SBF

Chapter 18Rationalist Line of Thinking

If there's a simple way to describe just one thing that people in the Effective Altruist, rationalist, utilitarian, nerdy‐about‐probability culture that SBF came out of do that confuses people, it's this.

In any conversation or debate, they have this way of zooming out of the terms presented to them.

Imagine if they were talking about things such as:

• Should Austin create a light rail train system?
• Should height restrictions be removed on buildings in San Francisco?
• How much money should the United States spend on pandemic response?

People in SBF's world have this way of backing up from a question first before even considering it. This can be disorienting to those who aren't familiar with the move, but it's basically in the water for how such folks think and talk.

What they are doing is applying what can be thought of as “Bayesian reasoning,” after Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes (1701–1761), who described how to think about probability that has been latched onto (and often very lucratively applied) by a certain kind of geek.

Used less formally, it shifts how a person views the world and how they discuss it. A Bayesian approach, it is thought, helps them be a little more rational and a little less emotional. Practitioners can seem robotic at times, but it's a technique that tends to yield thoughtful outcomes.

To wildly, wildly oversimplify Bayesian reasoning as applied to day‐to‐day life, you can think of it this way: “Zoom out from ...