The committed Rationalists often point out the flaws in science as currently practiced: the p-hacking, the financial incentives, etc. Feeding them more data about where science goes awry will only make them more smug.

The real problem with the Rationalists is that they* think they can do better*, that knowing a few cognitive fallacies and logicaltricks will make you better than the doctors at medicine, better than the quantum physicists at quantum physics, etc.

We need to explain that yes, science has it’s flaws, but it still shits all over pseudobayesianism.

Solomonoff induction is a big rationalist buzzword. It’s meant to be the platonic ideal of bayesian reasoning which if implemented would be the best deducer in the world and get everything right.

It would be cool if you could build this, but it’s literally impossible. The induction method is provably incomputable.

The hope is that if you build a shitty approximation to solomonoff induction that “approaches” it, it will perform close to the perfect solomonoff machine. Does this work? Not really.

My metaphor is that it’s like coming to a river you want to cross, and being like “Well Moses, the perfect river crosser, parted the water with his hands, so if I just splash really hard I’ll be able to get across”. You aren’t Moses. Build a bridge.