As of this comment, this post (1 hour after posting at 8:30am EST) has 43 karma from 41 votes. I suspect it's being upvoted through sockpuppet accounts. (This isn't a comment on the content on the podcast.)

Duplicating the description

TimePoints

• 00:00 intro
• 0:53 most of the sequences aren't about rationality; AI is not rationality
• 3:43 lesswrong and IQ mysticism
• 32:20 lesswrong and something-in-the-waterism
• 36:49 overtrusting of ingroups
• 39:35 vulnerability to believing people's BS self-claims
• 47:35 norms aren't sharp enough
• 54:41 weird cultlike privacy norms
• 56:46 realnaming as "doxxing"
• 58:28 no viable method for calling out rumors/misinformation if realnaming is 'doxxing'
• 1:00:16 the strangeness and backwardness of LW-sphere privacy norms
• 1:04:07 EA: disregard for the homeless and refusal to do politics because it's messy
• 1:10:16 EA: largely socially inept, does not understand how truly bad the SBF situation is
• 1:13:36 EA: treatment of utilitarianism and consciousness is simplistic
• 1:20:20 EA rigor: vitamin A charity example
• 1:23:39 extreme techno optimism and weak knowledge of human biology
• 1:25:24 exclusionary white nerd millennial culture
• 1:27:23 comfort class culture
• 1:30:25 pragmatics-agnosticism
• 1:33:13 shallow analysis of empirical topics
• 1:34:18 idiosyncrasies of communication, e.g. being extremely obtuse at the thesis level
• 1:39:50 epistemic rationality matters much more than instrumental rationality
• 1:43:00 the scene isn't about rationality, it's about hanging out and board games (which is fine, just don't act like you're doing anything important)

References

1. sample WAIS report https://www.pearsonassessments.com/co...
2. what is g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v...
3. childhood IQ vs. adult IQ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12887...
4. wonky attempts to measure IQ above 160 https://archive.vn/kFCY1
5. computer-based verbal memory test https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/verb...
6. typing speed / IQ https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED022127
7. simple choice reaction time https://www.psytoolkit.org/lessons/ex...
8. severity of 83 IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur7...
9. googleability of WAIS https://nda.nih.gov/data_structure.ht...
10. uses of WAIS in clinical care https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
11. drunk reaction time experiment https://imgur.com/a/IIZpTol
12. how g correlates with WAIS https://archive.vn/gyDcM
13. low murderer IQ https://archive.vn/SrenV
14. tom segura bit about the first 48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0l2l...
15. rarity of perfect LSAT scores (30 out of 100,000) https://archive.vn/KWAzf
16. limits on human reading speed (1) https://archive.vn/IVU8x
17. limits on human reading speed (2) https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-1...
18. kinobody fitness callout by philion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjytE...
19. summary of lesswrong drama (Jan-Mar. 2022) https://alfredmacdonald.medium.com/su...
20. leverage / geoff anders pseudo-cult https://archive.vn/BKvtM
21. the questionability of michael vassar and related organizations https://archive.vn/8A8QO
22. sharp vs soft culture https://archive.vn/VOpya
23. something-in-the-waterism https://alfredmacdonald.medium.com/so...
24. on the fakeness of many bayesian priors https://alfredmacdonald.substack.com/...
25. criticism of the "postrationalist" subculture and the problems created by pseudonyms and hyper-privacy norms https://alfredmacdonald.substack.com/...
26. proliferation of "technoyogi" woo in this culture due to lack of BS-calling norms https://alfredmacdonald.substack.com/...
27. questionability of the vitamin A charity I mentioned https://archive.vn/2AxlK
28. MIRI support from Open Philanthropy https://archive.vn/JW6WT
29. MIRI publication record https://archive.vn/9hIhT
30. MIRI staff https://archive.vn/hJeuT
31. MIRI budget, 50% of which is spent on research personnel https://archive.vn/z6bvz
32. benefits of sharp culture (or at least a mean robot boss) https://archive.vn/onIfM
33. daniel dennett on, among other things, the problems with treating all suffering as interchangeable https://archive.vn/5SLEy
34. on reading comprehension limits: https://catalog.shepherd.edu/mime/med... -- while a 50th percentile student reads (with retention) at 250wpm and a 75th at 500wpm for "general expository reading (e.g. news)", this same group reads at a 50th percentile of 149wpm and a 75th percentile of 170wpm for "advanced scientific and/or technical material". assuming a gaussian distribution, the distance between 50th percentile and 75th percentile is 2/3s an SD -- so with an SD of ~31.5, reading said material at 306.5WPM is 5SD from the mean, or about 1/3.5 million. the average audible narration rate is 155wpm, so this severely puts into question those who say they're 2xing or even 1.75xing advanced audiobooks/lectures.

