Is there a Russian version of SIAI?
No, although Russia is interesting for other reasons: they are still unusually atheistic, have old proto-transhumanists and rocketry enthusiasts, and recently have begun efforts into SENS-style life extension and cryonics. (Russian scientists apparently did a lot of investigation into nootropics, and there are multiple interesting substances I've seen where all the info was basically in Russian.)
As far as I know, there's little to no real transhumanism in Japan. This is weird and I do not understand it. The ideas are certainly in circulation, through SF, the leisure & wealth are also there (as proven by the infinite works of the otaku), and there is tolerance of robots and software (eg. Vocaloid) you don't see even in America.
China may not be important: they're still busy getting wealthy, their nonprofit/philanthropy is non-existent (thanks in part to Communist Party paranoia about non-commercial organizations), and Chinese intellectuals worth reaching quite possibly speak English already.
As someone living in China, I feel pretty confident saying that most Chinese are not skeptical or interested in rationality. Even "Science" in China is deficient. We think we have a problem with publication bias in the West; I heard a terrifying statistic that there are ZERO negative studies published in the field of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). And while the country is atheist, huge numbers of people still go the Buddhist temples, bang their heads on the ground and worship statues with blue skin.
Having grown up in China, it took a LONG time to shake off all the belief in belief that primary school instilled in me (if you read the singing and dancing article recently: I marched together with the entire school every day from the age of 6. Infer about my personality what you will.) Deconstructing the ridiculous amounts of blatantly untrue cached thoughts I have takes a lot of mental willpower, even now. Indoctrination doesn't have to be about religion.
The problem with TCM is that it's just not been scientifically researched. There's bound to be lots of good stuff, especially in the herbal stuff (it's not homeopathy, there's at least active ingredients in there), and there's bound to be lots of bs, especially in the chi stuff, but it needs a significant western pharmaceutical team to dig through everything, find the useful chemicals and isolate the effects, with the expertise but without the biases of Chinese researchers. Unfortunately, that's a massive undertaking that I don't see happening any time soon. I mean, the success story of artemisinin in malaria treatment should be encouraging, and I personally assign a 90%+ probability that somewhere in TCM there are useful treatments/cures for things that western medicine don't cope with very well yet, but isolating them could be a difficult task.
If we take Religion as any indication of irrationality then America should be one of the least rational countries in the world.
A ridiculous statement to make. America is moderately religious on a global scale. I think it is a mistake made for similar reasons as the mistake of thinking conservative American Protestants are roughly equivalent to conservative Muslims.
Americans being more willing to be weird could explain both rationality as a project and religiosity.
It was a commonality between rationality as a project and religiosity. I was intending a very weak form of "could explain".
What I actually believe is that Americans have a default of "doing something". Thinking about whether the something makes sense is permitted but optional.
state of rationality in the non-English-speaking world
And if there are no Singularitarian, Cryonics-Supporting, Utilitarianism-Advocating websites for the majority of the human race, isn't that a huge deal?
Please don't equate rationality with Singularitarianism, cryonics support, utilitarianism and AI. Even better, consider all these topics separately. Outside the English speaking world, there are Singularitarians, there are (of course!) utilitarians, there are cryonics supporters (however cryonics subscribtion is not available in most countries), there are AI researchers, but you would have much harder job seeking a cluster isomorphic to LW with all its idiosyncrasies together.
I've been wondering about this. A related thought: Much of the sequences are an antidote to various memes that make their way into educated minds in our culture. Do those memes exist outside of the West? Would a non-Anglophone Chinese person find any value in "The Simple Truth"? Are there universities that only teach quantum physics without wavefunction collapse?
(Of course, the sequences are also an antidote to defects of thinking that are part of our shared genetic heritage. Then again, how much research has been done into cross-cultural variation of cognitive biases?)
how much research has been done into cross-cultural variation of cognitive biases?
