Ethos/Philosophy

Whatever you want to call it, applied rationalism, alternative rationalism, Kernelism (currently undecided, waiting to see which one sticks) is an alternative for those who do not feel like the current rationalist zeitgeist fully meets their needs and desires yet still think the general concept has some redeeming features. This project is in some ways an attempt to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This includes, but is not limited to:

* Not thinking existential risk should be the only focus area
* Thinking we shouldn't assume AI will solve all our problems
* Disliking elements of the current rationalist culture
* Having an interest in other cause areas
* Disagreeing with the things people are awarded status for in the rationalist community eg. insightful posts over useful actions
* Thinking some of the assumptions about human nature are too idealistic, and having seen the consequences of people assuming they are true
* An interest in planning on multi-decade timespans

## In other words

If mainstream rationalism is academical computer science working on abstract fascinating problems, alt-rash is the tech startup that gets practical things done.

(This comparison makes most sense if you're a programmer already which is sort of sub-optimal because we'd like to be useful for other people too not just programmers.)

## How is this different to post-rationalism?

Post-rationalism is heavily spiritual and philosophical. This philosophy is more heavily focused on application.

## What are the main differences between rationalism and applied rationalism?

Applied rationalism still endorses about 80% of the sequences, but there are notable differences.

### Preferring median outcome over mean outcome is legitimate.

No pressure towards unlikely high-risk moonshots such as x-risk.

### Ask not what you can do for alt-rash, but what alt-rash can do for you.

There is a problem many people experience about the rationalist community as it currently exists:

*"Most personal development in the community, whether it is picking a career or dealing with mental health problems, is done with the intention of helping people do more good in the world. This unfortunately reinforces the puritan idea that self worth is not intrinsic, that their existence must be justified by what they can do for others. If this isn’t a morally dubious framing it is at least analogous to a parent encouraging their teenager to start taking antidepressants, not out of care for their immediate well-being but because not being depressed will increase their standardised test scores."*

Screw that; ***you*** get to choose what you want to live for, and alt-rash exists to let you do that better. Not the other way around.

### Method neutral

Picking the best tool to solve the problem; sometimes it is meta philosophy, sometimes it is wisdom of crowds.

### Action focused

Rationality should be about picking actions to do and doing them in short order, and focused around working out what the next action should be, more than it is about distant, abstract theorising.

## Iterative improvement over getting it right first time

*If I had only looked over at the other makers, the painters or the architects, I would have realized that there was a name for what I was doing: sketching. As far as I can tell, the way they taught me to program in college was all wrong. You should figure out programs as you're writing them, just as writers and painters and architects do.*

~ Paul Graham, Hackers and Painters

Figure things out as you go; not only is it quicker than figuring everything out before you start, it also produces superior results because it is immensely difficult to derive everything from theory.

## Correcting for rationalist tendencies

More doing, less debating of minutiae; see "action focused".

Outcome matters more than intent; someone's intent is of non-zero value but cannot substitute for good outcomes. Rewarding effort ends up encouraging people to look like they are trying.

Grunt work should be rewarded in proportion to how valuable it is; in other words, a lot more than currently.

Conscious effort to avoid only talking about and doing work on new/shiny things, and to reward follow through.

## Dealing with human nature as it currently is, not how it *should* be

Status games will exist, jealousy and resentment will exist, people will betray your trust despite assuring you they won't, these things haven't magically stopped affecting the ingroup just because we self identify as "rational"

Basing social structures on enlightened self-interest may actually make a healthier community than a pure altruism based one, removing the incentive to defect and also punishing those who defect in general will help to keep the community healthy.

Trying to push status distribution in the direction of pure meritocracy, rather than attempting to discourage status hierarchies altogether.

Not attempting to enforce equality of outcome, accepting that some people for whatever reason have an effect multiplier on good outcomes, and instead of trying to lower it/the effects of it, emulating them, attempting to pull up those below the average rather than dragging down those above it.

## Agreements as the building block of community/civilization

Reputation, standing, trust, references are all in a sense soft contracts.

You need contracts in order to solve coordination. Government force is a blunt form of contracts, it sort of works, but we will try to do better.

Awareness of the model of personhood in which people develop a social contract, based around maintaining a mask that makes them legible to others by being identifiable, having integrity, and behaving on the basis of reasons, and in exchange getting to interact as persons with others within a community.

Having a set of standards to adhere to in order to be part of the community, having a written consensus on what those are and actually enforcing those standards rather than allowing people to stick around so long as they like us.

Also, realising that the olden day method of spending 5+ years in a community before gaining any trust is not workable for the modern subculturally-mobile world, so large financial/social collateral being put up instead of an almost worthless "spent 3 months in the community without murdering anyone yet".