[ajkjk]

(Thank you) I agree, although I do think that the rationalists and EAs are way better than most of the other narrowband groups, as you call them, out there, such as the Metaverse or Crypto people. The rationalists are at least mostly legitimately motivated by morality and not just by a "blow it all up and replace it with something we control" philosophy (which I have come to believe is the belief-set that only a person who is convinced that they are truly powerless comes to). I see the rationalists as failing due to a skill issue as well: because they have so-defined themselves by their rationalism, they have trouble understanding the things in the world that they don't have a good rational understanding of, such as morality. They are too invested in words and truth and correctness to understand that there can be a lot of emotional truth encoded in logical falsehood.

edit: oh, also, I think that a good part of people's aversion to the rationalists is just a reaction to the narrowband quality itself, not to the content. People are well-aware of the sorts of things that narrowband self-justifying philosophies lead to, from countless examples, whether it's at the personal level (an unaccountable schoolteacher) or societal (a genocidal movement). We don't trust a group unless they specifically demonstrate non-narrowbandedness, which means being collectively willing to change their behavior in ways that don't make sense to them. Any movement that co-opts the idea of what is morally justifiable---who says that e.g. rationality is what produces truth and things that run counter to it do not---is inherently frightening.

[skinnymuch]

They aren’t motivated by morality. They just are more moral relative to the niches you referred to.

Any group that focuses on their own goals of high paying jobs regardless of the morality of those jobs or how they contribute to the structural issues of society is not that good. Then donating money while otherwise being okay with the status quo —- not touching anything systemic in such an unjust world but supposedly focusing on morality is laughable.

[ajkjk]

I see it as moral action with a skill issue, which is how I see a lot of bad things in the world. People are very good at missing the forest for the trees.

In their defense they do try to do the calculations: is a high-paying job okay on net if you give most of the money away? depends on the job; depends on if somebody else would have it if you didn't; etc. Not that there is a rigorous way to do them but it's very much a group that does try.