Reflections on Rat Fest ’25

Popper himself, when I interviewed him in 1992, was a comically dogmatic denouncer of dogmatism. He kept insisting he was right and his critics wrong.

When I told Popper a former student accused him of not tolerating criticism, he responded: “It is completely untrue! I was happy when I got criticism! Of course, not when I would answer the criticism… and the person would still go on with it.” Then Popper would eject the student from the class.

Ejecting the student seems over the top. But there’s a difference between openness to criticism and relativism. If you address a criticism but the critic just continues as if you hadn’t, I can see how that’s frustrating. If there’s no new reasoning or evidence to the contrary, I think it’s fine to “insist[]” that you are right and your critics wrong. It’s possible to determine that objectively. That’s not dogma – it’s integrity.

The claim that Deutsch “repeatedly appeals to Popper’s authority” in BoI should be accompanied by evidence. Like, Horgan should quote some passage from BoI that he thinks is an appeal to Popper’s authority.

Deutsch’s book The Beginning of Infinity suffers from this problem, too. Deutsch rejects appeals to authority but repeatedly appeals to Popper’s authority.

Same issue as in #2052: I don’t think Deutsch ever appeals to Popper’s authority. Deutsch ‘just’ thinks Popper is right, and so he quotes/refers to him. Also, recall that Deutsch criticizes Popper’s criterion of demarcation in chapter 1 as being insufficient:

Testability is now generally accepted as the defining characteristic of the scientific method. Popper called it the ‘criterion of demarcation’ between science and non-science.

Nevertheless, testability cannot have been the decisive factor in the scientific revolution either.

A key tenet of critical rationalism is that knowledge is tentative, improvable, because all of us are fallible, we can never be sure we’re right. But Rat Festers cite Popper and Deutsch as if they are infallible.

My impression is that, when they cite Popper and Deutsch, they consider their citations unproblematic, ie background knowledge shared with other attendees – to an outsider, that can look like an appeal to authority.

Horgan writes several passages about Rat Fest being “cult-y”:

[W]hy do I call Rat Fest “cult-y”?

Because what binds this band of rebels together is veneration for Popper and Deutsch. Five folks give talks on physics, and all seem to assume as axiomatic that the many-worlds interpretation is true. Why? Because Deutsch says it’s true.

I partly agree but also disagree.

My impression is that there is a mixture of Deutsch fans. Some – and I think that includes the physicists – came to their own reflected conclusion that Many Worlds is the theory to adopt. Others couldn’t possibly do that because they don’t have the requisite physics knowledge; they probably defer to the experts.

I have had discussions with some fans of Deutsch where I was interested in getting to the truth of some matter whereas they were more interested in quoting Deutsch, as if that settled the debate.

Sometimes, I remind fans of Deutsch that they need to decide between merely socializing around his ideas and actually applying them, which includes being critical of him. After all, listening to music, talking about music, going to concerts, etc are all different from actually making music!

Full disclosure: I used to be one of Deutsch’s biggest fans but have since become one of his bigger critics, as evidenced by some articles such as this one and this one. I have also published criticisms of some of Popper’s ideas, though I think on the whole my view of Popper is more favorable than my view of Deutsch.

… My students are using AI to do their thinking for them.

Generally speaking, people who have properly functioning minds enjoy thinking about things they are interested in and use tools to outsource toil and other things they are not interested in.

They would not want to use those tools to spend less time doing things they do enjoy. If Horgan’s students are using AI, that means they are not interested in whatever he teaches them. (That isn’t necessarily an indictment of Horgan – people often go to school not because it interests them but because they think they should.)

In this sense, AI is more like a calculator allowing mathematicians to focus on what really matters: using their creativity to find new proofs, theorems, etc (I’m not a mathematician, but I imagine that’s what they do).

If you give your students an exam on disobediance…

Typo: disobedience

Dennis Hackenthal weighs the relative merits of “patches” versus “purges,” meaning incremental political reforms versus revolutions. Hackenthal asks Rat Festers which they prefer. More hands go up for incremental reform. Popper was an incrementalist, and, well, revolutions can get messy.

I don’t recall asking. The central thesis of my talk was that Popper’s advocacy of gradual improvement doesn’t work in certain fundamental matters, ie matters which allow no room for compromise because even the slightest deviation from the ideal means utter surrender of the underlying principle. https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/reason-by-purge-or-by-patch

Oh and it’s Hackethal btw :) No ‘n’.

Lulie Tanett, wearing a “Beginning of Infinity” t-shirt, suggests you can use reason to pinpoint and overcome hidden, irrational fears. So… critical rationalism can help you be your own psychotherapist?

Did she refer to reason? My impression lately is that she repurposes Deutsch’s distinction between explicit thought on the one hand and inexplicit/unconscious (“hidden”) thought on the other to repackage and rebrand Kant’s marriage of reason and unreason.

Over three days Rat Festers give more than 30 talks, most just 15 minutes long, on [several topics including] objectivism (Ayn Rand’s schtick)…

My macOS Dictionary app says for schtick: “a gimmick, comic routine, style of performance, etc. associated with a particular person…”

Calling Objectivism, a serious philosophy developed over decades that has influenced millions to live a life guided by reason, a “schtick”, as if Rand had never had any serious intentions with it, is dismissive and insulting.

But if Horgan has any legitimate criticisms of Objectivism, I want to know. (I have some, too!)

Chipkin urges me to come to Rat (short for rationalism) Fest…

It’s technically true that the “Rat” part of Rat Fest is short for rationalism, but I’ve always considered it to be short for Crit Rat, ie Critical Rationalism. This matters because it’s not a rationalist conference, neither in the Less Wrong sense nor in the rationalism vs empiricism sense.

Science writer John Horgan wrote his own article about his experience at Rat Fest:
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/my-weekend-at-rat-fest

@dennis-hackethal, could you expand your argument in Lucas' blog post that self-similarity must entail correspondence?

Fixed as of v3.

Only days prior, Tom Hyde had retweeted Francisco Goya’s 1799 painting ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’.

It’s not a painting. According to Wikipedia, it’s an aquatint.

https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/reflections-on-rat-fest-25