If you want to explore the topic further, in a sort of corollary to Betteridge: if you say "x is too y" in the headline, then in the piece you have to say why "x is too y to achieve A" or that "x is too y in comparison to B." Otherwise the criticism "x is too y" just floats in space, unmoored from any standard by which to judge it, its impact unclear. A headline "Eagles' Quarterback Jalen Hurts doesn't spread the ball around to all his receivers enough" is probably just sports blog masturbatory analysis and nitpicking; "Jalen Hurts doesn't spread the ball around enough to defeat the more organized defenses the team will meet in the playoffs" is much better, showing the impact of the action on the team's goals and providing a clear standard to judge against; "Jalen Hurts doesn't spread the ball around as much as quarterbacks like Rodgers or Mahomes" gives us a direct comparison to show how other successful players have performed and where Hurts falls short if he wants to be an MVP candidate like them. It also gives us a standard by which to figure out if we agree with the author.
Right now all I'm getting is "Rationalists are easier to to dupe than Nassim Taleb's imaginary friend Fat Tony.*" Consider some alternative theses, and if you can support them from your evidence:
"Rationalists are more easily duped than other political groupings and actors."
This seems tough to argue for. Progressives fell for Smollett and Abrams and Beto, vast hordes of the Republican base fell for Q and Mike Liddell and JFK Jr. being alive, Fox News advertises nothing but gold buying scams and reverse mortgages, while MSNBC and CNBC gave you Tom Brady and Larry David pitching FTX out the wazoo. Congress fell for WMDs, the EU fell for Putin, the US military-industrial-intelligence complex just keeps getting duped into handing local partners in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Syria billions of dollars that fail to deliver any results, US corporations get duped into doing DEI work or partnering with Rivian, US investment banks got duped into holding the bag for financing Elon's twitter acquisition, when academics aren't getting duped into printing fake papers they're getting duped by non-replicable studies p-hacked by researchers to make it look like they meant something, Billionaires get duped into buying fake old wines, the greatest venture capitalists and tech investors get duped into wasting billions on WeWork or Robin Hood or Peloton. To paraphrase the quote in my profile, ain't nobody who ain't gullible, I looked.
"Rationalists are too easily duped to achieve their goals."
This probably moves the argument into a debate about what the "goals" of the rationalist movement are. If we're going with the Yudkowskian maximalist theory that people who have read The Sequences will one day bestride the earth and rule like intellectual colossi, then there's a pretty good argument there. For Rationalists to be Ubermensch Philosopher Kings they'd need to be basically impossible to fool, they are not impossible to fool, ergo they cannot be Ubermensch Philosopher Kings. If we're going with the EA theory that they should be in charge of directing money to far-off charities for 10% of my income, I'd also find that pretty accurate, I don't want to risk giving money to an org that might pass it to a fake org or to a doomed and ill-conceived political campaign. My more modest view of the role Rationalists play in my life, writing fun blog posts and faux-reddit screeds that make me think, I don't think Rationalists are too gullible to handle. SA might be too gullible to be "the guy," he might even be too gullible to be the-guy-behind-the-guy, but I don't think he's too gullible to be the-guy-behind-the-guy's favorite author's favorite author.
"Rationalists are more easily duped than ordinary citizens."
This might be true in the sense that Rationalists are more likely to try a nootropic supplement or counterintuitive fitness trend than the common run of human, but that's more hobby than anything else. The ordinary run of humans are so easily fooled that it beggars belief. Not only do time share scams exist, there's a meta level of tv ads for scam companies that will help you get out of your scam time share for a fee.
