trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Anti-rationality quotes
by PhilGoetz — 2009-04-17T17:55:30.517Z

There's a semi-regular feature on OB called "Rationality quotes". In Marketing rationality, I'm claiming that for conservative religious people, using rationality instrumentally is as epistemically dangerous as for us to use faith instrumentally. People object. So to supplement that, I'm giving you a list of anti-rationality quotes. I originally compiled them to respond to a theologian who claimed that Christianity encouraged inquisitiveness; but I think they apply to reason as well. Please note that these quotes are not from obscure authors; all of these quotes, with the possible exception of Sturgeon, are from authors who are considered by Christians (either Catholics or Protestants) to be more authoritative than anyone alive today.

Some of these examples come from “Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England”, Peter Harrison, Isis, Vol. 92, No. 2 (June 2001), pp. 265-290; and from The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany, Neil Kenny (2004). 2 quotes come from chpt. 5 of Hitchens, God is Not Great. (His Aquinas quote, however, says exactly the opposite of what Aquinas actually said.) Some of them I found myself.

Also see the Wikipedia page on the Syllabus of Errors that byrnema provided.

ADDED: ICMMT. I concede that the relation between rationalists using unreason, and Christians using reason, is not symmetric. But it is analogical.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. – Genesis 3:6 (KJV)

There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. – Proverbs 14:12; Proverbs 16:25 (NASB)

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it?” Job 38:4-5 (NASB)

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. – God, quoted in Isaiah 29:14, NIV

Seek not out things that are too hard for thee, neither search the things th

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Chomsky on reason and science
by PhilGoetz — 2009-04-17T17:52:35.547Z

I came across this delightful 1995 article by Noam Chomsky while testing whether googling 'rationality' would lead people to LW (it doesn't). It defends rational inquiry against postmodern, Kuhnian attacks1. I was pleasantly surprised, because Chomsky is ideologically aligned with the people making the attacks. (Also because I have reservations about Chomsky's rationality, which I will not state because I don't want this to turn into a discussion of Chomsky, socialism, American foreign policy, or universal grammar.)

Here are some choice sentences:

With regard to the second problem, since what is called "science," etc., is largely unfamiliar to me, let me replace it by "X," and see if I understand the argument against X. Let's consider several kinds of properties attributed to X, then turning to the proposals for a new direction; quotes below are from the papers criticizing X.

<long paragraph of DHMO-like attributions about X>

Conclusion: there is "something inherently wrong" with X. We must reject or transcend it, replacing it by something else; and we must instruct poor and suffering people to do so likewise. It follows that we must abandon literacy and the arts, which surely satisfy the conditions on X as well as science. More generally, we must take a vow of silence and induce the world's victims to do so likewise since language and its use typically have all these properties.

...

There is also at least an element of truth in the statement that the natural sciences are "disembedded from the body, from metaphorical thought, from ethical thought and from the world"--to their credit. ... Though scientists are human, and cannot get out of their skins, they certainly, if honest, try to overcome the distortions imposed by "body" (in particular, human cognitive structures, with their specific properties) as much as possible. ... It is also true that "Reason separates the `real' or knowable...and the `not real'," or at least tries to (without identifying "real" with "knowable")--again, to its credit.

...

It strikes me as remarkable that their left counterparts today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gla

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While we're on the subject of meta-ethics...
by CronoDAS — 2009-04-17T08:01:10.478Z

The best theory of morality I've ever found is the one invented by Alonzo Fyfe, which he chose to call "desire utilitarianism."

This short e-book (warning: pdf), written by a commenter on Alonzo's blog, describes the theory very well. He also wrote a FAQ.

One great advantage of this theory is that what it describes actually exists even if you prefer to use the word "morality" to mean something else. Even a community of paperclip maximizers may find something in it to be relevant, amazingly enough.
The Trouble With "Good"
by Scott Alexander — 2009-04-17T02:07:32.881Z

Related to: How An Algorithm Feels From Inside, The Affect Heuristic, The Power of Positivist Thinking

