Yeah the "rational" part always seemed a smokescreen for the ability to produce and ingest their own and their associates methane gases.
I get it, I enjoyed being told I'm a super genius always right quantum physicist mathematician by the girls at Stanford too. But holy hell man, have some class, maybe consider there's more good to be done in rural Indiana getting some dirt under those nails..
The meta with these people is “my brilliance comes with an ego that others must cater to.”
I find it sadly hilarious to watch academic types fight over meaningless scraps of recognition like toddlers wrestling for a toy.
That said, I enjoy some of the rationalist blog content and find it thoughtful, up to the point where they bravely allow their chain of reasoning to justify antisocial ideas.
It's a conflict as old as time. What do you do when an argument leads to an unexpected conclusion? I think there are two good responses: "There's something going on here, so let's dig into it," or, "There's something going on here, but I'm not going to make time to dig into it." Both equally valid.
In real life, the conversation too often ends up being, "This has to be wrong, and you're an obnoxious nerd for bothering me with it," versus, "You don't understand my argument, so I am smarter, and my conclusions are brilliantly subversive."
Wisdom tends to resemble shallow aphorisms despite being framed as universal. Rather than interrogating wisdom's relevance or depth, many people simply repeat it uncritically as a shortcut to insight. This reflects more about how people use wisdom than the content itself, but I believe that behavior contributes to our perception of the importance of wisdom.
It frequently reduces complex problems into comfortable oversimplifications.
Maybe you don't think that is real wisdom, and maybe that's sort of your point, but then what does real wisdom look like? Should wisdom make you considerate of the multiple contexts it does and doesn't affect? Maybe the issue is we need to better understand how to evaluate and use wisdom. People who truly understand a piece of wisdom should communicate deeply rather than parroting platitudes.
Also to be frank, wisdom is a way of controlling how others perceive a problem, and is a great way to manipulate others by propping up ultimatums or forcing scope. Much of past wisdom is unhelpful or highly irrelevant to modern life.
e.g. "Good things come to those who wait."
Passive waiting rarely produces results. Initiative, timing, and strategic action tend to matter more than patience.
I have enjoyed learning the context and original meaning behind many of these aphorisms and words of wisdom, and that is the true utility of learning them, so that you can subvert them and invert them. Cultural touchstones have value because of shared context. The specific utility and applicability of wisdom varies because conversation is context specific and outcome dependent based on the adversarial vs collaborative nature of the dialogue.
Rarely is it collaborative and the onus is on the learner to understand the benefit with no context into the importance or relevance of the information. My point is that the value is lost frequently because of human behavior.
It feels like a shield of sorts, "I am a rationalist therefore my opinion has no emotional load, it's just facts bro how dare you get upset at me telling xyz is such-and-such you are being irrational do your own research"
but I don't know enough about it, I'm just trolling.
I get it, I enjoyed being told I'm a super genius always right quantum physicist mathematician by the girls at Stanford too. But holy hell man, have some class, maybe consider there's more good to be done in rural Indiana getting some dirt under those nails..