*@Faceh I have known a lot of Fat Tonys, or at least guys who would have read that piece (if they were in the habit of reading books like that) and identified themselves with Fat Tony. Self-made greasy guys, realtors and salesmen and house flippers and developers and entrepreneurs. They're the kinds of guys to tell me that a slot machine is "hot," that the Sixers should stick with Shake Milton because he hit a few threes against the Lakers, that this particular craps table always hits 11s and to bet on them, that girls who wear Frye boots are always freaks in bed, to never trust Albanians. What Taleb trumpets as street-philosopher skepticism is often closer to over-active pattern recognition; in his thought experiment Tony calls bullshit after 99 tosses, in my experience of those kinds of guys they would have called bullshit after the first 3 landed heads and gone 5:1 odds on Heads for the fourth toss. Which, in Taleb's hypothetical, is great; but just as often guys like that end up having to sign themselves out of the casino, the house is very good at convincing people that their lucky streak will keep running. And they will all tell you how their ex-wife fooled them in the divorce. Great salesmen, in my experience, are often easily sold by other salesmen. Mamet and Miller agree, of course. The quality that enables them to sell so convincingly, their belief in the narrative of the superiority of their own insurance products, makes them vulnerable in turn to believing the narratives of boat salesmen and casino croupiers and loose women. Of course, there are times they recognize a danger that my sheltered education missed, there are also times their superstitious pattern recognition results in betting big on the Giants to win the division because they "have the will to win." There's a reason why the big successful hedge funds hire MIT math majors by the bale, not greasy Eyetalians who successfully guessed how many gumballs were in the jar.
Right now all I'm getting is "Rationalists are easier to to dupe than Nassim Taleb's imaginary friend Fat Tony.*
He's not even getting that. He's getting that imaginary rationalists are easier to dupe than fat Tony. He doesn't give any actual example of a rationalist making this mistake.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
FiveHourMarathon 2yr ago
Wait, Larry David was pushing FTX? As in the Curb Your Enthusiasm meme where he tries to do something, it fails spectacularly, and cut to the credits with that jaunty music?
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Notes -
If you want to explore the topic further, in a sort of corollary to Betteridge: if you say "x is too y" in the headline, then in the piece you have to say why "x is too y to achieve A" or that "x is too y in comparison to B." Otherwise the criticism "x is too y" just floats in space, unmoored from any standard by which to judge it, its impact unclear. A headline "Eagles' Quarterback Jalen Hurts doesn't spread the ball around to all his receivers enough" is probably just sports blog masturbatory analysis and nitpicking; "Jalen Hurts doesn't spread the ball around enough to defeat the more organized defenses the team will meet in the playoffs" is much better, showing the impact of the action on the team's goals and providing a clear standard to judge against; "Jalen Hurts doesn't spread the ball around as much as quarterbacks like Rodgers or Mahomes" gives us a direct comparison to show how other successful players have performed and where Hurts falls short if he wants to be an MVP candidate like them. It also gives us a standard by which to figure out if we agree with the author.
Right now all I'm getting is "Rationalists are easier to to dupe than Nassim Taleb's imaginary friend Fat Tony.*" Consider some alternative theses, and if you can support them from your evidence:
"Rationalists are more easily duped than other political groupings and actors."
This seems tough to argue for. Progressives fell for Smollett and Abrams and Beto, vast hordes of the Republican base fell for Q and Mike Liddell and JFK Jr. being alive, Fox News advertises nothing but gold buying scams and reverse mortgages, while MSNBC and CNBC gave you Tom Brady and Larry David pitching FTX out the wazoo. Congress fell for WMDs, the EU fell for Putin, the US military-industrial-intelligence complex just keeps getting duped into handing local partners in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Syria billions of dollars that fail to deliver any results, US corporations get duped into doing DEI work or partnering with Rivian, US investment banks got duped into holding the bag for financing Elon's twitter acquisition, when academics aren't getting duped into printing fake papers they're getting duped by non-replicable studies p-hacked by researchers to make it look like they meant something, Billionaires get duped into buying fake old wines, the greatest venture capitalists and tech investors get duped into wasting billions on WeWork or Robin Hood or Peloton. To paraphrase the quote in my profile, ain't nobody who ain't gullible, I looked.
"Rationalists are too easily duped to achieve their goals."