I am a normative utilitarian and a descriptive emotivist: I believe utilitarianism is the correct way to resolve moral problems, but that the normal mental algorithms for resolving moral problems use emotivism.
Emotivism, aka the yay/boo theory, is the belief that moral statements, however official they may sound, are merely personal opinions of preference or dislike. Thus, "feeding the hungry is a moral duty" corresponds to "yay for feeding the hungry!" and "murdering kittens is wrong" corresponds to "boo for kitten murderers!"
Emotivism is a very nice theory of what people actually mean when they make moral statements. Billions of people around the world, even the non-religious, happily make moral statements every day without having any idea what they reduce to or feeling like they ought to reduce to anything.
Emotivism also does a remarkably good job capturing the common meanings of the words "good" and "bad". An average person may have beliefs like "pizza is good, but seafood is bad", "Israel is good, but Palestine is bad", "the book was good, but the movie was bad", "atheism is good, theism is bad", "evolution is good, creationism is bad", and "dogs are good, but cats are bad". Some of these seem to be moral beliefs, others seem to be factual beliefs, and others seem to be personal preferences. But we are happy using the word "good" for all of them, and it doesn't feel like we're using the same word in several different ways, the way it does when we use "right" to mean both "correct" and "opposite of left". It feels like they're all just the same thing. The moral theory that captures that feeling is emotivism. Yay pizza, books, Israelis, atheists, dogs, and evolution! Boo seafood, Palestinians, movies, theists, creationism, and cats!

Remember, evolution is a crazy tinker who recycles everything. So it would not be surprising to find that our morality is a quick hack on the same machinery that runs our decisions about which food to eat or which pet to adopt. To make an outrageous metaphor: our brains run a system rather like Less Wrong's karma. You're allergic to cats, so you down-vote "cats" a couple of points. You hear about a Palestinian committing a terrorist attack, so you down-vote "Palestinians" a few points. Richard Dawkins just said something especi...
My Way
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2009-04-17T01:25:26.171Z

Previously in series: Bayesians vs. Barbarians
Followup to: Of Gender and Rationality, Beware of Other-Optimizing

There is no such thing as masculine probability theory or feminine decision theory. In their pure form, the maths probably aren't even human. But the human practice of rationality—the arts associated with, for example, motivating yourself, or compensating factors applied to overcome your own biases—these things can in principle differ from gender to gender, or from person to person.

My attention was first drawn to this possibility of individual differences in optimization (in general) by thinking about rationality and gender (in particular). I've written rather more fiction than I've ever finished and published, including a story in which the main character, who happens to be the most rational person around, happens to be female. I experienced no particular difficulty in writing a female character who happened to be a rationalist. But she was not an obtrusive, explicit rationalist. She was not Jeffreyssai.

And it occurred to me that I could not imagine how to write Jeffreyssai as a woman; his way of teaching is paternal, not maternal. Even more, it occurred to me that in my writing there are women who are highly rational (on their way to other goals) but not women who are rationalists (as their primary, explicit role in the story).

It was at this point that I realized how much of my own take on rationality was specifically male, which hinted in turn that even more of it might be specifically Eliezer Yudkowsky.

A parenthetical, at this point, upon my own gender politics (lest anyone misinterpret me here). Of much of what passes for gender politics in present times, I have very little patience, as you might guess. But as recently as the 1970s this still passed for educational material, which makes me a bit more sympathetic.

So this about my gender politics: Unlike the case with, say, race, I don't think that an optimal outcome consists of gender distinctions being obliterated. If the day comes when no one notices or cares whether someone is black or white, any more than they notice eye color, I would only applaud. But obliterating the difference between male and female does not seem to me desirable, and I am glad that it is impossible using present-day technolo...
Practical rationality questionnaire
by AnnaSalamon — 2009-04-16T23:21:05.787Z

EDIT, 4/18: I'm closing the survey. I'll post analysis and a better anonymized version of the raw data in a day or so. 236 people responded; thanks very much to all who did.

For survey participants curious about the calibration questions, the answers are:

Number of republics the USSR broke up into, following the output of the cold war: 15.

The year in which the global population reached 1 billion: 1804.

The average percentage of a watermelon's weight that comes from water: 92.

The old post:

There has been much discussion of the extent to which rationality is or isn’t practically useful. There have also been many calls for better empirical evidence.
In an attempt to produce empirical evidence for or against rationality’s usefulness for LW-ers, I have here a rationality questionnaire. It takes about 15 minutes to complete, according to myself and to Katja Grace, who kindly helped me with it. I tried to hug the query of “Are there OB/LW-like techniques, or similar techniques, that actually help LW-ers achieve their goals?” This isn’t a test -- we’re not measuring individuals’ rationality -- we’re just looking for correlations and noisy indicators that may nevertheless tell us give us useful info in aggeragate, when used on groups.
Fill in the survey -- by following

this survey link [Survey is now closed. Though the link will still let you see the questions.]

-- and know your next 15 minutes will contribute to science, truth, rationality, and the future practical successes of LW-ers. =) (... at least as far as expected value is concerned, if you assign some probablity to this data being useful.)

