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Rationalists Are Less Credulous But Better At Taking Ideas Seriously — LessWrong

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Consider the following commonly-made argument: cryonics is unlikely to work. Trained rationalists are signed up for cryonics at rates much greater than the general population. Therefore, rationalists must be pretty gullible people, and their claims to be good at evaluating evidence must be exaggerations at best. This argument is wrong, and we can prove it using data from the last two Less Wrong surveys. The question at hand is whether rationalist training - represented here by extensive familiarity with Less Wrong material - makes people more likely to believe in cryonics. We investigate with a cross-sectional study, looking at proto-rationalists versus experienced rationalists. Define proto-rationalists as those respondents to the Less Wrong survey who indicate they have been in the community for less than six months and have zero karma (usually indicative of never having posted a comment). And define experienced rationalists as those respondents to the Less Wrong survey who indica

x Rationalists Are Less Credulous But Better At Taking Ideas Seriously — LessWrong Taking Ideas Seriously Cryonics Rationality Frontpage 112 Rationalists Are Less Credulous But Better At Taking Ideas Seriously by Scott Alexander 21st Jan 2014 4 min read 288 112 Consider the following commonly-made argument: cryonics is unlikely to work. Trained rationalists are signed up for cryonics at rates much greater than the general population. Therefore, rationalists must be pretty gullible people, and their claims to be good at evaluating evidence must be exaggerations at best. This argument is wrong,

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