Why don’t rationalists win more?
The following list comes from a presentation I gave at a Slate Star Codex meetup in 2018.
- Thinkers vs. doers: selection effects [1] and a mutually-reinforcing tendency to talk instead of doing [2]
- Theoretical models spread without selection [2]
- Inability and unwillingness to cooperate [2]
- People who are more interested in instrumental rationality leave the community [2]
- Focusing on the future leads to a lack of immediate plans [2]
- Pessimism due to a focus on problems [1]
- Success mostly depends on specific skills, not general rationality [1]
- Online communities are fundamentally incapable of increasing instrumental rationality (“a chair about jogging”) [3]
- “Why Don’t Rationalists Win?”, Adam Zerner2015
- “The Craft & The Community—A Post-Mortem & Resurrection”, bendini2017
- “Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality”, Patri Friedman2010
- “What Is Rationalist Berkeley’s Community Culture?”, Zvi Mowshowitz2017
- “Slack Club”, The Last Rationalist2019
- “Where are All the Successful Rationalists?”, Applied Divinity Studies2020
- “Rationality !== Winning”, Raemon2023