georgioz
2mo ago
Of course I do understand that what follows is a lot more complicated, but I think that in general medicine should always be driven by primum non nocere - first do no harm principle and I would be much more strict in enforcing this. So for instance transhumanist things like most forms of esthetic medicine such as breast implants, trans surgeries, contraception pills, sterilizations, euthanasia, abortion and other similar or procedures or drugs would be considered outside of core publicly funded medicine. It could still be provided but under different scope let's say akin to getting tattoo or going to nail saloon and thus it should be automatically clear to the customer that the primary goal is unrelated to certain standard of this no-harm principle and that he or she should accept the risks as well as costs associated with it.
As for the part where people do not follow the medical plan or even actively sabotage it, which then requires even more resources from the system, I think having a system of deductibles like let's say in Singapore can partially resolve the problem. So the principle is that state pays for your medical bills because it is a prosocial thing to do in order to have healthy population but only up to the point. A level up from that is to involve immediate family so for instance part of the costs will be coming from their savings so that the immediate family (children, spouse, parents) has incentive to pressure that person to do something about themselves or they will be at least partially held accountable.
The fact that it hurts people's feelings to tell them that they squandered their opportunities to make something of themselves doesn't mean that they didn't squander said opportunities.
Sure, but this begs the original question. You didn't make it, so you had to squander your opportunities because we removed all the obstacles such as religion, race and so forth. This is basically restating my original position - if the outcome are not equalized it is hard to argue that opportunities were equalized.
But even if we abolish all of those barriers, you're still left with the uncomfortable fact (qua deBoer) that some people are naturally smarter, taller, faster, stronger, more charismatic etc. than others and will inevitably have better outcomes as a result, and there's precious little that social engineering alone can do about that.
Sure, however the messaging is different. You are genetically one of the useless lumpenproletariat and equality of opportunity will do nothing for you or your kids. The best you can get is to equalize the outcomes, meaning you have to basically extract rent from those more successful somehow. Be it political action for more welfare - maybe using low level violence to extort them to cough up the money, up to actual crimes. Those are avenues available to you.
Which BTW kind of questions the whole idea of merit as well, if somebody is successful it has to be somehow related to some merit, he may be the best programmer or best hustler or best drug dealer or whatever. To me it really is not that clear that a programmer developing one of the addictive gacha games shows more merit than literal criminal or that some unemployed person who uses his money to do graffiti has less merit than somebody who has ability to worm herself into liberal arts academia financed by government dole.
If NATO, with cca what, 900 million population, GDP (ppp adjusted) maybe 4x of Russia, cannot somehow manage to have conventional forces supremacy in Eastern Europe to prevent Russia from attacking, what use is NATO?
Exactly, and Putin may put this into a test, especially to test how will let's say countries like Portugal or Italy or even Hungary or Slovakia or Finland or Romania react to the situation when their soldiers will return in cardboxes by thousands in peer-to-peer warfare. And we already see the pathetic situation we are in right now - US cannot get a bill of $60 billion passed to support Ukraine, and even that has some Israel support as well as organizational support for European theater inside. And we are still talking about 7% of US military budget and 0.2% of US GDP. And let's not forget that USA and UK actually have some obligations towards Ukraine as part of Budapest memorandum where Ukrainians gave up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of territorial integrity from US, UK and Russia. Of course Russian word is as usual not worth the paper it was put onto and US/UK try to weasel out of it by saying it was actually "assurance" and not "guarantee". Anyways even besides that, this is still seems crazy to me - you are supposedly willing to pour trillions of dollars to build up defense against hostile power threatening NATO but you are unable to spend comparatively infinitesimal fraction of money to actually fight it? To me it seems like an invitation for Putin to test the resolve.
Plus the reality check of actual efficacy of all that GDP put into military. Fucking North Korea who is economical dwarf was able to send 3 million shells to Russia. US production is around 30,000 a month so North Korea was able to send years of production to Russia. And we are not even talking about what Russia was able to do since the war started - triple the production of artillery shells to 300,000 a month.
