The topics covered overlap with the present-day rationalist movement (centered on Lesswrong). They include religion and atheism, philosophy (especially philosophy of science and ethics), evolution, and psychology.
Religion and atheism isn’t a central topic of LessWrong. To the extend that religion is a topic, it’s more “what can we learn from religion” then about opposing it. At least I don’t remember any highly received new atheist writing in the last years on LessWrong.
Later, writing about religion felt like beating a dead horse.
Then, I suppose as a part of the “meta-rationality” wave, the idea of cultural evolution became popular: how people can do the right things for wrong reasons (and premature rationality can hurt you), for example how divination is useful, not because supernatural things are actually true, but because divination is effectively a source of randomness, so it is useful where a random-number generator would be useful, e.g. when fighting an intelligent adversary or hunting animals. This made religion somewhat acceptable—perhaps not epistemically, but instrumentally.
We also had the period when LessWrong was effectively dead and replaced by Slate Star Codex as a center of rationalist discource, but SSC was not explicitly atheist, and at least half of its comment section did not even aspire to be rationalist.
Lately Buddhism became popular on LessWrong—a fact that I hate, and I have already complained about it many times—first it started as “there seems to be some scientific evidence in favor of meditation giving its users some benefits” which is okay if true, but of course the entire expert literature on this topic is full of memetic hazards, and we gradually move towards accepting parts of Buddhist epistemology, or at least privileging them as hypotheses. (Sometimes I imagine a parallel universe where e.g. Catholics have invented push-ups, and the rationalists in that universe progress from “hey, there is a scientific evidence that push-ups are good for your body” towards accepting the wisdom of Catholicism and praying to Lord Jesus.) I sincerely hope that this all is just temporary and we will grow out of it, better sooner than later.
(And I suspect the recent silence on the topic also reflects the recent changes in American politics. To put it bluntly, a decade or more ago, it was like “religion = Republicans = the bad guys”, but then people realized that Islam is a religion too, and being a too consistent atheist also makes you “islamophobic”, which is a politically incorrect thing, and therefore it is better to just avoid this topic.)
I see it just as a product of the times. I certainly found the anti-theist content in Rationality: A to Z to be slightly jarring on a re-read—on other topics, Elizer is careful to not bring into it the political issues of the day that could emotionally overshadown the more subtle points he’s making about thought in general—but he’ll drop in extremely anti religion jabs despite that. To me, that’s just part of reading history.
Yes, I said “overlap” not “coincide” for that reason. The present movement has more discussion of applied epistemology, ideology, and world-view formation, and less discussion specifically focused on religion. My sense is that the earlier movement is also more focused on Christianity than on religion or ideology in general.
Evolution was a pretty new theory in 1880 and so it makes sense it would be discussed more. (AI is a big topic for the present movement and not for the earlier).
Religion and atheism isn’t a central topic of LessWrong. To the extend that religion is a topic, it’s more “what can we learn from religion” then about opposing it. At least I don’t remember any highly received new atheist writing in the last years on LessWrong.
As far as evolution goes https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/evolution shows few recent writing about it.
At the beginning, LessWrong was strongly atheistic:
Religion’s Claim to be Non-Disprovable
Avoiding Your Belief’s Real Weak Points
Beyond the Reach of God
Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism
Is Humanism a Religion-Substitute?
Belief in Belief
Professing and Cheering
An Alien God
The Sacred Mundane
Let Them Debate College Students
A Parable on Obsolete Ideologies—goes full Godwin on religion
Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted
How Theism Works
My Atheism Story
Later, writing about religion felt like beating a dead horse.
Then, I suppose as a part of the “meta-rationality” wave, the idea of cultural evolution became popular: how people can do the right things for wrong reasons (and premature rationality can hurt you), for example how divination is useful, not because supernatural things are actually true, but because divination is effectively a source of randomness, so it is useful where a random-number generator would be useful, e.g. when fighting an intelligent adversary or hunting animals. This made religion somewhat acceptable—perhaps not epistemically, but instrumentally.
We also had the period when LessWrong was effectively dead and replaced by Slate Star Codex as a center of rationalist discource, but SSC was not explicitly atheist, and at least half of its comment section did not even aspire to be rationalist.
Lately Buddhism became popular on LessWrong—a fact that I hate, and I have already complained about it many times—first it started as “there seems to be some scientific evidence in favor of meditation giving its users some benefits” which is okay if true, but of course the entire expert literature on this topic is full of memetic hazards, and we gradually move towards accepting parts of Buddhist epistemology, or at least privileging them as hypotheses. (Sometimes I imagine a parallel universe where e.g. Catholics have invented push-ups, and the rationalists in that universe progress from “hey, there is a scientific evidence that push-ups are good for your body” towards accepting the wisdom of Catholicism and praying to Lord Jesus.) I sincerely hope that this all is just temporary and we will grow out of it, better sooner than later.
(And I suspect the recent silence on the topic also reflects the recent changes in American politics. To put it bluntly, a decade or more ago, it was like “religion = Republicans = the bad guys”, but then people realized that Islam is a religion too, and being a too consistent atheist also makes you “islamophobic”, which is a politically incorrect thing, and therefore it is better to just avoid this topic.)
This is a great list of posts. I had some of these in mind but hadn’t remembered all of these. Thanks!
Early LessWrong was atheist, but everything on the internet around the time LW was taking off had a position in that debate. ”...the defining feature of this period wasn’t just that there were a lot of atheism-focused things. It was how the religious-vs-atheist conflict subtly bled into everything.” Or less subtly, in this case.
I see it just as a product of the times. I certainly found the anti-theist content in Rationality: A to Z to be slightly jarring on a re-read—on other topics, Elizer is careful to not bring into it the political issues of the day that could emotionally overshadown the more subtle points he’s making about thought in general—but he’ll drop in extremely anti religion jabs despite that. To me, that’s just part of reading history.
Yes, I said “overlap” not “coincide” for that reason. The present movement has more discussion of applied epistemology, ideology, and world-view formation, and less discussion specifically focused on religion. My sense is that the earlier movement is also more focused on Christianity than on religion or ideology in general.
Evolution was a pretty new theory in 1880 and so it makes sense it would be discussed more. (AI is a big topic for the present movement and not for the earlier).