Conversation

rationalists are in the news For Some Reason earlier,

asked and failed to interview (ex? post?) rationalist

for the hit piece published today because my god who would talk to cade metz but QC had things to say and does so here:

episode 12: eigenrobot vs the new york times

wherein I talk with QC (@QiaochuYuan) about his experience turning down Cade Metz's request for an interview for a hit piece on Scott Alexander and Rationalism; go on a nicotine withdrawal-fueled rant

230

Enjoyed this.

, when you said rationalist parties weren't fun... that got me wondering. I find a lot of party games/drinking not fun, but I tend to have pretty good personal reasons for that, and the things I DO find fun are often related to decision theory and such.

faun

@makoConstruct

Feb 16, 2021

I'm wondering if it's not that rats are unfun people, it's just they have a different sense of fun, and they don't really understand it themselves, but they could come to, if I worked on that. Then maybe rationalist parties could be fun, in a bespoke way.

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

Replying to

and

yeah i mean e.g. there was a specific type of joke / pun that a lot of rationalists were into that i *hated* i never really figured out what the deal with that was

8:33 AM · Feb 16, 2021Twitter for iPad

Replying to

and

Was it tom swifties? Same. Scott's twitter is all tom swifties and I don't understand why anyone follows it. Is this a neurotype difference???

faun

@makoConstruct

Feb 16, 2021

But like, I hope there would have been some aspect of the rationalist sense of fun that would have resonated with you, but they just weren't doing it competently then, because nobody's found its names yet.