So why am I now hearing this defeatism ? Eastern European countries joined NATO because they were told it'd make them 'safe' against Russia ? Was that just a bluff ?
I actually see it as the opposite. The ultimate defeatism is things I reacted to such as "too many Ukrainians are dying, let's give Putin what he wants" or "don't support Ukrainians by 0.2% of GDP when they are in hot war against an actor that threatens NATO, it is too much money that can be spent on social security". So if we care about non-NATO soldiers dying and spending on level of peanunts, then how is NATO going to absorb tens of thousands of their own citizens dying or spending hundreds of billions or even trillions on potential hot war? Will it not be too tempting to again give Putin what he wants and effectively dissolve NATO as a defensive alliance? These two things are related in my eyes and I bet that those new NATO members are watching it in disbelief, they may have been hoodwinked by mushy allies. Also it is not as if this happened for the first time, Czechoslovakia could talk about that a little bit
You are literally describing the same situation. Manager/Superstar researcher is using his superstar influence in order to secure job for somebody he fucks is the same as saying:
Manager negotiating a spousal hire as part of a compensation package is attempting to secure a business relationship that is in the best interest of the university and utilizing the various tools at their disposal to do so, including potentially that spousal hire.
Yeah, that is the point. Manager is negotiating with the company (hiring manager) to secure new business relationship (for his mistress and for himself to the extent of getting potentially a good fuck as a result) and it is in best interest of the company (or else he leaves in the middle of the most important project to competitor or whatever) and he is utilizing various tools at his disposal (e.g. a lunch with hiring manager and his manager etc.) to secure that relationship.
I understand corporatespeak, no need to remind me that "spousal hiring" and "best interest of the company" means "hire somebody I fuck" and "do as I say or else something bad happens". Nobody with IQ more than 80 falls for this shit.
georgioz
8mo ago
It is almost exactly the same scenario. There are three people: hiring manager, then there is the superstar fucker and then there is candidate that is being fucked. Superstar is pressuring hiring manager to hire his mistress "or else"- he leaves along with grants on his research or whatever. I can even construct it a such: superstar researcher with millions in grants comes to the hiring office that he fucks this student and she may be leaving for a job in other city. If they do not hire his mistress as an adjunct then he is going with her along with grants because he loves her. Now the same happens with my example of corporate manager: he fucks this young intern and she tells him that she has a good job lined up in another city. Manager sees this as a threat so he pressures his colleague in other department to hire his mistress, he even gets tacit approval from his own superiors because he is now responsible for crucial project and nobody wants to rock the boat for such a silly thing. How exactly is this different: except the fact that university has this as a written policy?
A good state of affairs can be that "everyone kinda knows, nobody makes a big fuss about it, it isn't officially condoned or supported or acknowledged, but people slightly judge the people involved in the deal and don't see it exactly aligned with the principles of a university." Plausible deniability is maintained, disbelief is suspended and a "quantum tunneling" has taken place. It's not necessarily good to separate everything into the black-and-white categories of legal (and therefore supported, and documented, and regulated and defined and socially accepted and considered moral) vs illegal (and beyond the pale and morally corrupt and unacceptable and you're an unperson for it).
Yes, this is called good old fashioned nepotism. When this manager in the team fucked his subordinate and then promoted her, everybody knew about it and many thought it was kind of piece of shit move. It also did not endear the newly promoted person in eyes of many of her colleagues. It was tolerated as lesser evil for many reasons by his superiors unfortunately. Little did I know that what he should have done was telling it transparently by saying that he was not promoting somebody for fucking his brains out, it was just normal HR benefit of "sex partner hiring" he was awarded during standard salary increase negotiations, no big deal. You see, he is really working hard and he works harder with hard-on that he needs to be motivated, his situation is special because he has no time to look for partners as he is working so much. Reading apologetics here in this thread I'd guess he would probably have much more defenders, silly him.
