Whenever the rationalist writers start talking about engineering, programming, or machine learning in technical terms I have a sudden Gell-Mann Amnesia realization that these people's primary domain is writing and pontificating, with little to no actual experience with engineering, programming, or machine learning.
I don't know any engineers who would characterize the world as being simply defined by "a few simple formulae"
Meanwhile, the rationalist community has an abnormally large reverence for engineers, programmers, and machine learning experts as if they were superhuman:
> But to these I’d add that a sufficiently smart engineer has never been burned by arguments above his skill level before,
Really? Sufficiently smart engineers have never encountered arguments above their skill level? Are we to assume that engineers are at the peak of logic and reasoning and skill? Is this an attempt to pander to an engineering audience? Or an actual belief that engineers have superhuman levels of logic?
Finally, I'm growing tired of the way rationalist writings go out of their way to self-congratulate rationalists while placing the rest of the population into the unenlightened normie category that we're all supposed to look down upon:
> The people I know who are best at taking ideas seriously are those who are smartest and most rational