Comment by duxup

Great read.

I remember going to college and some graduate student, himself a philosophy major, telling me that nobody is as big a jerk as philosophy majors.

I don't know if it is really true, but it certainly felt true that folks looking for deeper answers about a better way to think about things end up finding what they believe is the "right" way and that tends to lead to branding other options as "wrong".

A search for certainty always seems to be defined or guided by people dealing with their own issues and experiences that they can't explain. It gets tribal and very personal and those kind of things become dark rabbit holes.

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>Jessica Taylor, an AI researcher who knew both Zizians and participants in Leverage Research, put it bluntly. “There’s this belief [among rationalists],” she said, “that society has these really bad behaviors, like developing self-improving AI, or that mainstream epistemology is really bad–not just religion, but also normal ‘trust-the-experts’ science. That can lead to the idea that we should figure it out ourselves. And what can show up is that some people aren't actually smart enough to form very good conclusions once they start thinking for themselves.”

Reminds me of some members of our government and conspiracy theorists who "research" and encourage people to figure it out themselves ...