The principal-agent problem here is that hiring manager as well as the candidate are both employees. You already have conflict of interest where hiring manager may have interest in having this new non-standard perk available for his spouse as well. Also your definition of principal as "institution" is very strange, principal should be some person be it taxpayer or donor etc. You just dodge the question - there was some other agent in HR department who created benefit of "spousal hire", so this other agent (the hiring manager) is supposedly representing the best interest of "institution" in form of official benefits policy created by this other agent (HR benefit specialist)? What is next - that department of education as another agent in chain from taxpayer agrees with this policy as well? I am sure government bureaucrats would love to have the same policy for themselves. This just obfuscates what is going on here.
Maybe the confusion lies in the naming? Because it is official benefit and not some underhanded secret thing then it stops being nepotism and becomes "spousal hiring" instead? So if a new management of some University that governs endowment of tens of billons of dollars creates a new transparent policy that select superstar researchers and top university leadership will have free and unlimited access to room full of booze and hookers on campus, then this does not mean drinking and whoring on the job, it is just "award negotiated during hiring process"? I think it is in fact much worse if you take some morally shady practice and make it legal and official, it means you are trying to remove stigma from it.
I actually don't think I understand your point overall but it feels like your point is we can't rationally prove that pain and suffering are bad, so checkmate rationalists, we're no better than anyone else. Which... okay.
No, this was not the point. Go and analyze pain and suffering of animals abused for bestiality compared to animals slaughtered for meat all you like in fine rationalist tradition. What I object is going to meta level of what are your personal feelings about this or that response to such thought experiments, in that sense a rationalist is not obliged to privilege your anecdotal emotional outburst. I may as well imagine somebody who is hurt by what you are saying - and believe me there would be no shortage of agitated people if I said that we are going to normalize bestiality.
And now voilà, you have some basis of understanding of what is going on, just by analyzing your own emotions. And we do not have to model other people as if they do not understand that pain and suffering is bad and they need you to explain it to them. They do understand it very, very well - only from their standpoint it is people promoting bestiality who are source of that pain and suffering for them. And it is you who opened this door for them by harping on your own personal feelings about the whole discussion, you made this meta discussion about how this original discussion makes people feel part of the game.
georgioz
6mo ago
Sure and I am using them as one of the examples now in this discussion, so we do give a shit in this sense. But it will not help Moriori people, so it is just discussion over spilled milk. Bygones are bygones, current ancestors of Māori people can just express some sympathy and move on fighting for the living nation instead of ruminating over the dead one.
I have my own peeve with said comment, this supposed "rationalist Cross-Examination" makes people even more stupid and in the end everybody retreats into their own aesthetics of the situation. It is more stupid discussion the more basic the moral intuition is - like for instance "why murder is bad". I can put you on the spot here and it will be up to you to come to defense of your view that murder is bad ranging from defining murder to exceptions like war and whatnot. It almost always degenerates into sophistry (AKA dark arts) as the situation is of course nuanced and complex and you can spend lifetime cross-examining, unless of course you have certain end in mind. So in the end, it all comes down to normalcy, murder is murder and nepotism is nepotism.
So I guess intuition is very powerful and it is not always easily accessible to rational discussion which quite often leads to wrong conclusions depending on what path you take. Which is kind of a point even here in this discussion - you already see how people invent all kinds of defense to this, including this call of yours. To me, if I see a person pushing to hire somebody he fucks, this is nepotism. I do not understand what does temote work do with any of this, laid out your argument.
Agreed, it is the same with some people performing Roman salute while shouting Sieg Heil!, it is just saying Hail victory! in German. Some people surely use it with genocidal intent, while other people use this ancient salute in its original intent - "to give their hearts" by figuratively grabbing it by in their right hand and offering it on display. They may just want to express their strong support for your victory in your struggle. And as for why should they speak in German? It may have nothing to do with any hypothetical alignment of their views with weltanschauung espoused by national socialists in 1930s Germany. They maybe just like to use words like schadenfreude, it makes them look more educated. Context matters!
But what of Ukrainians themselves? Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw? It's impossible to find good numbers on how many Ukrainian men have been killed so far in this war. It's likely in the hundreds of thousands. Towns and villages throughout the country are devoid of men, as the men (hunted by conscription) either flee, hide, or are sent to the fronts.
