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Notes -
Disclaimer: this is a serious test for shady thinking. My apologies. Consider this a strawman, and please try to confront a steelman.
Note: see disclaimer above. This is shady thinking in note format.
EDIT: This is mostly in response to https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-is-the-academic-job-market-so particularly thinking about Scott analyzing how the academic job market actually works. I bet Scott's analysis is super annoying to many of those in the market, and likewise super satisfying to others. My thesis is that the others are rationalists and the many are not.
idea
rationalists explain foreign things from "first principles"
they liken themselves to newton and hooke, exploring new frontiers
for better or worse
to the experts in the field, they are cringe and dilettante, sneer worthy
the problem
within every field, there are certain "touchy areas"
everyone understands the truth but pretends not to
a bigger problem
rationalists home in on touchy areas
rationalists can't "understand the truth but pretend not to"
rationalists "say the quiet part out loud"
the solution
demonize the rationalists
sneer at the rationalists
how cringe, what baby
One thing that people hate, of course, is the name "rationalism". It's conceited. Doesn't everyone think they are rational? What makes rationalists so special?
Relevant Hanania has a good answer to this question, defining rationalism thusly:
I think this gets at what you are saying. "Rationalism" is primarily about the ability or desire to examine things that others consider taboo.
This is also how a rationalist lay person can make insights and connections that a scientist with decades of training cannot. The taboos in academia are so strong that there are low-hanging fruit everyone. Infamously, HBD has great explanatory power which is completely tabooed inside the academia.
Now, in academia, does everyone really "understand the truth but pretend not to"? I don't think so. People's ability to self-deceive is very strong. For every person in the social sciences who secretly believes in HBD, there are 10 blank-slaters. Social conformity bias shapes beliefs. It's just less powerful in rationalists, whose lack of conformity also makes them irritating.
I would be curious if rationalists are even less "social conformity" biased. I'd guess the average rationalist grew up an outcast who became (often irrationally) suspicious of the ingroup, and gravitated to outgroups to fulfill their social needs and went on to justify their continual social exclusion via their own intelligence whether they were or not.
They are just as influenced by social conformity, but through an inverted/rejection/wound/resentment model that leaves them able to see through the blind spots of the normies, but just as biased when it comes to the particular outgroups they identify with. Which is still valuable to have, but the self congratulations are probably unwarranted.
This reminds me of how, it seems to me, a disproportionate number of people who make an identity out of being atheists (as opposed to just being atheists) are people who grew up in oppressive religious households and rebelled against it*. Similarly, there is a difference between people who just take some good ideas from rationalism, on the one hand, and people who make an identity out of being rationalists, on the other.
It does not help matters that rationalism was started by a guy who has what could fairly be called very extreme and dogmatic feelings about a certain topic (artificial intelligence) and that so many prominent rationalists are from the same Bay Area milieu, both of which things give the movement a sort of cloistered vibe that to some observers contrasts oddly (although not necessarily fairly) with its professed goal of pure reason.
*This is even more, and more obviously, the case for people who are into stuff like black metal and/or Satanism. Not that I think there is anything wrong with the vast majority of Satanism - which, from what I can tell, is mostly a fun hobby rather than some serious desire to do evil.
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