Rationalists Are Probably Less Kinky

Rationalists Are Probably Less Kinky

how rats differ from non-rats in data

Aella

Oct 08, 2026

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I run

Glosso

, the holy grail of surveys (both ones you can take and create). It’s got a feed, a matching system, the ability to rate your friends, extensive data on your results and how you’re seen, etc.

One of the surveys is a ‘

how rationalist are you

’ survey. If you want to take it, I recommend you do it now, before you read the rest of this post and get primed!

Okay, did you take it? Let’s go.

I did not create the rationalist survey. It’s emergent from the Chaos Survey, a gigantic experimental survey where anybody could submit items. I ended up with over 1,000. I then ran factor analysis on the data, which is basically a way to look at natural clustering in the way people answer questions. You can see the results for the full thing

here

and

here

.

One of the spectrums that emerged was basically a rationalist survey

1

. It’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty decent proxy. The questions have different weights, and the strongest ones were basically ‘I like Lesswrong/ACX/Marginal Revolution/Don’t Worry About The Vase/Hacker News/EA Forum’ (in that order).

Over 2k people have taken the survey, and thus have rat scores. But I’ve constructed Glosso to collect a

ton

more data, and so we have a very wide array of other questions these users have answered.

So: what correlates with a high rationalist score?

The stereotypes are true!

But let’s throw in another control here - proximity to me and the bay area. I am weird, and also in the rationality community, and in the bay area, so possibly rationalists on Glosso might be disproportionately weird compared to other people. On Glosso you can add people into circles, and so each user has a certain distance-from-me in the social scene. Let’s control for this, and also for location (I have location data on fewer people, but a lot of the effect is correct anyway by proximity to me).

Some disclaimers: I collect data from various parts of the internet for various surveys. Of all of my sources, Glosso is obviously, extremely subject to selection bias. It’s popular among my friends, internet weirdos, people who do online surveys, sex-positive people, liberal people. I am

not

taking this as strong evidence for base rates of anything! Rather, I am interpreting this as evidence about way the

rationalists who use Glosso differ from non-rationalists who use Glosso.

Probably this generalizes to non-Glosso populations to some extent, but we don’t know how much. These are clues, not unassailable conclusions!

Rationalists score lower on many woo or conspiracy beliefs, but are much more likely to believe AI is an existential threat. They also are WAY more interested in immortality!

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The stereotype of brain-over-gut, while perhaps exaggerated, has truth to it. In general, 10-15% more deeprats agree with a lot of intellectual, abstract, mind-changing, analytical type statements than non-rats do.

They’re also more likely to take better bets.

I also have a slow IQ proxy on Glosso (you can find out your

Glosso IQ score,

which is normalized to the Glosso population!). It’s loose right now - just a series of raven’s matrices puzzles, but the number you get right gets put on a bell curve. If the median Glosso IQ score is definitionally 100, then rationalists get 107 and normies 95.

Morality-wise, rationalists deviate a lot:

They report being more pro-agency, higher decouplers, more individualistic, more pro-markets, more consequentialist. They also report being more committed to truth and not-stealing stuff. This matches up with my personal experiences with the rationalist community, which affords a great deal of individual freedom and tolerance for the effects of that freedom, but is absolutely scrupulous about truth telling and making people get fair financial rewards.

They seem to be having better lives across the board, pretty significantly. Rationalists are less likely to have anxiety or depression, report being happier, more satisfied with their life, less worried, etc.

This is interesting, because on Ranko (the part of Glosso where you can anonymously rate your friends), people tend to assign high-rat scorers

lower

on happiness.

This is all pretty noisy, as the ns are all around 300, and we are doing a

lot

of tests searching for significant stuff on Glosso, so I would be even warier than normal. Still though, it seems like other people rate rationalists lower on happy, kind, friendly, playful. My guess is rats tend to come across as more stoic and dour regardless of their internal state, which might be pretty good. Or possibly, non-rats are more likely to perform happiness when they are not actually happy?

These gaps are not huge, but there is a pretty consistent trend. When asked to self-rate, rationalists were more likely than others to have a self-view of being arrogant, incosiderate, stoic, smart edgelords (the smart being probably correct, as reflected in the other data). They view themselves as less naive, polite, loving, compassionate, or sensitive.

If we’re going to have discourse about why there are so few women in rationality, I’d say this is probably where to look. The disposition that tends to correlate with rationalist interests is very stereotypically masculine! Rationalists are

not

very feminine flavored! There is little effusive social warmth here.

