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.)