5 – When Grandmas ask “What is Rationality?”

An ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5) episode. Our answers when someone asks “What is Rationality anyway?” and they have a bit of time.

(If they don’t have time, Eneasz’s Elevator Pitch is “Rationality is a systematized method of making your beliefs more closely match reality”)

Eliezer’s Sequences of Blog Posts on Rationality

In ebook form – Rationality: From AI to Zombies

Piano competition with and without music results

Blind auditions for classical orchestras increased hiring of women (shorter version here)

Martin Shkreli: Real Evil, or Evil-For-Good-Due-To-Effectiveness-Calculations?

John Oliver’s piece on Abortion Laws

The Bell Curve

Finally – fact-checking Eneasz’s claims about cultural trends:

Scott Alexander’s most recent survey results in full (starting to age now).

Of the things mentioned:

Relationship Style

Prefer monogamous: 778, 51.8%

Prefer polyamorous: 227, 15.1%

Uncertain/no preference: 464, 30.9%

Other: 23, 1.5%

(in the general population: Polyamory in general pop (US) = 9.8M out of 319M (3%) (“An estimate based solely on the agreement to allow satellite lovers is around 9.8 million.”)  )

Politics

Communist: 9, 0.6%

Conservative: 67, 4.5%

Liberal: 416, 27.7%

Libertarian: 379, 25.2%

Social Democratic: 585, 38.9%

(general population (US) – 19% of general pop identify as Libertarians. Not as big a difference as Eneasz thought!  )

Religion

Atheist and not spiritual: 1054, 70.1%

Atheist and spiritual: 150, 10.0%

Agnostic: 156, 10.4%

Lukewarm theist: 44, 2.9%

Deist/pantheist/etc.: 22,, 1.5%

Committed theist: 60, 4.0%

(general population (US) is almost reversed, ~76% religious, 23% “nones” (and only 7% atheist/agnostic)  )

Moral Views

Accept/lean towards consequentialism: 901, 60.0%

Accept/lean towards deontology: 50, 3.3%

Accept/lean towards natural law: 48, 3.2%

Accept/lean towards virtue ethics: 150, 10.0%

Accept/lean towards contractualism: 79, 5.3%

Other/no answer: 239, 15.9%

(couldn’t find any numbers for general pop. As a proxy, a survey of philosophers (primarily Anglophonic) showed only 24% consequentialists.)