Roko Mijik (of “basilisk” infamy) addresses Rationalists with a parable (doing the job Scott Alexander will no longer do):
Scenario:
The emperor is walking around naked.
Nobody dares say so; the few that did were indicted for sartorial heresy, lost their jobs, lost their homes and businesses won’t serve them. They live under the railway bridge next to the pedos.
…
On social media, “nakedism” and “unfashion speech” are grounds for having posts censored, throttled, demonetized, kicked out of the online payments/financial system etc
You might need to stretch your imagination a bit to grok this world, but I think I’ve painted a picture.
…
Now you, a rationalist, are sympathetic to the truth. You believe in the Litany of Gendlin, etc.
You talk to a sartorial heretic, and she says:
HEY RATIONALIST WHY DON’T YOU PUBLISH A PAPER ON SARTORIAL HERESY! THERE AREN’T MANY OF US LEFT WE COULD USE YOUR HELP!
…
And at that moment a new rationalist principle solidifies in your mind:
“Heretic, not every epistemological problem can be solved with the tools of Bayes. You and the other heretics have already provided overwhelming evidence that the emperor is naked. … ”
“ … but according to the well-known wisdom of Srinivasan, It does not matter whether you have the scientific or historical evidence to prove a truth if people do not have an economic incentive for adjudicating and then spreading that truth."
”… and in your case, the Emporer’s Sartorial Guild of Weavers (SGW) have an extremely strong economic incentive to suppress the heresy. If normal people updated to the truth about how clothing works, then the SGWs would be exposed as frauds and they would lose their jobs"
…
“Yes, the SGW ideas are now so stupid that they’re actually maladaptive, and massively so. Flaying your own skin off tends to lead to fewer grandchildren! But humans are adaptation executers, not fitness maximizers:
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