Astral Codex Ten

rationalists

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rationalists

Article

rationalists is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between August 08, 2022 and August 05, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “most of that came from rationalists and effective altruists”; “polyamorous people and rationalists did”; “rationalists … had higher Long COVID too”. It most often appears alongside ADHD, AGI, AI Alignment.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: August 08, 2022
  • Last seen: August 05, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Why Not Slow AI Progress?
August 08, 2022 · Original source
Anthropic was founded when some OpenAI safety researchers struck out on their own to create what they billed as an even-more-safety-conscious alternative. Again, the headline was Anthropic Raises $580 Million For AI Safety And Research (and most of that came from rationalists and effective altruists convinced by their safety-conscious pitch). Again, their announcement included reassuring language - their president said that “We’re focusing on ensuring Anthropic has the culture and governance to continue to responsibly explore and develop safe AI systems as we scale.” Clued-in people disagree about whether Anthropic has already pivoted to building the Torment Nexus, but it’s probably only a matter of time.
Inline links: Anthropic Raises $580 Million For AI Safety And Research, building the Torment Nexus
Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And Bisexuality
May 11, 2023 · Original source
I checked to see if people who identified with other vague categories had more Long COVID. This was mostly true for left-leaning or weird categories, and mostly false for right-leaning or normal categories. For example, Christians and Republicans had no more Long COVID than people who said no religion or no political party, but polyamorous people and rationalists did. The strongest effect was for ambidextrous people, but ambidextrous people also have more mental illness.
There were a few exceptions - polyamorous people, rationalists, and (to a much lesser degree) effective altruists all had higher Long COVID too. But these groups also have higher rates of bisexuality and mental illness; I think they are just weird.
As we saw above, certain weird-identity havers like polyamorous people and rationalists did have more Long COVID, but I attributed that to being part of the same cluster of genuinely weird people as bisexuals.
Your Book Review: The Educated Mind
July 14, 2023 · Original source
Reviewer: I feel like his system describes a lot of us Rationalists oddly well?
Your Book Review: The Laws of Trading
July 21, 2023 · Original source
As an aside, this seems to sometimes be a failure mode for Rationalists and EAs. They hang out in the same circles, leading to correlated career paths, social networks, and groupthink.
Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP?
August 05, 2025 · Original source
The rationalists: I live on a street with five other rationalist families and a small rationalist microschool. The broader Bay Area rationalist community has its own parties, dating sites, media, holidays, a conference center, and even a choir. 5/10
If you’re sufficiently committed, you don’t need money. You can go out in the forest with your like-minded friends and probably starve (or, like the libertarians, get eaten by bears). But if you’re insufficiently committed, money is pretty helpful! Or at least this is what I gather from my own experience. There are three reasons the rationalists have somewhat succeeded at the community-building project when so many other movements have failed.
Inline links: get eaten by bears