#they're teaching me data entry next!!!

[sightoru]

y'all remember that red coat I posted the other day? I got TWO compliments on it

[drbased]

Do you have an opinion of the online rational-sphere? (Such as lesswrong and everything adjacent.)

Separately from your opinion from them as a movement/community, what do you think of their "teachings" about rational thought?

I must admit, I'm not aware of them. I associate the word 'rational' with atheism, but from what I can see, 'lesswrong' is about teaching you how to think. And straight off the bat, this whole concept screams manosphere-adjacent. 'Rational', like 'logical' is one of those heavily male-coded words that allows a man to think he's better than you with your silly emotional woman-brain. And just to confirm my suspicions, this website seems a bit too interested in AI. Like hell, AI is mentioned in the fist entry on the library page.

Just think about this for a second: the three subjects here are 'rationality, ambition and AI'. Those things, especially the last one, have nothing to do with each other. Not according to him though:

This is so funny because no it's not. Maybe this guy's niche area is, but the majority of AI is being used to steal data, steal artwork, steal jobs and make spam. If your understanding of AI isn't that it's primarily a tool to make our actual human lives better, then you're a damn fool.

These techbros are obsessed with the idea that AI - something that processes the world from a bottom-up approach, that is, learns by understanding each individual pixel/fragment of information - can share the same word and therefore meaning of intelligence that humans - something that processes the world from a top-down approach, that is, learns by understanding the broad picture first without needing to know details - have. To me, to think our minds can be replicated and 'improved on' is such a devaluing of the value of not just humanity but life itself. And I fail to see how you can think rationally when you don't understand that a world of perfect autonomous machines making perfect decisions means nothing if none of them can feel anything.

If someone is telling you how to 'think rationally', that's always going to be from the context of their own brain. No-one on this god's green earth thinks entirely 100% rationally - we all have our biases and blind spots, and that's fine. The subjectivity of our experiences is entirely what makes us human. If you're telling me to 'think more rationally' without addressing the nature of the self in its relation to reality, and what morality, emotions and co-operation mean in our collective journey in thinking and behaving more rationally, then I'm naturally going to be suspicious of you.

And indeed, the more I read, my suspicions are increasingly confirmed:

(Jesus christ, just look at how this guy chooses his examples. Look at how these 'facts' are all so politically and morally loaded and yet they're conveniently placed next to each other as if they're on the same level of legitimacy and importance. This whole article screams 'I once hated those SJWs but now I have a more intellectual and balanced approach, meanwhile almost all of the examples of shit argumentation he gives just so happen to be SJW-esque.)

Everything about this website just screams motivational shit for mgtow-ers. It's all about being the thinkiest brainiest boy who can bend reality to his will and therefore achieve success with his pet AI wanking him off, up until the AI achieves sentience and vores him. These men are libertarian individualists - it's all about you being rational, and how you can use that rational thinking to get on in your own life. But also, for all the individualism, there's a deep insecurity where they feel they need to be told how to think.

I'm sure there's plenty of actually good stuff in here but as part of my 'rational thinking' I tend to pick up on vibes very easily. Pro-tip, it's always about what's not said as much as what is said. And the way people phrase things, how they choose to lay out information in order of importance matters. Not to say that you have to dilute their subject matter - I definitely don't with my discussions on radical feminism - but if there's a known evil associated with what you're discussing and you don't mention it straight away, I assume that you have a strong bias and something to hide. (Which is why I always make it clear on my stance on transgender people and why I refuse to be flippant on the subject, by the by).

A few things to note here:

I've already covered the first paragraph

'heavily motivated by trying to improve the world as much as possible' - in what way? What are your end goals, what are your aims? Being this kind of vague can be a dogwhistle to anything, and given the wider context of not just this website but the culture wars in general, I absolutely read this as ayn-rand-esque

because, if these people want to improve the world, why do they think AI has anything to do with it? what about the dismantling of oppressive systems and finding alternative approaches to our government and economic system of capitalism?

What about the environmental impact of AI?

