You Should Not Like Being Smarter Than The Average Human Being
Emotions are good. Politeness is bimodal. ‘Informality is friendly’ and ‘informality is creepy’ are the ground states. Jokes reframe wrongness as funnyness; the Rationalism movement looks, from the real outside, like a bunch of supremely edgy computer cultists.
This is why it was a really bad idea to frame knowledge of statistics as a conspiracy thing. If you think of your better judgement as a secret hat, then you will dedicate resources to keeping how smart you are a secret.
You are, presumably, a rational actor. But who are you, generically? What are the outer limits of your selfhood? Are you satisfied with them? Why or why not?
Discuss.
I am deeply irritated with “I can anonymously discourage this line of thinking” as a forum construct. If you have a problem with what I’m saying, say it to my face.
Not a downvoter, but the post is really unclear to me, doesn’t seem to have a coherent point, and doesn’t justify claims. Also, it doesn’t seem relevant to effective altruism, which has <50% overlap with the rationality community.
There are good criticisms of EA, including good criticisms of the form “EA should be more welcoming”, but they’re way more developed and coherent.
The EAF is using LessWrong 2.0 forum architecture, which shapes its’ culture tremendously. In particular, there’s a general expectation that good criticism has to be longwinded.
That said, this is a very helpful summary of what locals think is going on. Thank you!