[moravak1984]

> Meh. Writing like this was formative for me (before Gwern; I'm old), but I've come to realize that the biases of the rationalist community are really no different from the biases of anyone else. It just manifests in a different way?

Could you point out to some examples? Is there any "rational inquiry" that shows a worldview bias from the rationalists, in your opinion?

I agree that the broader smarty-pants community may have this issue, just curious to read your examples.

I think this nicely pointed out in "The Big Bang Theory", where Sheldon Cooper says something like "If I would be wrong, don't you think I would know about it?" That sounds like something Elmo M would say with a serious face.

[saagarjha]

Rationalists are not necessarily better at thinking than you are, they're just usually better cited. That isn't to say there isn't value in being able to cite your beliefs, but if you try very hard you can find data that justifies just about anything, omit nontrivial externalities, and expect any arbitrarily high standard of evidence because that is what you need to think well and good, when in fact they just spend more time being comfortable with conversations that involve p-values and metacognition than you are and will seek to draw you onto their home turf for that discussion.

In this case, for example, I doubt that Gwern is seeking to mislead, but I have heard (hearsay, I know) that there are people who read this, start vaping, and legitimately end up with nicotine additions from much worse stuff. Sure, there's nothing false said here, but you can definitely say only true things about vapes and neglect to mention that your readers of this have ended up more likely to die of lung cancer than they might have had you not published this. I think someone who was truly rationalist would find that in itself an interesting topic of conversation but it seems to rarely come up that being super pedantic often leads to negative outcomes because presumably this would make them shine a mirror at themselves in a way that they are almost intentionally incapable of discussing.