#just linking to rationalwiki alone would send many of these people into a rage

[sabakos]

OK so like what is the deal with the rationalists every time you post about them there are new and wild details what are their beliefs why do you hate them. Sorry if you've answered this 1 billion times before

Nota Bene: This post is for informational purposes only, anyone who tries to argue or "debate" with me on it is getting blocked with no further warning.

Yeah, sorry, I've been a bit worn down by discourse so I think I'm going to mostly pass on this one and lean on someone else's work. Especially since RationalWiki (which, confusingly, predates and is mostly not aligned with Yudkowsky brand Rationalism) has a fairly thorough exposition.

It's certainly far from unbiased and I don't necessarily endorse everything in this article at the time of my posting, but I don't think it's unfair either. Here's a summary from the article:

The good bits are not original and the original bits are not good. The well-written explanations of cognitive biases are taken idea-for-idea from Kahneman. In contrast, the quantum physics sequence not only makes actual physicists throw things at walls, it builds to an essay arguing that you should use Yudkowsky's version of Bayesianism rather than empirical science.

I feel this is mostly true, except I would lean heavier on even the parts about cognitive biases also being fairly out of date at this point. Still far better than the quantum bayesian nonsense though, it's at least interestingly wrong. I would say that Kahneman's worth reading if you can be properly skeptical about him, but Yudkowsky isn't.

As for why I personally hate the Rationalists, well, it's like if the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on your door over a hundred times per year: you'd be polite the first few times, but after a dozen or so you'd probably put up a "No Solicitors" sign, and soon you'd start chasing them off with a shotgun. I have an overlapping set of hobbies with many of these people (e.g. philosophy, physics, computer science), which attracts a disproportionate number of them into my life. I then somehow (???) give these people the initial impression that I'm intelligent and thoughtful, but when it turns out that I'm unwilling to extend that courtesy of "thoughtfulness" to their insane pseudophilosophical beliefs, there's a great deal of friction. Especially so since one of the main vulnerabilities that this group plays on is their victims' need to feel intelligent, an opinion I categorically do not share about them!