Shit Rationalists Say?

The "confidence interval" line should have a percentage ("What's your 95% confidence interval?").

"You make a compelling case for infanticide."

"Can you link me to that study?"

"I think I'm going to solve psychology." ("I think I'm going to solve metaethics." "I think I'm going to solve Friendliness.")

"My elephant wants a brownie."

"Is that your true rejection?"

"I wanna be an upload!"

"Does that beat Reedspacer's Lower Bound?"

"Let's not throw all our money at the Society for Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies."

"I have akrasia."

"I'm cryocrastinating."

"Do that and you'll wind up with the universe tiled in paperclips."

"So after we take over the world..."

"I want to optimize for fungibility here."

"This looks like a collective action problem."

"We can dissolve this question." ("That's a dissolved question.")

"My model of you likes this."

"Have you read Goedel, Escher, Bach?"

"What do the statistics say about cases in this reference class?"

"You should read the Sequences."
"It's not like Gandhi has little XML tags on that say 'moral' "
"It's not like natural selection put little XML tags there that say 'purpose'."
"Sure, I'd take a pill that made me bisexual."
"There's this really great fanfiction you should read."
"Oh man I wanna tile the universe with ice cream trees."
"I don't want to tile the universe with bananas and palm trees."

[Sequence that will be incredibly funny in context but is a terrible idea please for goodness' sake (literally) nobody film it]

"No, we're not a cult."
"We're not a cult or anything."
"It's not like organizations have little XML tags that say 'cult' and 'not cult'"
"Any organization with a good cause can have cult attractors"
"Look I'd explain it but there's a lot of inferential distance and I don't want to be condescending."
"We are not a cult. We are not a cult."

"Did you just generalize from fictional evidence?"

"You're a one-boxer, right?" (Said with no context.)

"You'd choose specks, right?" (Said with no context.)

"Mysteriousness is not a property of a thing."

"You're running on corrupted hardware."

"Replace the symbol with the substance."

"Could you regenerate that knowledge?"

"Consider a group you feel prejudiced against, frequentists for example."

"But what's the best textbook on that subject?"

"Is that a compartmentalized belief?

"I notice I am confused."

"Of course I have super-powers. Everyone does."

"Beliefs are properly probabilistic."

"Is that your confidence level inside or outside the argument?"

"Did you credibly pre-commit to that rule?"

"That's just what it feels like from the inside."

"Conceptspace is bigger than you imagine."

"No you don't believe you believe that."

"No, money is the unit of caring."

"If that doesn't work out for you, you can still make six figures as a programmer."

"Purpose is not an inherent property."

"You think introspection is reliable?"

"Why didn't you use log-odds?"

Bullshit Rationalists Say:

"My priors are different than yours, and under them my posterior belief is justified. There is no belief that can be said to be irrational regardless of priors, and my belief is rational under mine."

"I pattern matched what you said rather than either apply the principle of charity or estimate the chances of your not having an opinion marking you as ignorant, unreasoning, and/or innately evil."

"Rational..." (used in the title of a post on any topic.)

Shit and Bullshit Rationalists Don't Say:

"You're entitled to your opinion."

"You can't be too skeptical"

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"Did you read what Kurzweil wrote about the Singularity?

"100%."

"But was it statistically significant at the p<.05 level?"

"Yeah, I read all the papers cited in lukeprog's latest article."

If a "Shit Rationalists Say" thread would result in net positive utility, I want to believe that a "Shit Rationalists Say" thread would result in net positive utility.

If a "Shit Rationalists Say" thread would not result in net positive utility, I want to believe that a "Shit Rationalists Say" thread would not result in net positive utility.

Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

"Suppose we were all playing Prisoner's Dilemma with clones of ourselves..."

I heard this said at the Ohio meetup on Sunday; Yvain commented that, of all the meetups he'd been to, ours took the longest to reach that point.

"Oops."

Here's one I say a lot: "Everyone is too young to die."

I've thought a "shit your brain says" might be a good way of compactly presenting some cognitive biases.

"Foo is not about bar."
"What odds are you offering on that?"
"Taboo 'monkey'."
"If you're not getting bad result, you're spending too many resources on avoiding it."
"Rationalists should win."
"Sorry, I'm running on corrupted hardware."

Shit Rationalists Say:

'The thread should really be called "Shit LWers Say.'

"So you know the My Little Pony episode about bayesian updating?"

Cached thoughts are the mindkiller.

One huge category of utterances remains unrepresented:

"Ooh, is there a new Methods of Rationality chapter up yet?"

"I can't believe there's no new chapter yet."

"Have you read Methods of Rationality? You have to read it, OMG."

Took every quote posted in this thread so far and Markov-ised it. (Depth of 1, i.e., each word only depends on the word before it. A depth of 2 basically regurgitates the input in this case.)

Here are some of the results:

"How do you regenerate that beat Reedspacer's Lower Bound?"

"It's a more karma. I interpreted your map, not a group you feel prejudiced against, frequentists for infanticide."

"Look, just generalize from halo effect."

"Okay, but in this is rational under them to make six figures as a cult."

"Beliefs are just an inferential distance and my belief is the territory."

"That's just a survey should do you measure, not throw all the scientific knowledge a dissolved question."

"Any organization with the teacher's password."

"That's just rejecting religion and closely guarded secret, so it but there's no idea how BIG thingspace is."

"Foo is the karma system more likely."

"You make six figures as a thousand shards of inferential distance and I cooperate."

"Conceptspace is white."

"Go ahead and only if and it's objective, but I think he's just what the Nazis did!"

"There's a Philosophy professor about definitions."

