alt Hacker News> you implicitly claimed that "the 95%" indeed have such gatherings.
> As far as I can tell, the gatherings that they have are not of that nature.
I literally cited you an example of such a gathering. Do you refute it or just deny that it exists?
> And my claim is that it's actually trivial to tell who's a true believer and who isn't, because the concept of "true believer" does not pertain to "rationality" (by construction!)
That's your mistake. The rationalists are irrational. Roko's basilisk, which I cited earlier, is an example of the sorts of ideas and beliefs they get up to which are irrational.
Your claim "This group is rational because they call themselves such" is unfounded. Trivially so. Just like the Christian Scientists aren't scientists just because it's part of their name.
> For example, you won't catch Scott Alexander demanding "donate to MIRI or the basilisk might reach back in time and torture you".
I never claimed universality. In fact, in response to you I explicitly said that the beliefs are diverse. Being able to cherry pick someone that's more rational than others and a part of the group doesn't prove that there aren't very influential members of the group who are generating a lot of fringe ideas. Specifically Eliezer Yudkowsky, the founder of LessWrong which is a core part of the rationality movement.
> And you have done nothing to establish this, and I believe you're incorrect.
I've established the meetups exist. I've established that a particularly nasty group came from these meetups, the Zizians. Specifically the founder got their start from the LessWrong forums and the "Center for Applied Rationality" [1] workshops (meetups).
Replies
> I literally cited you an example of such a gathering. Do you refute it or just deny that it exists?
You did nothing to attempt to establish that the gathering was of the nature you ascribe to it, and I see nothing in the Reddit post to support the claim.
> Roko's basilisk, which I cited earlier, is an example of the sorts of ideas and beliefs they get up to which are irrational.
You have done nothing to establish the commonality of such belief, nor have you clearly defined its boundaries. You commit the noncentral fallacy (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...) here and demonstrate outgroup homogeneity bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity).
> Your claim "This group is rational because they call themselves such"
No; my claim is based on reading their work and talking to them.
> I never claimed universality.
For your argument to work, you require evidence of a specific belief that is commonly asserted in the community despite a recognition that it is fringe and likely untrue.
> I've established that a particularly nasty group came from these meetups, the Zizians.
You did not in fact previously establish that the Zizians "came from those meetups". You merely mentioned them upthread. But even taking for granted that they "came from" the meetups (I haven't checked your current evidence but I'm sure it's adequate), this does nothing to establish that the meetups are "gatherings where they all proclaim that their beliefs are true even if they don't seriously believe them".
you two have fundamentally different readings of the statement "95 of them who don't take their eccentric beliefs as gospel truths and 5 who do."
One reading is the views are eccentric within the community (e.g. roko's basilisk). The other reading is eccentric view which come out of the community but are not held.
You introduced the claim that the 95% are larping along with the 5% and sharing the same proclaimations.
If you think that, it seems fair to ask you why. Most of the weird stuff (e.g. zizian) isnt accepted by the rationaist majority. A few unusual things are, like AI X-risk.
You seem to be banging on a stereotype. Yudkowsky doesn't speak for everyone (not even everyone on lesswrong) and AI safety/paranoia is an incredibly polarizing issue.
There's a loosely structured community of people who self-identify as "rationalist". There are some general themes of belief but no coherent platform, per-se. Some of them are nutjobs. Maybe at an elevated rate from general society, but not dramatically so.