As others said, this is absurd version of the events at hand. If Ukraine loses this war, they are fucked in the same way Donetsk and Luhansk are fucked now, only worse. It may very well happen that they will end up according to the map that Medvedev shown with Ukraine being what Donetsk/Luhansk was in since 2014 - just a puppet state and source of expendable shock troops for the new Russian Empire. The next move? Putin attacks Moldova with forced conscripts from newly annexed Ukraine thus potentially solving two problems at once by expanding the territory and sending potential rebels into the meatgrinder. He already uses this tactics to some extent by conscripting mostly ethnic minorities and rural population. The same tactics Mao utilized when he sent surrendered Kuomintang soldiers to Korea: win-win scenario for him.
And we are not even talking about a scenario where Putin with his newfound strength may test the article 5 and actually conduct Baltic offensive on Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania. It is not as if NATO will fire nukes in face of conventional assault - so what will they do? Will Spaniards and French and Italians send enough troops to the meatgrinder to save some faraway countries? At worst Putin can always say "my bad, I just want part of Estonia and make peace" and play peacemaker or he can withdraw after testing the waters. It is not as if NATO countries will ever muster courage to actually wage full fledged war with the aim to physically oust Putin from Kremlin when he hides behind nuclear ICBMs and torpedoes. And in the meantime Putin will have enough Ukrainians to send ahead of his barrier troops.
Don't forget, things are never so bad that they cannot get worse.
I think a lot of that can be viewed through immense impact that boomer generation had on culture. Sixties and seventies when boomers were young adults, it was all about celebrating teenage revolt, and drugs, rock n' roll and all that. Eighties and nineties when boomers were at their prime, it was all about making money, and celebrating being fit and healthy and being full of vigor, and above all else being sexy - it was time of masculine men shagging fit women like in Baywatch. Aughts and tens is when boomers are becoming old and it is time of moralization and experiencing their failing bodies and being aware of their mortality - so suddenly grey is gorgeous and of course sex is suddenly all about power relation of men over young women of young healthy women over old desiccated boomer hags; which means that healthy sexuality has to be suddenly forbidden.
It is all display of cultural power of objectively the most powerful and narcissistic generation of the last century imposing their self-centered worldview on broader culture.
georgioz
5mo ago
This pattern of reaction is disconcerting. We live in a world of complex issues that demand thoughtful consideration, yet it appears that a significant portion of discourse is reduced to emotional outbursts. It's really hard for me not to feel disheartened or even adopt a misanthropic view when I see things like this.
I just really want to know if you are aware of what you did here. You are against "emotional outbursts" because they make you "feel disheartened" and move you towards misanthropy AKA hatred of humans? Does it not "feel" a little bit too melodramatic and emotional to you, the supposed rationalist?
But why would Putin attack the Baltics?
I thought we are beyond this already, the same was said before invasion of Ukraine. If anything - why should he not invade? He is already considered a pariah, Russia is sanctioned, NATO already sent a lot of available weapons from their military storage and with other conflicts in Middle East and potential issues with Taiwan he may just try it. Rhetorically Russia already claims that they are effectively at war with NATO so it is also nothing that the Russians themselves would be shocked about.
But this was not even the point of my post, which was focused more on Ukraine and Ukrainians who would be at the mercy of what whatever Putin sees as his pet project and his legacy. They would be the buffer zone, they would be Putin's shocktroops and their role would be to do whatever is needed in order for the Russian core to be as shielded from any negative impacts of regimes decisions as possible. I can imagine imposing some sort of reparations in the same way Soviets did it to East Germany. We can see more pressure for russification and myriads of other things that could ruin the nation culturally, economically and morally. So the point is that just saying "Ukrainians are dying" is not some ultimate argument it seems to be, one always has to also add "compared to what" - as they may continue dying while achieving nothing after "peace" with Russia. Again it would be good to ask people in Luhansk and Donetsk or even people now living in other occupied territories in Ukraine about how happy are they not being "pawns of NATO" but being part of Russian Mir nine years after "peace" negotiated in Minsk. What an upgrade.
