Comment by sunshowers
4 days ago
I don't disagree, but to steelman the case for (neo)rationalism: one of its fundamental contributions is that Bayes' theorem is extraordinarily important as a guide to reality, perhaps at the same level as the second law of thermodynamics; and that it is dramatically undervalued by larger society. I think that is all basically correct.
(I call it neorationalism because it is philosophically unrelated to the more traditional rationalism of Spinoza and Descartes.)
I don't understand what "Bayes' theorem is a good way to process new data" (something that is not at all a contribution of neorationalism) has to do with "human beings are capable of using this process effectively at a conscious level to get to better mental models of the world." I think the rationalist community has a thing called "motte and bailey" that would apply here.
Where Bayes' theorem applies in unconventional ways is not remotely novel for "rationalism" (maybe only in their strange busted hand wavy circle jerk "thought experiments"). This has been the domain of statistical mechanics long before Yudkowski and other cult leaders could even probably mouth "update your priors".
I don't know, most of science still runs on frequentist statistics. Juries convict all the time on evidence that would never withstand a Bayesian analysis. The prosecutor's fallacy is real.
Most science runs on BS with a cursory amount of statistics slapped on top so everyone can feel better about it. Weirdly enough, science still works despite not being rational. Rationalists seem to think science is logical when in reality it works for largely the same reasons the free-market does; throw shit at the wall and maybe support some of the stuff that works.
As if these neorationalist are building a model and markov chain monte carlo sampling their life decisions.
That is the bullshit part.
Agreed, yeah.