Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

[Scott1328]

And these are the paragons of rationality in the world today.

Not my paragons, I didn't vote for 'em.

[Mr.Samsa]

And these are the paragons of rationality in the world today.

Not my paragons, I didn't vote for 'em.

Sorry, not paragons, I meant parallelograms. They're parallelograms of rationality.

[Seth]

And these are the paragons of rationality in the world today.

Not my paragons, I didn't vote for 'em.

Sorry, not paragons, I meant parallelograms. They're parallelograms of rationality.

No, they are the obtuse triangles of rationality.

[surreptitious57]

Now there are good points in The Twelve Virtues like avoiding confirmation bias and not treating every hypothesis as equal though the prose is not as
one would expect given the subject matter. I have no idea if this is deliberate or not but logical concepts can only be written about in a specific way
One cannot be too liberal with terminology otherwise meaning can get lost in translation. It also seems too laboured. A simple definition of what the
scientific method is and the difference between evidence and proof plus a brief summary of the major logical fallacies would have been just enough
Bullet points written in plain and simple language which a child could understand so without any need for either hyperbole or metaphor. The Twelve
Virtues by comparison is some what deep and heavy and philosophical and even the title is pretentious. Science and maths are complex subjects but
that in and of itself is no reason to make explanations of them complex. And so less word salad and much tighter definitions would have been better

He says he was getting over quarter of a million hits a week when he started posting at Less Wrong so he obviously has some serious influence in the
artificial intelligence community. I also notice that he is mostly self taught. I take that to mean he has no formal higher education. However as long
as he himself is just as rigorous in his methodology as he expects others to be who read The Twelve Virtues then that should not really be a problem

On a totally different note I would very much like to see you post more if that be possible now. You do not really seem to want to return to Rat Skep
and though it is a lot quieter here you will not have Cito to deal with. He is a member but will not bother you as such. And so if you can now I would
be grateful to see you contribute more. I suspect a few others may also though I can only speak for myself as such. So just have a think about it now

[Mr.Samsa]

Now there are good points in The Twelve Virtues like avoiding confirmation bias and not treating every hypothesis as equal though the prose is not as
one would expect given the subject matter.

Of course there are good points, he says nothing profound or insightful so reaching the minimum criteria of a "good" point is a practical inevitability.

The Twelve
Virtues by comparison is some what deep and heavy and philosophical and even the title is pretentious.

But it's not deep or heavy or philosophical. It's a simplistic dealing of a topic wrapped in wankery.

Science and maths are complex subjects but
that in and of itself is no reason to make explanations of them complex. And so less word salad and much tighter definitions would have been better

The problem is more that he needed to deal with them in a more complex way. Describing science as a leaf on the wind or whatever isn't helpful.

He says he was getting over quarter of a million hits a week when he started posting at Less Wrong so he obviously has some serious influence in the
artificial intelligence community.

Just note that by "artificial intelligence community" you mean "crazy people online who like to talk about robots". He obviously holds no weight or relevance to actual experts on the topic (except occasionally when he tries to debate them and they laugh at him).

I also notice that he is mostly self taught. I take that to mean he has no formal higher education. However as long
as he himself is just as rigorous in his methodology as he expects others to be who read The Twelve Virtues then that should not really be a problem

It's clear that he's "self-taught" as he doesn't know what he's talking about at all.

[Scott1328]

I wonder if any of the departed members will return now that Thwoth has stepped down as lead moderator.

[Mr.Samsa]

Depends who takes up the throne and what they do with it. Kiore usually has a sensible head on his shoulders so he could make it work, it's just whether he has the will and patience to battle against all the other mods who want vaguely defined rules and subjective judgements of infractions to be the standard.

[pErvinalia]

Twath is gone? That's good news. I wonder what numpty they will get to replace him?

[DaveDodo007]

I like Thwoth as a poster and he was quite reasonable when you PM'ed him. The problem with ratskep was the membership's inability to countenance the views that were different from the collective. To blame the mods for all the ebil in the world is to ignore the closed minded wolves of perpetual butthurt howling at their door demanding that some poster or other be banned for non groupthink.