You smuggled in the argument that "sex is sacred" and therefore not at all like tennis. But then tennis people should just say it: sex absolutely is like tennis and it should be okay for children to have sex with adults was it not for all those pesky people who wrongly think that sex is sacred. But don't worry, as soon as we work a little bit on that opposition we will gladly accept child sex as new normal and embrace groomer as proud moniker.
Maybe the argument is that they will obviously not do that for political and strategic reasons. Something the NYT article gloats about: haha, we lied about gays being born that way to fool conservatives into accepting new laws. Now when we have majority and conservatives are eating dust, we can finally say what we wanted all along. And by the way trust us, the sexual liberation will definitely stop before full acceptance of Minor Attracted Persons (wink, wink hahaha).
georgioz
9mo ago
Look at their politics calibration, it does not look nearly as well as sports one. It is also because of this:
When calculating the calibration and skill scores for forecasts that we updated over time, such as election forecasts that we updated every day, we weighted each update by the inverse of the number of updates issued. That way, we counted each forecasted event equally, regardless of how many updates we issued to the forecast.
Nevertheless at minimum stop spreading stupidity like "538 predicted 30% chance of Trump winning". They made 150+ predictions with wildly different number assigned. Having articles that "Today 538 predicts politician X winning with 90% probability" means nothing, in a week there may be a new prediction reassigning it to 50%. At best you may gauge who is favorite and who is not, but one does not have to be an expert for that.
georgioz
11mo ago
Don't worry, Western Marxism is still alive an doing well. Just wait until the oppressed take control of means of [cultural] production - then we will solve all the contradictions, including those that soviet style communists could not resolve.
georgioz
11mo ago
One of the counterarguments to this "hard on crime" line of thinking is the problem of mass incarceration. There is a limit to how many people can be imprisoned without compromising the system’s integrity. I learned more about this when I read about the Russian prison system, which developed its own set of rules after the communist revolution in 1917 and following literal imprisonment of whole nations in gulags. A similar phenomenon is happening in US prisons, where powerful gangs impose their own laws and influence both the inmates and the outsiders. Mass incarceration is a problem of the type that stares back if you stare at it intensely enough.
There is also a deeper problem behind this - whether we call it a “mental health crisis”, as some on the left do, or “social fabric being ripped apart”, as some on the right do. It is shocking that over 9% of males can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime. Even if we are not among them, we cannot ignore the fact that 10% of males will experience the prison system for a period of time. Therefore, I do not think that the solution is to release violent criminals or to be extra tough on crime.
I as European welcome this. Different example is that for instance to call something butter in EU, it has to have between 82 and 90% butterfat and maximum of 16% water. So what happens in practice is that you have brand name of your local diary producer with Butter name on it and you know what you get. If you see something else, then it is some fake product. I consider this as very valuable for the sake of informing the customer about the quality and content of the product.
georgioz
8mo ago
I can't imagine a more sympathetic to human realities to this concept, and am really baffled by the person who would put 'liberal fairness' on such a pedestal that they would get remotely worked up at the idea of supporting marriages / families, the fundamental social unit of society.
Oh, so then let's make it a society wide practice - if you get a job in local Amazon warehouse you are entitled to have your spouse or close family member employed as well. Let's make it a law. Yeah, I don't think so.
She absolutely did NOT mean it to refer to bystanders who did nothing, because she was not seeking to explain the behaviors of bystanders, but rather only the behavior of government officials who implemented the policy.
Sure, nobody is talking about doing nothing, we are talking about people supporting 3rd Reich in one way or another. Which is how this thread started.
They think that Arendt had some incredible insight because, in 1963, it was in fact a unique and controversial insight.
I am with you on this. People fetishize Nazism as somehow unique and Arendt kind of ruined the party, I am not dissing her - I am dissing people who need her.
It is the exact opposite of outrage porn; in fact, Arendt was criticized at the time for not being sufficiently outraged. Her entire thesis was that Eichmann was not "a monster" and was not even particularly anti-Semitic.
Here I did not mean Arendt's particular schtick, but how it is used now: Ah, you are not particularly hardcore Nazi, you are just banally evil so I can still punch you. I meant this.