I suspect this is probably related to why they have such (relatively) good mental health? In general, femininity tends to correlate with greater neuroticism and lower satisfaction across the board (probably good for keeping babies alive?). Maybe if you turn up whatever autistic knob is required for a rationalist culture you also drop out the neuroticism? Idk this is vibes not a strong claim here.

The controlling-for-distance-from-aella was doing some work here, in the non-controlled versions it was like ‘yeah rats are slightly more into cnc’ (5% more) but actually it’s just my circles are into that.

But weirdly, in general, except for specifically wartime/slave/trafficking roleplay scenarios, rationalists are

less kinky

than non-rationalists. Across 519 kink items, 80% of the items are ones rationalists reported being

less

interested, compared to non-rationalists. It holds across all the kink-related tests on glosso I have. For most cnc or bdsm related stuff, they have nearly identical scores.

Is it possible rationalists just have a higher bar for saying they’re into things? Probably not - their answer distribution matches other people’s on everything except the kink/relationship questions.

It’s possible they are less likely to downplay answers that are perceived as unflattering (the scrupulous truth-telling trait), and thus appear to be more into things that are taboo? I don’t know.

Interestingly, rationalists seem to be more interested in marriage and kids than non-rationalists! They already have kids and report being in relationships at the same rate as non-rationalists, so this isn’t an effect of ‘more rationalists are sad and lonely’. Maybe this is due to some other confounder I haven’t checked, but the gap is pretty big.

They’re more likely to tolerate political disagreements in a partner, and more down to shun friends for a partner. Pretty pair-bondy, if you ask me!

They’re more likely to donate to charity, and more likely to want to raise kids in nontraditional ways. They are not interested in splitting domestic labor equally, which I

heartily

agree with and find very reflected in the culture (you should be engaging in positive-sum trades!!).

Obviously

not

base rates here! But in general, it seems that rationalists

are

a little more polyamorous than non-rats. From normie to rat, we see an increase of 5% for cuddling, 12% for sexting, 11% for falling in love, and 8% for financial support.

This is controlling for knowing me, which maybe isn’t the right move here, since you can in fact control away real effects if those real effects are related. If we

don’t

control for me+bay area, and stick to just age+sex, then the difference is a 15% gap for cuddling, 23% gap for sexting, 20% gap for falling in love, and 12% gap for financial supporting.

So I’d say, roughly, that 10-20% more of rationalists are polyamorous than non-rats.

Rationalists tend to be friends with other rationalists. This aligns with my experience in real life, which is populated full of group houses and

unique culture

.

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1

The greater the number, the higher the impact on the quiz scores. I’d loosely consider stuff under .25 to be ‘mild’ and stuff below .2 to be ‘slight nudges’

1. I like the forum “LessWrong” (0.48)

2. I like the blog “Astral Codex Ten” (0.49)

3. I like the blog “Marginal Revolution” (0.47)

4. I like the blog “Don’t Worry About the Vase” by The Zvi (0.35)

5. I like the forum “Hacker News” (0.35)

6. I know what the word “epistemology” means (0.31)

7. I like the forum “EA Forum” (0.30)

8. Raising prices when there are shortages (for example, due to disasters) is a good thing for society. (0.29)

9. I like the podcast “The Bayesian Conspiracy” (0.28)

10. I have studied advanced physics (0.27)

11. I know the principles for designing nanotechnology (0.25)

12. Insider trading is fine and should be allowed (0.23)

13. I have studied genetic engineering (0.22)

14. I have an above average understanding of the economy (0.22)

15. I align my politics with the person I’m currently in conversation with (0.22)

16. I have read the great literary classics (0.21)

17. I am familiar with condensed matter physics (0.19)

18. When bad people suffer, that’s bad, even if it’s justified. (0.21)

19. I could recite a poem from memory right now (0.19)

20. Consent is overrated by mainstream American culture (0.19)

21. The Mormons are really on to something (0.19)

22. The correlation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement has a substantial genetic basis — that is, there are genes that influence both traits. (0.20)

23. I love listening to the opera (0.19)

24. (r) We need to use land we already have cleared for development before we cut into any more natural environments (−0.26)

25. (r) I disliked math in school (−0.20)

26. (r) Society should prevent misinformation from spreading (−0.19)

27. (r) All parks should have cost‑free entry. (−0.20)

28. (r) I am less racist than my peers (−0.19)

29. (r) I follow the Golden Rule (i.e. treating others as you would like to be treated) in some form (−0.20)

30. (r) The political elite are secretly a cabal of pedophiles (−0.20)

31. Intelligence is mainly determined by genetics (0.20)

32. If people could live about 10 times as long as they do now, that would be a good thing. (0.19)

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