[FeepingCreature]

Consider a community filled with 100 people; 95 of them who don't take their eccentric beliefs as gospel truths and 5 who do. Those 5 will inevitably become the public face of the community when they make the news. However there is very little that the 95 could have done to stop them.

[cogman10]

> However there is very little that the 95 could have done to stop them.

How about the 95% stop having gatherings where they all proclaim that their beliefs are true even if they don't seriously believe them?

How is the 5% supposed to know that the 95% is actually larping belief? And how is an outsider who observes the 95% espousing their whacky beliefs supposed to know who is a member of the 95% and who is a member of the 5% (and if those percentages are accurate).

You can observe the same dynamic in any church. Everyone in the congregation will have different levels of belief, but when it comes to sharing a testimony you'll be hard pressed to distinguish between who the true believers are and who's just "faking it until you make it".

[zahlman]

> gatherings where they all proclaim that their beliefs are true even if they don't seriously believe them?

What on Earth are you referring to? What gatherings? What beliefs? What proclamations? What evidence of insincerity?

[cogman10]

> What gatherings?

Rationalist have groups meetup and conferences. For example [1]

> What beliefs?

It's pretty diverse and not uniformly held. Some of the more strange ones that seem to have pretty wide appeal are around AI safety. For example, Roko's basilisk.

> What proclamations? What evidence of insincerity?

I was responding to the comment above me that suggested that 95% don't actually hold rationalist beliefs and are instead simply having fun with it. Only a small 5% are actually sincere.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1car63w/les...

[zahlman]

Okay, but those pieces don't establish your claim. You would need a Roko's basilisk-like concept that only 5% of the community agree with, and a "group meetup" or "conference" where "they all" (i.e.: also the 95%) "proclaim that their beliefs (i.e.: including the basilisk thing) are true".

If I observed such a gathering knowing that 5% of the people there have sincerely come to a particular conclusion based on the available evidence and the other 95% think the evidence doesn't support that conclusion, I would be extremely surprised to see everyone going around "larping belief". And I don't think you can actually show such a thing occurring.

[cogman10]

Which claim exactly did I make which you are refuting? Please actually quote it.

> I would be extremely surprised to see everyone going around "larping belief". And I don't think you can actually show such a thing occurring.

I never claimed I could or that I observed such a thing. The 95/5% didn't come from me, it came from the person I responded to.

My point was that

- It's impossible to distinguish who's a true believer and who isn't.

- That the meetups of the rationalists re-enforce beliefs, particularly in true believers. Also that these beliefs of the rationalists can be pretty whacky and based on a jenga tower of priors.

- That there isn't "nothing" a rational person could do to dissuade someone from a whacky belief.

[zahlman]

> Which claim exactly did I make which you are refuting? Please actually quote it.

When you said:

> How about the 95% stop having gatherings where they all proclaim that their beliefs are true even if they don't seriously believe them?

you implicitly claimed that "the 95%" indeed have such gatherings.

As far as I can tell, the gatherings that they have are not of that nature.

> My point was that It's impossible to distinguish who's a true believer and who isn't.

And my claim is that it's actually trivial to tell who's a true believer and who isn't, because the concept of "true believer" does not pertain to "rationality" (by construction!) but to fringe beliefs, and people who are doing rationality correctly (which I expect to be the large majority) simply don't profess the fringe beliefs (because doing so is inherently antithetical to rationality). Therefore, the fringe 5% are the 5% of people actually saying the fringe thing, and the 95% don't actually say the fringe thing. Trivial.

For example, you won't catch Scott Alexander demanding "donate to MIRI or the basilisk might reach back in time and torture you".

> That the meetups of the rationalists re-enforce beliefs, particularly in true believers. Also that these beliefs of the rationalists can be pretty whacky and based on a jenga tower of priors.

And you have done nothing to establish this, and I believe you're incorrect.

[HDThoreaun]

95% of rationalists always thought roko's basilisk was a joke

[joegibbs]

Doesn't it say something if 5% of a group are wacko lunatics if, for instance, a random sample of the rest of the population has only 0.5% wackos?

[FeepingCreature]

I would never disagree that the rationality community contains a higher than normal share of lunatics. Whether it produces or attracts them is an open question.

[astrange]

The entire point of rationalism is to take your own beliefs seriously and follow them as if you were a robot.

(Except that they don't claim them to be "their own beliefs" but instead call them "priors".)