ADDED: Please hold off on discussing the implications of different responses for a day or two, until the rate of survey-completions dies down. Unless you're sure your discussion won't prejudice others' answers.
Instrumental Rationality is a Chimera
by Tom_Talbot — 2009-04-16T23:15:43.765Z

Eliezer observes, “Among all self-identified "rationalist" communities that I know of, and Less Wrong in particular, there is an obvious gender imbalance - a male/female ratio tilted strongly toward males.” and provides us with a selection of hypotheses that attempt to explain this notable fact, ranging over the normal cultural and biological explanations for male/female imbalances in any community. One important point was missing however, a point raised by Yvain last week under the title, Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great. That fact is that we have not done anything yet. Eliezer writes under the assumption that women ought to want to study our writings, but since we have so far failed to produce a single practical application of our rationalist techniques, I really cannot blame women for staying away. They may be being more rational than we are.

Long have we pondered Eliezer's enigmatic homily, “Rationalists should win.” and like the aristoteleans of old we agreed that it must be so, since a proclivity to win is inherent in the definition of the word “rationalist”.

Well, have you won anything lately? Are the horizons of your power expanding, you rationalist Übermenschen? Perhaps you will say, “We have only just gotten started! We are pregnant with potential, if not abounding with achievements.”

I do not mean to be impatient but it has been a few weeks now and we appear to be spinning our wheels a little tiny bit. As interesting as many of the posts here have been, I cannot recall any of them having been instrumentally useful to me, or anyone else here mentioning posts that have been instrumentally useful to them. In fact it almost seems as if most of the posts contributed by the Less Wrong community have been about the Less Wrong community. These self-referential meta-posts accumulate, and as they become increasingly impenetrable they discourage potential contributors of either sex.

Since the confusion caused by this notion of instrumental rationality shows no signs of abating, I will attempt to cut the knot. There is no such thing as instrumental rationality. What is the rational way to butter toast? Brew coffee? Drive a car? Raise a child? Conduct a particle physics experiment? You will notice that the unifying feature among these examples is that there is no unifying feature among these example...
Welcome to Less Wrong!
by MBlume — 2009-04-16T09:06:25.124Z

If you've recently joined the Less Wrong community, please leave a comment here and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, or how you found us. Tell us how you came to identify as a rationalist, or describe what it is you value and work to achieve.

If you'd like to meet other LWers in real life, there's a meetup thread and a Facebook group. If you've your own blog or other online presence, please feel free to link it. If you're confused about any of the terms used on this site, you might want to pay a visit to the LW Wiki, or simply ask a question in this thread. Some of us have been having this conversation for a few years now, and we've developed a fairly specialized way of talking about some things. Don't worry -- you'll pick it up pretty quickly.

You may have noticed that all the posts and all the comments on this site have buttons to vote them up or down, and all the users have "karma" scores which come from the sum of all their comments and posts. Try not to take this too personally. Voting is used mainly to get the most useful comments up to the top of the page where people can see them. It may be difficult to contribute substantially to ongoing conversations when you've just gotten here, and you may even see some of your comments get voted down. Don't be discouraged by this; it happened to many of us. If you've any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.

If you've come to Less Wrong to teach us about a particular topic, this thread would be a great place to start the conversation, especially until you've worked up enough karma for a top level post. By posting here, and checking the responses, you'll probably get a good read on what, if anything, has already been said here on that topic, what's widely understood and what you might still need to take some time explaining.

A note for theists: you will find LW overtly atheist. We are happy to have you participating but please be aware that other commenters are likely to treat religion as an open-and-shut case. This isn't groupthink; we really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false. If you'd like to know how we came to this conclusion you may find these related posts a good starting point.

A couple technical notes: when leaving comments, you may notice a 'help' link below and to the right of the text box. &n...
Of Gender and Rationality
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2009-04-16T00:56:11.827Z

Among all self-identified "rationalist" communities that I know of, and Less Wrong in particular, there is an obvious gender imbalance—a male/female ratio tilted strongly toward males.

Yet surely epistemic and instrumental rationality have no gender signature. There is no such thing as masculine probability theory or feminine decision theory.

There could be some entirely innocuous explanation for this imbalance. Perhaps, by sheer historical contingency, aspiring rationalists are recruited primarily from the atheist/libertarian/technophile cluster, which has a gender imbalance for its own reasons—having nothing to do with rationality or rationalists; and this is the entire explanation.

Uh huh. Sure.

And then there are the less innocuous explanations—those that point an accusing finger at the rationalist community, or at womankind.

If possible, let's try not to make things worse in the course of having this discussion. Remember that to name two parts of a community is to split that community—see the Robbers Cave experiment: Two labels → two groups. Let us try not to make some of our fellow rationalists feel singled-out as objects of scrutiny, here. But in the long run especially, it is not a good thing if half the potential audience is being actively filtered out; whatever the cause, the effect is noticeable, and we can't afford to ignore the question.

