[sxp]

> For one, their analyses almost always amounted to post hoc justifications of the things they liked.

"Almost always" is carrying a lot of weight here. Rationalists are ideologically diverse [1] when it comes to things like monogamy vs polyamory, left vs right, pro-AI vs anti-AI, nature vs nurture, racism vs anti-racism. The distribution is different from the general population, but many people have changed their minds about various aspects of their life after discussions and debates with rationalists.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5FqX6XBJlfOShMd3U...

> What’s less known is that the memo was originally sent to the [e-mail] mailing list, which I was a member of. It was a personal belief masquerading as a rationalist inquiry that tried to pull everyone into an unwanted workplace argument.

One of Damore's mistakes was opting for a high-decoupling route on a politically charged topic instead of a low decoupling route. That tends to end badly and he learned this the hard way.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7cAsBPGh98pGyrhz9/low-decoup...

[pavel_lishin]

That graph looks incredibly un-diverse. Assuming it's accurate, it's mostly childless white male Americans, who skew heavily towards being students.

[lux-lux-lux]

Well-educated young middle class white men, and with politics that generally flow entirely predictably from those demographics. The only real outlier is the openness to HBD/scientific racism stuff.

[zahlman]

> with politics that generally flow entirely predictably from those demographics.

There is obviously no such thing.

The clear purpose of the subthread the two of you are engaging in is clearly against HN guidelines.

[zahlman]

>> Rationalists are ideologically diverse [1]

> That graph looks incredibly un-diverse.

Which of age, childlessness, white skin, being male or US citizenship is an "ideology"?

[zahlman]

And?

The entire point is that true statements are true, and false statements are false, regardless of who does or doesn't utter them.

[xhevahir]

> One of Damore's mistakes was opting for a high-decoupling route on a politically charged topic instead of a low decoupling route.

Why does the formation of correct beliefs, a topic people have been discussing for millennia, require such exotic jargon? It's things like this that give off cult vibes.

[zahlman]

Because, as the incident with Damore amply demonstrated, trying to use common language to describe these concepts leads to enormous misunderstandings at best. (And sometimes people go out of their way to misinterpret you anyway.)

[tzs]

On those survey results several items show a 5 item bar chart with the bars labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 showing the counts and percentages of respondents who chose 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

For example, "Do you prefer modern or older architecture?" shows 20% chose 1, 34.6% chose 2, 25.6% chose 3, 15% chose 4, and 4.8% chose 5.

WTF does this mean? I don'e see anything that says what those labels mean. I'd guess for questions asking X or Y they mean X, lean X, no preference, lean Y, and Y but in what order?

But some aren't comparisons. One such chart is simply titled "Global Warming". What does it mean to answer "2" to that?

[zahlman]

> I'd guess for questions asking X or Y they mean X, lean X, no preference, lean Y, and Y

Yes; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale

> but in what order? ... One such chart is simply titled "Global Warming". What does it mean to answer "2" to that?

These things become clear by cross-referencing with the actual survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZLCk8_L64hen93A2g...).