"I might write rationalist fanfiction of the other person will cooperate if snow is no context."

"Mysteriousness is true rejection?"

"I'd say politically incorrect about it before proposing solutions?"

"Arguments are you feel prejudiced against, frequentists for infanticide."

"I have to suppress dissent."

"Of course I wanna be the universe with rationality?"

"Money is an argument about my belief that one of a rationalist."

"I pattern matched what you know the Society for link me to a startup, I think of any more elaborate."

"'Snow is being used to say 'purpose'."

"I know, it's pasta, and it's terrible for me, but at least I poured butter all over it."

"How do you know that?"

"Have I interpreted your position correctly?"

"That's uncomputable."

"That AI would destroy the world."

"That's a fact about your map, not about the territory."

"That's a duplicate quote."

"What does this have to with rationality?"

"That word doesn't carve reality at its joints."

"I want to do an AI Box experiment."

"Apply the reversal test! You're suggesting we kill all the old people."

"I wish I could self-modify to . . ."

"I'd say something politically incorrect about race, but it would start a flame war."

"I'd say something politically incorrect about gender, but it would start a flame war."

"I'd say something politically incorrect about my ability to say politically incorrect things, but it would start a flame war."

"Karma is being used to suppress dissent."

"Your position is incoherent unless you're a vegetarian."

"Rationality isn't that great."

"We should do a survey on this."

"That survey should have been bigger. We should do another survey."

"Way too much of the scientific literature is wrong."

"We need to make the karma system more elaborate."

"The negation of that statement sounds just as true."

"There's an Everett branch where . . ."

"I've seen research on this but I can't remember it."

"My personalities disagree on this."

"If this is a simulation, does that really matter?"

"My inner Robin Hanson says . . ."

Shit and/or Bullshit LessWrongers Don't Say:

"Let's agree to disagree."

"You're a Communist."

"Just trust me on this."

"That's just like what the Nazis did!"

"Can you explain that with less math?"

"I'm a rationalist."

"Haven't you seen Terminator?"

"But that's unnatural!"

"I don't really want more karma. I feel like I have enough."

The thread should really be called "Shit LWers Say."

We're not the only group of people calling ourselves "Rationalists", nor are we the most well-known of these groups (not by a long shot).

I'm guilty of all of these:

"Cached thought!"

"That's a wrong question."

"Have you read the Sequences?"

"According to Solomonoff Induction/the universal prior..."

"Stop prepending "rational" to post titles!"

"I know the forbidden idea, and it's not that bad."

"That's just a status/signalling game."

"There's a signalling hypothesis by Robin Hanson..."

"TDT/UDT says..."

"I want to get my microexpressions analyzed so I can know what I'm thinking."

Consider this a study guide for newbies who want to measure how much of LW they understand.

Post title should be "Shit LWers say". Not all Bayesians sound like regulars on this website.

Rationalist PUA:

"What's you number? [...] No not that. Your Erdos number."

Rationalist insults:

"...Frequentist."

While twirling a paperclip: "I do not love you, nor do I hate you." (well, more of a threat.)

"I bet (73%) that you're a really consistent person. The sort of person whose decisions are final. Like say, in Monty Hall."

"Name three.."

Some line in the video (maybe the "corrupted hardware" one) should be said by someone with a desk full of piles of papers (connoting unfinished, urgent work) on topics like FAI, and a computer screen with open windows on TvTropes, Fanfiction.net, and a LW post on akraisa.

"Source?"

"What Shock Level are you?"

I think I like this conceptually (I would get warm fuzzies if done right), except I'm trying to detach (in my own mind as well as others), the word "rationalist" from "the Less Wrong memeplex." Which is probably a pipe dream, and such a video would not contribute (much) to the issue one way or another, and "Shit Less Wrong folks say" doesn't have the same ring to it.

"You're going to [insert life plan here]? Why don't you just go work on Wall Street and donate your money to AMF?"

"This, modulo that."

"It's not obvious that..."

"...is the obvious low-hanging fruit."

"HPJEV is my fantasy jerkass boyfriend."

"Eat this rock salt."

"Eat this potassium salt."

"Have you played Mage: The Ascention?"

"Can you be a CEV machine and order food for me?"

"Scumbag aliefs!"

"Scumbag subconscious!"

"Scumbag physics!"

"I want to want to do that."

Wow, most of that looks really weird, and putting it all together like that seems to associate 'rationalist' with 'weird object-level beliefs'.

From RationalWiki:

How to spot a LessWrongian in your sceptical discussion

In the outside world, the ugly manifests itself as LessWrong acolytes, minds freshly blown, metastasising to other sites, bringing the Good News for Modern Rationalists, without clearing their local jargon cache. Sceptical discussion spaces will often have people show up labelling themselves "rationalist" and being as irritating as teenage nerds who've just discovered Ayn Rand. Take one drink for each of:

"As rationalists, we should ..."

"As a rationalist, you should ..."

"Bayesian" (particularly when they seem to have picked a real doozy of a prior probability; no working will ever be shown)

Preaching "rationalism" as if it's a religion substitute.[26][27]

Taking offense when someone inevitably points out that they're preaching a religion substitute.

Attempting to argue their points with them resulting in being told "You should try reading the sequences" rather than them addressing your point.[28]

"Eliezer Yudkowsky suggests ..."

"Rational Approach..."

"Stop dissecting my hypothetical..."

"Do you operate under Crockers rules?"

"That is a question about quality of life, not about death badness!"

"It's not obvious that..."

"...is the obvious low-hanging fruit."

"HPJEV is my fantasy jerkass boyfriend."

"This, modulo that."

[EDIT: Not actually Michael Vassar.]