Comment by gopher_space | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gopher_space | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Ever had a conversation with someone who literally cannot reexamine their base principles? Like, it's functionally impossible for them? That's everyone's central criticism of rationalists.

Being able to do that is pretty much "entry level cognition" for a lot of us. You should be doing that yourself and doing it all the time if you want to play with the big kids.

One of the things I really miss about the old nerds-only programmer's pit setup was the amount of room we had for instruction, especially regarding social issues. The scenes from the college department in Wargames were really on the nose, but highlight a form of education that was unavoidable if you couldn't just dip out of a conversation.

What a deeply confused criticism of rationalists, who are possibly the only meaningful social group in existence to celebrate changing their minds in response to new evidence.

It's truly fascinating how this thread is full of demonstrations of the exact phenomenon being discussed!

Accused of being unable to reexamine your base principles, you respond:

> rationalists, who are possibly the only meaningful social group in existence to celebrate changing their minds in response to new evidence

Which is exactly the kind of base principle that could use some reexamination.

That's an empirical claim, not a "base principle" (whatever that is). And, uh, yeah, I agree that I am not re-examining my beliefs in response to a bunch of random unsupported accusations by people who are demonstrably not familiar with the thing they're attacking. You should update your beliefs in response to evidence, not in response to social attacks.

Again, this is exactly what we're talking about. You expressed a belief about "rationalists" and the history of people changing their minds about things, I suggested maybe you should reexamine that belief, and you said nope absolutely not. (In a condescending way.) This is the kind of engagement that is being critiqued in this thread.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com