Comment by throwanem
5 days ago
That we know about, I suppose. We didn't know at one point there were any outright rationalist cults, after all, whether involved in sex, murder, both, or otherwise. That is, we didn't know there were subsets of self-identifying "rationalists" so erroneous in their axioms and tendentious in their analysis as to succeed in putting off others.
But a movement, that demonstrates so remarkably elevated rate of generating harmful beliefs in action as this, warrants exactly the sort of increased scrutiny this article vainly strives to deflect. That effort is in itself interesting, as such efforts always are.
I mean, as a rationalist, I can assure you it's not nearly as sinister a group as you seem to make it out to be, believe it or not. Besides, the explanation is simpler than this article makes it out to be- most rationalists are from California, California is the origin of lots of cults.
> Besides, the explanation is simpler than this article makes it out to be- most rationalists are from California, California is the origin of lots of cults
This isn't the defense of rationalism you seem to imagine it to be.
I don't think the modal rationalist is sinister. I think he's ignorant, misguided, nearly wholly lacking in experience, deeply insecure about it, and overall just excessively resistant to the idea that it is really possible, on any matter of serious import, for his perspective radically to lack merit. Unfortunately, this latter condition proves very reliably also the mode.
> his perspective radically to lack merit
What perspective would that be?
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