I believe this is a race against time. Rationalism has to actually influence the implementation of real solutions before it becomes a parochial loyalty in its own right. Unfortunately, one symptom of such a shift is the development of a shared enemy and a sense of embattlement, and the NYT/SSC affair may have provided the seed crystal for that shift.
> I believe this is a race against time. Rationalism has to actually influence the implementation of real solutions before it becomes a parochial loyalty in its own right.
I've deliberately ceded (in my head) from “rationalism”, to try to help push that off for a little while longer.
I'm old enough to have passed through one or more rationalist phases already. Note that I love rationality, and depend on it for my bread and butter, but this doesn't earn my endorsement of any specific "rationalist" author or movement.
Plenty of people in that community have written at length about how "rational" only applies to "understanding true factual statements" or "achieving your goals". No end goal is irrational. There is nothing you can care about where someone can correct you and say you ought not to care because "rationality".
I feel this community generates more reading comprehension failures in the general public than almost any other.
I would disagree with that characterization. In fact, SSC's essays often involve emotionally colored language, some are even parables/fiction that clearly engage in more than rational argument.
Ideally what it tries to do instead is to make us mindful of the emotional aspect, and re-examine it. That's for instance why rationalists are so obsessed with ingroup-outgroup processes: they notice themselves exhibiting the same patterns and want to understand why.
Isn't reporting the identity of an anonymous author a "true factual statement" important to understand his "goals" though? I mean, I agree this article was bad, but reporting it looks pretty rationalist to me.
I'm not saying you "shouldn't care" about this. I'm saying the fact that you clearly care so deeply is evidence that "rationalism" is largely a fraud. You want rationalism except when you get criticized, then you want a safe space.
Just commenting on the first paragraph. Not going to touch the second.
I'm not convinced his last name has anything to do with understanding him, rationalism, SSC, SSC's wider influence, etc any better. His thin pseudonym is what was actually well known anyway, and without his last name the article would have still included the fact that he is a psychiatrist in the Bay area.
You imply there is a particular goal of his that you could figure out by knowing his last name. That sounds ridiculous, but I guess I'll ask anyway: What is that goal that you figured out through knowing his last name?
> What is that goal that you figured out through knowing his last name?
Hell if I know. But that's not really the standard, is it? It was a true fact. It's relevant to discussion about the guy. A "rationalist" would, objectively, be expected to celebrate this sort of thing. Let's get all the facts on the table and stop hiding stuff, then we'll figure it all out. Deliberate anonymity like this certainly can be used to hide an agenda. You agree with that much, right?
Also: don't fall into the rhetorical trap of claiming the guy was "cancelled" (which you seem to be dancing around without saying). He wasn't. His patients didn't leave, his clinic didn't fire him. He just quit, taking the opportunity to strike out on substack.
It is a true fact, but it is not relevant to discussion, which I think I already made pretty clear. I don't actually care if you'd call it rationalist or not. Neither I nor the NYT are rationalist (either by hawkice's narrow definition, or as members of the community in question), so I don't know why you would hold either of us to that standard. And I have zero clue why you think that I think he was cancelled. He certainly was not cancelled. I didn't say he was because I don't believe he was.
Again, I have no idea why you think knowing his last name could cause anyone (since you say it didn't actually work for you apparently) to know his goals.
Anyway, I seem to be violating some HN norms given the downvotes, so I'll end this here.
I think it's not as bad as you make out. Over time, with thousands and thousands of words written, I get the impression people are actually converging on some semblance of truth. In my rather optimistic view of what's happening: initial reactions give way to longer, more thoughtful pieces, and eventually there's broad consensus and people stop discussing it.
Exactly! "Everyone has their own opinions and perspective and the right to express them and have them heard and respected by others" is an excellent philosophy!
It's also something that most rationalists tend to reject outright[1]. It sounds downright woke to me.
[1] When it's about someone else's opinions and perspectives.
It is a significant understatement to say that I carry no water for rationalists, but I would nonetheless love to see you attempt to defend this claim that they broadly seek to repress speech they don't agree with.
That's not it at all. The point is that rationalism (in all other contexts) down right celebrates pointed and extensive criticism of others' ideas. Rationalists, stated bluntly, are "jerks who want to be right all the time", and they will tear apart arguments that they feel are wrong.
Except when a rationalist is the target, then they circle the wagons like this and claim that their speech is being "repressed" and that they shouldn't be criticized in this way.
Well, they argue they shouldn’t be criticized because they think the criticisms are wrong. But isn’t that just disagreement, in the same blunt style you acknowledge is common? I don’t see many voices saying (and Alexander certainly didn’t say) that Cade Metz should be fired or nobody should read the NYT.
That said, here is as good an example as I am aware of for why the left-leaning world finds rationalists so outrageously exhausting. Including footnotes (footnotes!), this is a seven thousand word treatise on what can only be called a minor quibble. A psychiatrist wrote an anonymous blog, got outed, and doesn't actually seem to have been harmed much in practice. He's back to writing rationalist stuff under his own name.
Yet... this is somehow an existential thing we need to revisit (pg himself tweeted out this story this morning) again and again and again?
This is where the rest of us just throw up our hands. The whole idea of the rationalist perspective is that it's supposed to be detached from parochial loyalty. It's supposed to be about real problems and real solutions that affect real people in real ways.
And... when push comes to shove, it's not. It's just another tribe, waging just another tribal war. The fact that Alexander was wronged here is real. The idea that his wronging is of existential importance is just not remotely "rationalist". At all.