Duplicating the first comment (@alfredmacdonald's proposed alternative)

A READING LIST FOR RATIONALITY THAT IS NOT LESSWRONG / RENDERS THE SEQUENCES SUPERFLUOUS

objection: "but I learned a lot about rationality through lesswrong"

response: maybe, but probably inadequately.

1. while unorthodox, I usually suggest this above everything else: the PowerScore Logical Reasoning Bible, while meant as LSAT prep, is the best test of plain-language reasoning that I am aware of. the kinds of questions you are meant to do will humble many of you. https://www.amazon.com/PowerScore-LSAT-Logical-Reasoning-Bible/dp/0991299221 and you can take a 10-question section of practice questions at https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/test-format/logical-reasoning/logical-reasoning-sample-questions — many of you will not get every question right, in which case there is room to sharpen your ability and powerscore's book helps do that.
2. https://www.amazon.com/Cengage-Advantage-Books-Understanding-Introduction/dp/1285197364 in my view, the best book on argumentation that exists; worth reading either alongside PowerScore's book, or directly after it.
3. https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-What-Seems-Scarce-Matters/dp/B08X4X4SQ4 pinker's "rationality" is an excellent next step after learning how to reason through the previous two texts, since you will establish what rationality actually is.
4. https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Reasoning-Handbooks-Psychology/dp/0521531012 this is a reference text, meaning it's not meant to be read front-to-back. it's one of the most comprehensive of its kind.
5. https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-History-Logic-Valued-Nonmonotonic/dp/044460359X — this is both prohibitively and ludicrously expensive, so you will probably need to pirate it. however, this history of logic covers many useful concepts.
6. https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555 this is a standard text that established "irrationality" as a mainstream academic concept. despite being a psychologist, some of kahneman's work won him the nobel prize in economics in 2002, shared with vernon smith.
7. https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-audiobook/dp/B0014EAHNQ this is another widely-read text that expands on the mainstream concept of irrationality.
8. https://www.amazon.com/BIASES-HEURISTICS-Collection-Heuristics-Everything/dp/1078432317 it is exactly what it says: a list of about 100 cognitive biases. many of these biases are worth rereading and/or flashcarding. there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
9. https://www.amazon.com/Informal-Logical-Fallacies-Brief-Guide/dp/0761854339 also exactly what it says, but with logical fallacies rather than biases. (a bias is an error in weight or proportion or emphasis; a fallacy is a mistake in reasoning itself.) there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
10. here is another fantastic handbook of rationality, which is a wonderfully integrated work spanning psychology, philosophy, law, and other fields with 806 pages of content. https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Rationality-Markus-Knauff/dp/0262045079 (it is quite expensive -- no one will blame you if you pirate it from libgen.)

you will learn more through these texts than through the LessWrong Sequences. as mentioned, many of these are expensive, and no one will blame you if you need to pirate/libgen them. many or maybe even most of these you will need to reread some of these texts, perhaps multiple times.

"but I'd rather have a communi - " yes, exactly. hence the thesis of a video I made: lesswrong is primarily nerds who want a hangout group/subculture, rather than a means of learning rationality, and this disparity between claimed purpose and actual purpose produces most of the objections people have and many of my objections in my video, and why I have created this alternate reading list.

