I do not think rationalists are duped more easily than normies that never heard about Less Wrong, but people who claim to be the smartest people in the world should be held to higher standard, and claim that studying their super special sequences will make anyone as smart as they are should be put to close scrutiny.
If you are boasting you are Airborne Navy Seal Ranger specially trained in gorilla warfare, and get your ass regularly kicked by ordinary drunks in bar fights, people would be justified doubting the value of super secret martial arts training you offer.
I relate a lot. I have not read a lot of rationalists articles, but it seems to me that a lot of what they do is share ideas amongst themselves, but these ideas are not necessarily true or important, merely interesting. Few of these ideas have anything to do with the real world.
Nassim Taleb talks about putting skin in the game as a way to escape this intellectual circle jerking, because when you confront ideas with reality is the only way to know if there's any true truth to them. This follows Karl Popper's falsification principle: if your idea cannot be falsified (in the real world), then it's worthless.
I think the reason why there are no successful rationalists is because they don't want their precious ideas to actually be tested in the real world, they'll rather keep them unopened like collectionists do, and just admire them.
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Notes -
I do not think rationalists are duped more easily than normies that never heard about Less Wrong, but people who claim to be the smartest people in the world should be held to higher standard, and claim that studying their super special sequences will make anyone as smart as they are should be put to close scrutiny.
If you are boasting you are Airborne Navy Seal Ranger specially trained in gorilla warfare, and get your ass regularly kicked by ordinary drunks in bar fights, people would be justified doubting the value of super secret martial arts training you offer.
Obligatory link:
Where are All the Successful Rationalists?
Where are all the former losers who read the sequences, pulled themselves by their bootstraps and became brilliant winners?
I relate a lot. I have not read a lot of rationalists articles, but it seems to me that a lot of what they do is share ideas amongst themselves, but these ideas are not necessarily true or important, merely interesting. Few of these ideas have anything to do with the real world.
Nassim Taleb talks about putting skin in the game as a way to escape this intellectual circle jerking, because when you confront ideas with reality is the only way to know if there's any true truth to them. This follows Karl Popper's falsification principle: if your idea cannot be falsified (in the real world), then it's worthless.
I think the reason why there are no successful rationalists is because they don't want their precious ideas to actually be tested in the real world, they'll rather keep them unopened like collectionists do, and just admire them.
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