If so, then they are not an example of the banality of evil. They are an example of regular old evil.
Doctors are only one cog in the machine that goes from lawmakers, through Eichmann style beurocrats interpreting said laws, through insurance companies, hospital management, through psychiatrists, receptionists and so forth. The surgeon who is cutting the organs in fact has quite a good excuse doing what he does, he has mountain of exculpatory paperwork to freely do what he is gonna do. In fact if the doctor would refuse in some fit of consciousness, he or she would probably suffer severe career consequences. How is he evil in the old sense? He is law abiding citizen, respected even.
I am pro-Israeli here, but I can easily steelman this. Yes, what Hamas did was your cookie-cutter attempt at ethnic cleansing. You see, the way ethnic cleansing works is to do horrible shit to women, children and elderly and then proudly shout that from the rooftops. If you instill enough fear in the opposing ethnicity, they will vacate the premises on their own.
This is how it was done by Israelis themselves in 1948, they massacred the village of Deir Yassin and then run around literally broadcasting to rest of Arabs that they are next. By the way the extremist Israeli militia that participated in Deir Yassin massacre called Irgun was led by Menachim Begin, later a prime minister of Israel who called the massacre as "splendid act of conquest".
There are numerous other examples of successful ethnic cleansing. I can mentioned the Operation Storm during Balkan Wars in 1990s, where Croats ethnically cleansed Serbs from their territory with tacit approval of western coalition, the international tribunal even rubberstamped that it was actually not ethnic cleansing despite hundreds of thousands Serbs being effectively expelled. The formula was the same: run in, massacre anybody who refused to leave: mostly infirm, children, elderly etc. Then just enjoy wailing of their wives running before you, as they are just cheap but very authentic signal booster for those Serbs who did not get the message so far to run on the double. And now you have nice ethnically cleansed Croatia, part of EU and Eurozone, full of nice beaches and good food prepared by former soldiers that participated in the operation, with main perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing - general Ante Gotovina - considered as national hero.
Another successful ethnic cleansing is that of Germans after WW2, nobody now gives a shit about atrocities they experienced in East Prussia, currently Russian enclave or that they were expelled from Poland because Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers to the west, which included German cities, or Czechoslovakia when Germans lived there for literally centuries. Nobody gives a shit about those Germans now, there is no wound on the soul of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles or Russians, this is the reality now and they will live happily ever after - until they themselves are ethnically cleansed sometimes in the future possibly.
As the last example I present the genocide of a tribe living on Catham Islands called Moriori. They had unique pacifist culture of nonviolence that was able to survive in isolation. That is until they got in contact with Māori people in 1835 - in paradox of history Māori themselves were the Moriori ancestors. Long story short, imagine slavery and genocide with the last descendand of the culture died in 1933, around 100 years after contact with Māori. Again, nobody gives a shit about Moriori, because there is now literally nobody to give a shit about, they are history complete with their unworkable pacifist culture. And Māori are now respected minority of New Zaeland complete with land rights recognition and all that.
And I think I will also close with another last example I ninjaedited here, that of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh as it is very pertinent to the topic at hand. This instance of ethnic cleansing was made possible because the main ally of Armenians - Russia - is unable to provide any assistance, but also because Azerbaijan now has a very good geopolitical situation as being key for non-Russian supply of energy to Europe, having good diplomatic ties to Turkey as their protector as well as being on the upswing economically. There are some performative declarations from the west, but nothing will be done on practical level.
So I guess my "steelman" is that this is the reality of human nature, this is how the world worked and will work in the future. If there is anything that needs any "steelamaning", it is this first principles morality and dream of multicultural peace loving society where the whole world is full of Moriori peoples singing kumbaya together. The reality is much more ugly and the fact is that ethnic cleansing was used and will be used in the future as solution of various conflicts. In a sense I think that the Hamas attack was a success to large extent, it shows that the support is shifting away from Israel. Europe is still dependent on energy from Arab countries, Germans recently signed 15 years long contract for LNG from Qatar, and guess who is one of the largest supporter of Hamas globally. Who knows, maybe in due time we will have the same situation as with Nagorno-Karabakh, which was also a long war until it wasn't.