These men are so clearly out of touch with reality (seriously, AI might be an existential threat?):

I've had an admittedly very brief scan of this report but everything I've read so far reminds me strongly of what super-genius elon musk thinks about simulation theory, debunked here.

I also followed a link to their 'alignment forum' which seems to be identical in format. And here's the first post I saw, by some different author:

This all screams so out of touch with reality. That stereotype is old - most people now associate AI with theft, spam, taking jobs away from artists, and using up as much energy as whole countries. For all the obsession with rationality, this is religious apocalyptic ferver - these men want to believe that AI will become so powerful as to destroy us all - as opposed to, say, literal climate change which AI is accelerating.

I've focussed so much on AI here because I think it says a lot about their understanding of 'rationality'. The maleness of all this jumps out. I've spoken on this male obsession before - this idea that people aren't logical enough, but AI is logical, so AI will be better than all of us, and with our new Logical Overlords to guide us society will be Better. This is just repackaged meritocracy capitalism which is repackaged religious thought. And it's all right-wing thought which says that there are certain ways of being and certain types of being which are objectively better and earn and prove their right to run society by being 'better'.

Philosophy is such a broad spectrum of ideas, and trying to compile it all into one place to figure out the One True Way how to think is not something I would suggest. Because in my experience, changing my life was not just about thinking but rather recontextualising my whole concept of myself as an active, present agent in the real world and therefore learning that if I'm not using my thoughts alongside actions then they don't mean anything. I've learned that there is a real value in recognising where your selfhood has been fragmented and seeking to restore a complete sense of self - because if you think about it, you were already a whole: that's literally what you are, there aren't parts of you floating around in the ether. My thoughts are mine, my experiences mine, my beliefs and morality mine. I'm at the center of my existence, and any philosophy/school of thought/psychological discipline that doesn't address that right out of the gate is an immediate write-off to me.

I've actually delved into some really dark existential terrors and came to the conclusion that at a certain level down, you have to think irrationally. If you face pure 'objectivity' then you'll end up obsessing with how having car like next door has would make your life easier, so therefore in order to be more honest about your relationship with the world, you would have to either feel miserable about not being able to drive or seek to remedy that immediately. This is the mechanism by which I tried to live my life through my whole adulthood and this is what caused me to stay depressed. In the end, the only 'logic' you really need to remember is that this is your life and that feeling good feels good - your emotions and actions don't need to line up with your perception of what 'objectivity' is, and you can choose to be happy regardless. Other people would label that irrational and vapid, as I once did, but I've found it's actually the most rational thing there is, and above all it's honest. It requires a humility and honesty that the techbros will always lack, because their obsession with rationality will always be anti-human.

This website wants to be the thinking man's conservatism, but just imagine trying to debate with any one of these men IRL: they're going to start off thinking they're better than you because they ~~think rationally~~ (because they've spent time in a community that is ostensibly dedicated to that) and they're never going to engage with you in good faith, because they're always going to be wanting to deconstruct your arguments on a purely technical level, whilst entirely ignoring their own logical fallacies, biases and agenda. And that's the danger in all this - these men want to think rationally, they want to make the world a better place, but they also don't want to engage with uncomfortable moral ideas, especially those that actually challenge and question their privilege. Being 'rational' is a smoke-screen.

I just scrolled back up to read that you wanted me to comment on this separate from them as a movement, but in all honesty I couldn't have engaged with this any other way - and I think what I've written here illustrates why. If their teachings are any good, then I recommend searching for them elsewhere. Just as with critique of transgenderism, I recommend not consuming right-wing websites for it. Nobody exists in a vacuum; anything proposing to be 'objective' is always going to be dripping with the ideology of the writer. As I said earlier, I don't think any website or community that wants to compile complex philosophical ideas into one space that teaches you how to think is a good thing. Regardless of the legitimacy of some of the teachings, they're all part of a wider whole, and I do not like that whole. Even the name 'LessWrong' screams arrogant to me. You can find these ideas elsewhere, and I would recommend that.