Some research has been done, but not that much. The resources required for such studies is generally pretty intensive. But most of the literature suggests that cognitive biases don't change that much between cultures. For example, the literature on the Monty Hall problem shows that the the answer rates look nearly identical in all tested cultures (which include the US, Britain, China and Brazil among others). This is discussed with further references in Jason Rosenhouse's book "The Monty Hall Problem." I'm under the impression that there's similar literature for confirmation bias, but I don't have any citations off hand.
If we take Religion as any indication of irrationality then America should be one of the least rational countries in the world.
If you consider America homogenous but then you're probably using an insufficient model.
"If we take Religion as any indication of irrationality then America should be one of the least rational countries in the world."
Strongly disagree with this premise. Religion is one non-rational meme, but it is one of many and is neither the highest-status nor the most prevalent of the many popular irrational belief systems. Atheists may well be more rational on the one issue of religion, but can and frequently do subscribe to even more irrational belief systems, whether political ideologies, spiritual-but-not-religiousness, or delusions around...
There is a sequence translation project but it does not seem to be going to well. Fairly few pages translated, almost no comments on the translated posts.
An online resource in English is much more international in effect (as in "facilitating communication across national borders") than one in just 1 or 2 or 3 other languages. English is a decent language to use for any number of third parties who can't be bothered to translate from each others' languages. Therefore, setting up something with many sections in various languages is prohibitively expensive by contrast (unless your project is language-centered in the first place, maybe).
If we take Religion as any indication of irrationality then America should be one of the least rational countries in the world.
There are parts in Europe where there are many more non-believers, but those are not necessarily more rational. To a large extent it is environment, parents, friends etc. that determine religiosity or lack thereof. It seems that when people are gradually getting more rational, religion is not the first thing that gets thrown out the window. I notice that superstition, medical quakery and various supernatural beliefs are alive a...
To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing quite like SIAI or lesswrong in continental western Europe. People aren't into AI as much as in the US, and if there's rationality thinking being done, it's mostly traditional rationality, skepticism, etc.
Atheism can score high in many countries, as a rule of thumb countries to the north are more atheistic, those to the south (Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc.) are more religious.
There are a few scattered transhumanist as well as a few life-extension organizations, which are loosely starting to cooperate together.
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Is there a google map of LW users? I think we could use the number of LW users in different countries as a proxy for LW-style rationality, together with information how many people in given country are able to discuss in English.
(By "LW-style rationality" I mean trying to be rational even outside the laboratory, both epistemically and instrumentally, and trying to become even stronger.)
In Slovakia, it's pretty much me and Barbara, although I am still trying to spread information around me. But when we went to a meetup in Rome, that was even worse...
I guess that most of the people who would be interested in LW-style rationality already have functional written English.
I don't see the necessity to talk that much about rationality.
It's only the correct way of thinking, nothing less and nothing more. Everybody should do it, but the majority refuses. What is very stupid, but nothing new.
You have to follow the path of arithmetic also and there is no need to declare yourself as "arithmetically rational". The same should be with the (classical!) logic and the probability based reasoning. Just do it and do no fuss about.
Disclaimer: I'm still fairly new here, and though I did use the search bar it's entirely possible this has been discussed before. Just point me in the right direction if this is so.
While reading about 4chan's Japanese progenitor website, it occurred to me that I know nothing about the state of rationality in the non-English-speaking world, and more specifically the non-English-speaking internet. Is there a Russian version of SIAI? A Japanese Less Wrong? What about Korean Robin Hansons and Eliezer Yudkowskys?
If we take Religion as any indication of irrationality then America should be one of the least rational countries in the world. So if there are like-minded individuals out there speaking in languages we don't know, are we doing anything to collaborate with them? Do they have their own sequences and their own HPMORs which we could be reading?
And if there are no Singularitarian, Cryonics-Supporting, Utilitarianism-Advocating websites for the majority of the human race, isn't that a huge deal? Aren't Europeans and Asians more likely to be open to rationality, if only because of their atheism? If we want Friendly-AI to be developed, should we be translating the sequences into Chinese and Hindu as quickly as possible?