This probably moves the argument into a debate about what the "goals" of the rationalist movement are. If we're going with the Yudkowskian maximalist theory that people who have read The Sequences will one day bestride the earth and rule like intellectual colossi, then there's a pretty good argument there. For Rationalists to be Ubermensch Philosopher Kings they'd need to be basically impossible to fool, they are not impossible to fool, ergo they cannot be Ubermensch Philosopher Kings. If we're going with the EA theory that they should be in charge of directing money to far-off charities for 10% of my income, I'd also find that pretty accurate, I don't want to risk giving money to an org that might pass it to a fake org or to a doomed and ill-conceived political campaign. My more modest view of the role Rationalists play in my life, writing fun blog posts and faux-reddit screeds that make me think, I don't think Rationalists are too gullible to handle. SA might be too gullible to be "the guy," he might even be too gullible to be the-guy-behind-the-guy, but I don't think he's too gullible to be the-guy-behind-the-guy's favorite author's favorite author.
"Rationalists are more easily duped than ordinary citizens."
This might be true in the sense that Rationalists are more likely to try a nootropic supplement or counterintuitive fitness trend than the common run of human, but that's more hobby than anything else. The ordinary run of humans are so easily fooled that it beggars belief. Not only do time share scams exist, there's a meta level of tv ads for scam companies that will help you get out of your scam time share for a fee.
*@Faceh I have known a lot of Fat Tonys, or at least guys who would have read that piece (if they were in the habit of reading books like that) and identified themselves with Fat Tony. Self-made greasy guys, realtors and salesmen and house flippers and developers and entrepreneurs. They're the kinds of guys to tell me that a slot machine is "hot," that the Sixers should stick with Shake Milton because he hit a few threes against the Lakers, that this particular craps table always hits 11s and to bet on them, that girls who wear Frye boots are always freaks in bed, to never trust Albanians. What Taleb trumpets as street-philosopher skepticism is often closer to over-active pattern recognition; in his thought experiment Tony calls bullshit after 99 tosses, in my experience of those kinds of guys they would have called bullshit after the first 3 landed heads and gone 5:1 odds on Heads for the fourth toss. Which, in Taleb's hypothetical, is great; but just as often guys like that end up having to sign themselves out of the casino, the house is very good at convincing people that their lucky streak will keep running. And they will all tell you how their ex-wife fooled them in the divorce. Great salesmen, in my experience, are often easily sold by other salesmen. Mamet and Miller agree, of course. The quality that enables them to sell so convincingly, their belief in the narrative of the superiority of their own insurance products, makes them vulnerable in turn to believing the narratives of boat salesmen and casino croupiers and loose women. Of course, there are times they recognize a danger that my sheltered education missed, there are also times their superstitious pattern recognition results in betting big on the Giants to win the division because they "have the will to win." There's a reason why the big successful hedge funds hire MIT math majors by the bale, not greasy Eyetalians who successfully guessed how many gumballs were in the jar.
**One could of course argue that maybe these guys seemed like Fat Tonys, but they weren't real Fat Tonys. Fat Tony isn't a useful category if he's impossible to tell from any other fat loser until after he's always right, he's less superpredictor and more Texas sharpshooter.
He's not even getting that. He's getting that imaginary rationalists are easier to dupe than fat Tony. He doesn't give any actual example of a rationalist making this mistake.
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Wait, Larry David was pushing FTX? As in the Curb Your Enthusiasm meme where he tries to do something, it fails spectacularly, and cut to the credits with that jaunty music?
…That’s hilarious.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BH5-rSxilxo
Honestly, a fantastic ad. Sort of the opposite, which then worked out the other way.
Smartest celebrity in any crypto promo. He only agreed to it because he’d be written in as the non-believer.
Probably made 8 figures and no-one can even accuse him of endorsing it.
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Wow I had never seen the whole thing. That's a solid commercial, too.
This whole thing works like an extremely meta CYE joke in and of itself. Just layers upon layers of irony at work here.
The more flack Larry David catches for his role in it, the better the meta joke gets.
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