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One other thing I should really clarify and that the @nytimes piece got *severely* wrong: while I believe there are very strong sociological and even causal links between rationalism and NRx (especially in the Silicon Valley homes bases) their ideological and methodological
relationship is much more complex...closer to e.g. two attracting opposite magnetic poles or to fascism and communism, etc. Let me try to explain and please bear in mind that both sides (rationalism/EA, which I am lumping together, and NRx/Dark Enlightenment, again lumping)
are quite internally heterogeneous and I am only describing how I see central tendencies not the views of any individual involved.
1. Rationalism/EA are analytical, positivistic, rationalistic, progressive (not in the US politics sense, but in the Compteian sense), etc.
1. Rationalism/EA are analytical, positivistic, rationalistic, progressive (not in the US politics sense, but in the Compteian sense), etc.
attracted to overarching planned visions of the future, automated luxury communism, AI utopias or dystopias, etc. and if it metastasizes turns into extreme technocracy. NRx is emotive, violent, antipositivist, sardonic, aesthetic, extreme private property-oriented
and reactionary. In fact, in the latest expansion of @CivGame these are roughly represented by the (competing) ideologies of Synthetic Technocracy and Corporate Libertarianism. THESE ARE REALLY NOT AT ALL THE SAME IDEAS AND NO ONE SHOULD THINK I AM SUGGESTING THAT.
2. This said, I actually think that, especially in the Valley, there is a significant sociological link between these tendencies. They attract fairly similar types of white male spectrum geniuses and anytime you go to a sufficiently exclusive rationalist party there will be
a crew of NRxers there. Furthermore I think that the common claim that many people find NRx via the rationalist world is probably true.
3. How does that work? One stylized way to see it is in the evolution from e.g. @ESYudkowsky through to Yarvin with @slatestarcodex,
3. How does that work? One stylized way to see it is in the evolution from e.g. @ESYudkowsky through to Yarvin with @slatestarcodex,
@robinhanson and @balajis as intermediate points. I think rigorously nerdy rationalism tends to lead one towards ambitious schemes for reimagining and "optimized" world that one pursues far more in one's mind and conversations with a small group of other rationalists than
in real partnership with, deployment to or conversation with anyone outside that circle. Perhaps the prototypical example is Futarchy (see here: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html), @robinhanson's idea for taking the rationalist separation of fact and value to its logical extreme by
voting on values gauged by objective quantitative metrics and then using prediction markets to separately gather the information on these. Whatever the potential merits of these ideas developed and pursued in some way (and some of my ideas like Quadratic Voting and
Harberger Taxation belong roughly in this general category), there is virtually 0 chance of they being picked up based purely on logical arguments expressed in a high rationalist tone, which can easily be a source of frustration-come-cynicism, as we see in @robinhanson's later
thinking where he starts to conclude that a lack of adoption of these ideas is prima facia evidence that most politics and talk of social progress is a cynical and perhaps even violent power game. That sort of cynicism, in turn, naturally leads to overdrawn
focus on exiting, "disrupting", etc. the social fabric as we see in the thinking of e.g. @balajis and @patrissimo to be able to play out these radical visions more freely. From there, the next logical steps are corporate monarchy type visions, which bleed into actual monarchy
and all the romanticism, aesthetics and reactionary sentiments associated with them.
4. Does this chain seem far fetched or extended? Perhaps. Yet the single most common and most touching form of "fan mail" I get are from people who were on such a conveyor belt and said
4. Does this chain seem far fetched or extended? Perhaps. Yet the single most common and most touching form of "fan mail" I get are from people who were on such a conveyor belt and said
reading my work helped them exit and get back on the path towards broad social empathy, respect and democratic spirited treating of a range of other citizens as epistemic peers and co-creators of more inclusive futures.
For the ultra-tech geeks in the audience, technologies may be more useful than ideologies. In a stylized sense, rationalism is basically the AI way of thinking, NRx is roughly the bitcoin maximalist way of thinking and the alternative that I favor is roughly the
Engelbart-Kay- @audreyt human-centered design/network/Ostromian commons way of thinking.