I'm just going to write a review of this for anyone wants to get to the meat of the critique. I would consider myself outside the drama part of this as I've basically only engaged with the ideas and not that much with the "community". So I won't go into any of the community drama stuff but mostly factual disagreements.

(My take will of course still be biased however.)

General: I think Alfred did this in reasonably good faith most of the time. I think there was stuff he definetely skipped engaging with but I was honestly thinking it would be more drama and hit-piecy than it was.

TL;DR (of good points):

Suboptimal models of cognition when it comes to who can do good work as LW tends to care more about G then it does about for example conscientiousness and creativity that should be prioritised higher.

LessWrongers tend to lose the root for the tree when it comes to self optimisation. Exercise more and start thinking about the underlying cognitive algorithms of getting stuff done in the world.

There are weird culture norms where privacy and a homogenous population leads to in-group thinking and biases towards rediscovering things that already exist in the world within the LW sphere.

On different time stamps:

0:53 most of the sequences aren't about rationality; AI is not rationality

Death is bad is all i say here.

3:43 lesswrong and IQ mysticism

A bit handwavy but points to misunderstandings in how people actually make stuff in the world and the cult of genius.

32:20 lesswrong and something-in-the-waterism

Claim: you can do most things online anyway, why go to the Bay? //This seems like an intially good argument but there are major serendipity effects in terms of encountering new ideas that I feel he doesn't bring up. He doesn't bring up arguments such as the modes of cognition being more variable as you can go on a walk or have an in-person discussions with people.

36:49 overtrusting of ingroups

Summary: LW is way too in-group with too little mechanisms that can allow for calling out BS.

39:35 vulnerability to believing people's BS self-claims

Summary: People lie about their own capabilities in terms of for example writing speed which is bad.

47:35 norms aren't sharp enough

Summary: people aren't calling out bullshit. Points to something like "you sound ridicolous". An example is apparently saying "I drink soylent because it is more efficient" and this getting no pushback. //Yet pushback is based on if you share beloefs or not and so it seems this is more based on personal disagreements.

{54:41 weird cultlike privacy norms

56:46 realnaming as "doxxing"

58:28 no viable method for calling out rumors/misinformation if realnaming is 'doxxing'

1:00:16 the strangeness and backwardness of LW-sphere privacy norms}:

Summary: Privacy norms are weird in LW. //might be true, uncertain.

{1:04:07 EA: disregard for the homeless and refusal to do politics because it's messy

1:10:16 EA: largely socially inept, does not understand how truly bad the SBF situation is

1:13:36 EA: treatment of utilitarianism and consciousness is simplistic

1:20:20 EA rigor: vitamin A charity example}:

Vibe: "I disagree with longtermism and animal suffering and so it's bad" //I know this isn't charitable but it is a low level on the discussion here so I will respond in the same way. He also makes some goof points about QALY's and perception of pain to counteract utilitarianism not that deep of a discussion but still pretty good points.

1:23:39 extreme techno optimism and weak knowledge of human biology

//I would tend to agree that LWs could exercise more and learn more about neurobiology.

1:25:24 exclusionary white nerd millennial culture

Summary: homogenous culture

1:27:23 comfort class culture

Summary: sheltered and upper-middle class creates sheltering and implicit culture norms

1:30:25 pragmatics-agnosticism

Summary: yes you may be rational but what about writing and tonation and other parts of life?

1:33:13 shallow analysis of empirical topics

1:34:18 idiosyncrasies of communication, e.g. being extremely obtuse at the thesis level

Summary: People don't listen that well on LW. The letter of an argument is being followed rather than the spirit.

1:39:50 epistemic rationality matters much more than instrumental rationality

1:43:00 the scene isn't about rationality, it's about hanging out and board games (which is fine, just don't act like you're doing anything important)

Summary: Some epic ranting about how LW is about talking about AI and since he doesn't believe the AI stuff people are belittled to "hanging out and playing board games".

If you cba with implicit moral disagreements (such as the ones that underly the very epic EA drama that keeps popping up (not saying it's only that on the EA forum)) I would recommend thinking "I should exercise more and be more careful with implicit group norms in the future" and move on with your life.