[piscator]

An employee of mine joined Ratskep. The first time he was involved in a debate, one of the mods started purposely misspelling his handle to mock him. Others joined in the fun as it went on.
The first time he did it, he got a modnote saying purposely misspelling a user's handle was against the rules. So he PM'd the staff with a few examples of when other members and particularly moderators did the same thing to him.
Ratskep never replied. So now no one I know personally has any use for Ratskep.

[DaveDodo007]

I have no time for evolutionary psychology and have called it out on this very forum but claiming we are not part of some biological determinism is akin to claiming we have free will. Are you seriousy claiming that people's political opinions are reached through analytical thought and not just emotional/peer pressure?

There are so many odd assumptions here that I'm not entirely sure you meant to respond to me as it seems to have little relevance to what I wrote. In case you did mean to respond to me, I'll try to clarify some points:

1) I haven't denied that biology plays a role. My claim is that it doesn't play the specific role that Eliezer needs it to. In other words, general biological functions or predispositions might lead us to a particular conclusion or behavior but that's not the same as saying that something is an evolutionary adaptation, which is a more restricted type of behavior.

I think it does, both evolution and human evolution still play a part in human tribalistic thinking or motivational thinking if you will. I can't say you and rEv are stupid because that would be false. I can say that to move beyond your tribalistic parameters makes you uncomfortable and therefore you come to the conclusion that it is wrong. You both rationalize feeling and then think you are rational.

2) even if my claim made implications about the existence of free will (it doesn't), that's not a problem. There are a number of good arguments in favour of free will and the acceptance or rejection of determinism doesn't necessarily have any relevance at all.

Non sequitur is a non sequitur, my apologies and ignore it.

3) where did the distinction between analytic and emotional reasoning come from? You seem to be conflating analytic with "non-biological" and emotional with "biological" when there's no reason to think that. Rejecting that there is a specific evolutionary adaptation towards political stances does not mean political stances are carefully reasoned out.

People can have analytic thought processes and critical thinking ability when it comes to politics. I'm simply pointing out that they decide to follow their feeling instead and then try rationalize their emotions. This works when it comes to politics so there is no need to change it except if you want an honest debate, which unfortunately most people don't. This is why politicians are not held in high esteem because they exploit this and are then blamed for the people's own gullibility.

[Strontium Dog]

An employee of mine joined Ratskep. The first time he was involved in a debate, one of the mods started purposely misspelling his handle to mock him. Others joined in the fun as it went on.
The first time he did it, he got a modnote saying purposely misspelling a user's handle was against the rules. So he PM'd the staff with a few examples of when other members and particularly moderators did the same thing to him.
Ratskep never replied. So now no one I know personally has any use for Ratskep.

Surely you're not implying there are double standards over there, are you? The very idea!

[DaveDodo007]

An employee of mine joined Ratskep. The first time he was involved in a debate, one of the mods started purposely misspelling his handle to mock him. Others joined in the fun as it went on.
The first time he did it, he got a modnote saying purposely misspelling a user's handle was against the rules. So he PM'd the staff with a few examples of when other members and particularly moderators did the same thing to him.
Ratskep never replied. So now no one I know personally has any use for Ratskep.

You are missing the whole point of ratskep as it allows closed minded people to believe they are intelligent and skeptical whilst living in an echo chamber. They also get to ban anyone who disagrees with the current narrative so it must be true.

[piscator]

Well, that site was formed from the culture clique of a noted firebrand and public figure of a contentious intellectual stance, so it doesn't take much effort to foresee it's going to attract people who want to contend. They knew they were bound to ban a lot of assholes.
Certain of the fora there are dominated by a clique of bitter people with too much time on their hands. This happens in forums. But at Ratskep there are a lot of mods and former mods in this crew, which doesn't speak well of the site's culture.

[JimC]

Well, that site was formed from the culture clique of a noted firebrand and public figure of a contentious intellectual stance, so it doesn't take much effort to foresee it's going to attract people who want to contend. They knew they were bound to ban a lot of assholes.
Certain of the fora there are dominated by a clique of bitter people with too much time on their hands. This happens in forums. But at Ratskep there are a lot of mods and former mods in this crew, which doesn't speak well of the site's culture.

Do you mean the RDF of old?

Rationalia, of course, was formed from the weirdest segment of RDF after it imploded...