These are the major possibilities that I see:

(1) While the pure math of the right Way has no gender signatures on it, we can imagine that men and women are annoyed to different degrees by different mistakes. Suppose that Less Wrong is too disagreeable—that relative to the ideal, just-right, perfectly-rational amount of disagreement, we have a little more disagreement than that. You can imagine that to the men, this seems normal, forgivable, takeable in-stride—wrong, perhaps, but not really all that annoying. And you can imagine that conversely, the female-dominated mirror-image of Less Wrong would involve too much agreement relative to the ideal—lots of comments agreeing with each other—and that while this would seem normal, forgivable, takeable-in-stride to the female majority, it would drive the men up the wall, and some of them would leave, and the rest would be gritting their teeth. (This ex...
I Changed My Mind Today - Canned Laughter
by pre — 2009-04-15T23:59:26.897Z

If we had topic-headings here, I'd be suggesting a new one: I changed my mind today.
Being rational is all about chainging your mind, right? It's about re-assessing in the face of some new evidence. About examining the difference between your assumptions and the world itself. Narrowing down the difference between the model and the reality, the map and the territory.
Maybe your 'karma' should reflect how much you've told us when you changed your mind? Certainly I'd like to know when people change their minds about things more than when they just agree with me.

In fact, I think that is probably the thing I most want to know about from any of the people whom I know primarily because of their professed rationality.

Especially if they explain why they changed their minds, and do it well.
With that in mind, and introducing the new acronym: ICMMT
I Changed My Mind Today!
Or at least I revised my opinion.
As you may know, the UK TV channel "Dave" recorded and then broadcast three new episodes of "Red Dwarf" this Easter. If you didn't know that, your time is better spent tracking down those shows and watching them than reading the remainder of this article. Come back when you're done. If you haven't even watched the BBC originals then, um. Enjoy! See you in a year or so.
Anyway.
I enjoyed the new episodes, laughed a lot, reminisced a lot more, but was left somehow feeling more *flat* than when watching previous shows.

I didn't really even know why, until a friend pointed it out:

> The new shows have no 'laugh track'.

As soon as she said it, I knew that I'd heard mention that this was the first time they'd shot the show without a studio audience. And that she was right. And that the "laugh track" had been an important part of that show to me right from the first episode.
Now this was a revelation.
Until now, when I've noticed a laugh-track or when a laugh-track has been talked about by others, it's been to bitch about "canned laughter" being really false and it ruining the whole atmosphere and making everything seem fake.
Which I agreed with. Totally. That stuff is damned annoying. When I notice a laugh-track, it's because the people laughing are clearly moronic idiots who'd laugh at the fact of gravity and I hate them.
However. When my friend said that the lack of that laugh track left the show 'flat', I knew exactly what she meant. It made all the difference in the world. Deathl...
Mechanics without wrenches
by PhilGoetz — 2009-04-15T20:09:12.138Z

Say you're taking your car to an auto mechanic for repairs. You've been told he's the best mechanic in town. The mechanic rolls up the steel garage door before driving the car into the garage, and you look inside and notice something funny. There are no tools. The garage is bare - just an empty concrete space with four bay doors and three other cars.

You point this out to the mechanic. He shrugs it off, saying, "This is how I've always worked. I'm just that good. You were lucky I had an opening; I'm usually booked." And you believe him, having seen the parking lot full of cars waiting to be repaired.

You take your car to another mechanic in the same town. He, too, has no tools in his garage. You visit all the mechanics in town, and find a few that have some wrenches, and others with a jack or an air compressor, but no one with a full set of tools.

You notice the streets are nearly empty besides your car. Most of the cars in town seem to be in for repairs. You talk to the townsfolk, and they tell you how they take their cars from one shop to another, hoping to someday find the mechanic who is brilliant and gifted enough to fix their car.

I sometimes tell people how I believe that governments should not be documents, but semi-autonomous computer programs. I have a story that I'm not going to tell now, about incorporating inequalities into laws, then incorporating functions into them, then feedback loops, then statistical measures, then learning mechanisms, on up to the point where voters and/or legislatures set only the values that control the system, and the system produces the low-level laws and policy decisions (in a way that balances exploration and exploitation). (Robin's futarchy in which you "vote on values, bet on beliefs" describes a similar, though less-automated system of government.)

And one reaction - actually, one of the most intelligent reactions - is, "But then... legislators would have to understand something about math." As if that were a bug, and not a feature.

We have 535 Congressmen in the United States. Over the past half a year, they've decided how to spend several trillion of our dollars on interventions to vitalize our economy. But after listening to them for 20 years, I have the feeling that few of them could explain the concepts of opportu...