Published on September 4, 2024 9:39 AM GMT
The Pragmatosphere and Less Wrong both share rationalism as a fundamental characteristic of their philosophies. Less Wrong was founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky in 2009, whereas the Pragmatosphere was founded by Blithering Genius in 2013. The Pragmatosphere is much smaller, so its followers have more unified beliefs. By contrast, Less Wrong is a big tent movement and is much larger. So although there’s a lot of beliefs and ideas associated with Less Wrong, not all of its followers perfectly overlap in their beliefs.
There are many differences and disagreements between the two rationalist movements. The following observations and criticisms apply towards Less Wrong, from the perspective of the Pragmatosphere. Since Less Wrong is a big tent as aforementioned, not all of these criticisms necessarily apply to every LessWronger. Some of these criticisms also highlight things that we wish had more emphasis within Less Wrong and related movements, so they may not necessarily be disagreements.
- Biological realism is not a main tenet. Many LessWrongers reject aspects of biology.Most of them believe in morality. Most of them are humanists.There are disagreements relating to “Effective Altruism”.It’s rational to be concerned with how the advancement of AI will affect humans. However, we predict that the misuse and/or abuse of AI by humans will be a much bigger problem than AI misalignment.Some of them are too optimistic about technology and its (future) effects on humanity (e.g. space colonization, cryogenics, genetic engineering, etc).Some of them have too much faith in academic research.There isn’t enough emphasis on Georgism and resource scarcity in those circles.Most of them greatly underestimate how much overpopulation is a potential threat to humanity. Like most people, they’re more concerned with climate change, for various reasons (e.g. the negative consequences of climate change are more immediately noticeable than overpopulation).Most of them don’t support using reproduction licenses to enforce eugenic population control.Most of them don’t apply the subject-object dichotomy for understanding truth and knowledge, value, free will and determinism, etc.Most of them aren’t consciously aware of Sapir-Whorf Theory, its implications, or its applications.The rest of their epistemology is hit-or-miss.
The gateway to a rational community is the Abyss, the recognition that are no assumptions that we can take for granted in philosophy. Even though the Less Wrong forum was created to focus on promoting rationality, it’s mostly a faction of people who are preoccupied with AI misalignment, futurism, and effective altruism. We believe that they’re confusing their unexamined assumptions for rationality, as most people do. Eliezer Yudkowsky is justified in criticizing mainstream academic philosophy since most of it is frankly garbage, but I don’t believe that the philosophy that he’s created is much better, for all the reasons that I’ve stated here.
Ayn Randian Objectivists also claim and think they are rationalists, but I have a low opinion about them and their philosophy. In my experience, most Randian Objectivists merely parrot Ayn Rand quotes, while choosing to not think for themselves. The average LessWronger is definitely more rational, intelligent, and open-minded than the average Objectivist.
Even though The Pragmatosphere and Less Wrong claim and believe they are rationalist, they both propose remarkably different theories of epistemology. The beliefs, values, and priorities for humanity that both movements hold are also extraordinarily different from each other. We encourage more Less Wrongers to read and think about the works of the Pragmatosphere, but we also believe it’s unlikely that the two rational movements will ever merge to any great extent. Most of my posts on LessWrong haven’t gotten a lot of attention, and the ones that transgress the forum’s moral boundaries received a lot of downvotes. The effective altruism forum also banned me without giving me any warning or notice as to why I was banned.
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