The "analysis" does not really depend on that single "sentence" - although I also think calling it just as a sentence is uncharitable. It is not some random sentence from Sequences, The OP called is as a credo, it is oneliner that is tied to rationalism and Yudkowsky especially.
What I was getting at was the overall tone of some of the rationalist writing that I think "the credo" shows very well: it is edgy sounding guru oneliners that are sometimes literally used in normal conversation - the credo in particular I think was for instance said by Aella in her interview with Lex Fridman unironically.
I also admit that I am maybe too harsh, maybe I am taking it all too uncharitably. It is just internet infotainment, there is not that much going on and rationalists do have also oneliners like "it all adds up to normalcy". And then one reminds himself that normalcy includes saving ants, or AI apocalyptic doomerism and then I am not as sure what charitable take on rationalist utilitarianism should look like when taken as an actual moral philosophy that is adopted up by the unwashed masses.
Also as a closing point, I thought in this manner due to the fact that the OP described how normal people including Marxists do not adhere to the credo. I found it paradoxical as I do not find rationalists strictly adhering to the credo either, in that sense they do have much more in common with Marxists: they do have materialist utilitarian moral philosophical system (or one can almost dare say theology) build up ground up from first principles with some transhumanist transformative project. It is a philosophy created outside of mainstream, a system created by outsider "basement dwelling" philosopher with prolific writing and slight ties to rich donors. I wanted to point out this myopia to OP.
I have similar peeve, but because of exactly the opposite reasons: this whole credo is obvious bullshit. Even rationalists like Yudkowsky do not really practice it, take as an example his annoyance with Roko's Basilisk idea leaking or his secrecy around methods how he can get out of the box pretending to be AI. Why doing that, just set the truth free. If it destroys countries or even the whole humanity, then it should be destroyed, right? The cold truth is defined as the highest value so what is the problem.
Anyways, there are many ways how one can save "belief in untruth". One way is to defer to an authority: I cannot evaluate if Many Worlds or Spontaneous Collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, but I think expert A is trustworthy so I take his word for it. But in a way this is is belief about expert and not belief about the thing, so it is cheating a bit. Another way to do that is to have epistemic humility, Scott Alexander himself once remarked how he was able to argue untrue points very effectively toward people with less knowledge and his takeaway was to be a lot more skeptic when it comes his own views as he could also have been misled. Ironically rationalists themselves accept this premise, their whole shtick is how AI can lie to reach its goals. Similar idea is also expressed by yet another rationalist glib of it all adds up to normality, which basically urges you to be skeptical about too "weird" conclusions and sticking to your intuition a bit, even if evidence seems strong.
Now given the utilitarianism of rationalists I do not trust them at all, there is nothing preventing them to lie to me to reach their goals of maximizing utils or whatever. In fact they are quite upfront about this. The third one is right there in the rationalist Bayesian thinking idea. All it takes for me to defend any belief is to set my prior to very low value so it is incredibly hard for it to be flipped in my lifetime. And I can still signal my sophistication: my credence of idea X being true shifted a bit in light of new circumstances and recalculated posterior, but I still find it unlikely for X to be true. That is unless Scott Alexander or Yudkowsky or other gurus of rationalist faith say otherwise, then my posterior will shift dramatically.
Now maybe this all sounds too harsh, I do not really mind it as much. But one really has to treat rationalism as yet another pretentious internet fad, as an infotainment. There are very useful things I learned and for it I am very thankful. But I think dropping the guru sounding shit or weird stuff like defending value of insect life or polyamory or any of the awfully convenient overlap of supposedly cold rationalists with hippie/techbro Silicon Valley culture and ethos is advised. But sometimes I think I am not harsh enough - listening to Yudkowsky lately I would not be surprised if he founded some Unabomber style cult set out to bomb datacenters to prevent AI apocalypse, which would be logical step if they really believed in the Truth of apocalypse so firmly and unshakenly. So there is that.
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