This is possibly the best question in the thread. Thank you.
All of my anticipations seem to be driven by stuff. I expect stuff to happen as I, or other people, do, or don’t do, things.
When I pray, I expect to feel a greater sense of clarity in my thoughts. I will expect to occasionally feel a great sense of inner peace. This feeling has been described as “A small voice that pierces to the very soul.” “It causes the heart to burn.” “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness.”
As I follow basic Church lifestyle and standards, such as reading the scriptures daily, praying often, attending church and serving therein, avoiding alcohol tobacco, etc, waiting until marriage for sex, and so forth, I expect to develop “Christlike attributes.” I expect to become more patient and loving; I expect to be able to keep clean thoughts and to be humility. I expect to develop related social skills: projecting love through genuine enthusiasm about other people. I expect to be able to maintain a vision of the future motivated by my faith that translates into happiness and an optimistic attitude.
I expect that these things will operate not only in me but in others. I expected that these things would happen to the people I taught in India, for example. I expect to marry another Latter-day Saint; if she continues faithful, I expect these things will similarly help my future wife. I expect that doing these things will help me to have a happy, successful family.
I anticipate that others’ actions not in harmony with these principles will make them less happy in the medium-to-long run (and sometimes the short run). For example, when my fraternity brothers go and watch their porn, I anticipate that they will slowly extinguish their consciences and find difficulty taking joy in the simple, innocent pleasures of life. I anticipate them having greater difficulties having successful relationships and marriages.
I could go on in this vein, but I think that should be enough.
Because my other reply may seem rude, I want to make my point a different way: by giving a reply to calcsam that looks to Mormons, as his response looks to me (and probably several others here).
Why, this sure is the best response I’ve ever seen about this issue. I whole-heartedly thank you, and let me just say, I totally support Mormonism where Mormonism is good for America.
Now, all of my anticipations are sort of about “reality”, so when I look at reality, I expect certain things to happen based on being a rationalist rather than a Mormon. Let’s go over some of those things I expect to be true if I’m correct.
When I think about a problem, I expect to come closer to finding an answer. I will expect to occasionally come to a correct answer. This feeling has been described as an “aha!” moment or a “that’s funny...” moment. “America, apple pie, science, greatness, courage, applause lights.”
As society follows methods similar to what rationalists do, I expect to see them produce technology that will satisfy our goals. I expect engineers and scientists to come up with land vehicles better than previous generations had. I expect them to find more and better energy that was accessible before.
I expect that these things will not just happen in America, even though she’s the greatest nation on earth but in a way that doesn’t offend non-Americans, but elsewhere too. I expect that all over the world engineers will be able to produce technologies that make difficult work less difficult.
I expect that when others abandon these rationalist ideas and so don’t have curiousity or clear thinking, they won’t understand how technology works. I expect they’ll be unable to troubleshoot and fix things when they have minor operational breakdowns. I expect that R&D arms that don’t follow rationalist ideas won’t turn out good technology. So rationalism gives me more accurate expectations than Mormonism.
I could list some more technologies that work, but that should be enough to show beyond a shadow of a doubt Mormonism is completely wrong and incapable of producing technology.
I expect most of these same things (e.g., that prayer/meditation/reflection, gratitude, forgiveness, clean thoughts, avoiding alcohol & tobacco, etc. will all lead to a better life in the ways you’ve mentioned) and am not LDS, and have no LDS reason for these beliefs. These beliefs are true regardless of LDS, not because of it. The self-help / positive psychology / happiness literature is sufficient for the above beliefs, and so are not meaningful support for LDS.
These beliefs are true regardless of LDS, not because of it.
They are known to be true now but when given were not and were and are generally thought to be not worth following by most people.
All commandments are of this nature, they are true and there are actual reasons why they are true even if we do not currently understand those reasons. For instance even tithing (or giving a set percentage to charity) is recommended in most books on organizing ones finances, unfortunately I haven’t read any good explanations as to why this works just that it does.
The question was “What do you anticipate now that you didn’t before?”
If he answers that he anticipates devotion and prayer making him more patient, loving, and humble, and also more happy and optimistic—that indeed answers the question and doesn’t justify your open contempt.
That you call it “uncontroversial” or that you say you’re personally interested in other aspects of Mormonism, is both false and irrelevant—it wasn’t even your question that he was responding to. If the original person asking the question was more interested in miraculous (not psychological) anticipations, then he should have specified it better.
In short you criticized the answer, when it seems you should have criticized the question.
Then you kept proclaiming what calcsam’s intentions were.
Lastly, if I could downvote you twice for the same post, I’d have done it again after you edited for wrongly assuming and falsely proclaiming that it was calcsam who downvoted you. You have no excuse for that. It was just a falsehood with which you slandered calcsam, and even attributed it on his “inability to otherwise express frustration”.
I’d urge you stop cheaply psychoanalyzing people, especially when you end up wrong about your conclusions.
If he answers that he anticipates devotion and prayer making him more patient, loving, and humble, and also more happy and optimistic—that indeed answers the question and doesn’t justify your open contempt.
That you call it “uncontroversial” or that you say you’re personally interested in other aspects of Mormonism, is both false and irrelevant—it wasn’t even your question that he was responding to. If the original person asking the question was more interested in miraculous (not psychological) anticipations, then he should have specified it better.
calcsam knows very well what regulars here are curious about. A legalistic focus on giving answers that are technically responsive while evading the very things he knows people want answers to is not defensible, and you should not be blaming the questioner for failing to close enough loopholes.
Or perhaps you consider this to be a good refutation of Mormonism, rather than a condescending dodge of the central points of dispute?
I’d urge you stop cheaply psychoanalyzing people, especially when you end up wrong about your conclusions.
Wait, are there other instances where you think I’ve cheaply psychoanalyzed people? I want to know if there’s a trend I didn’t notice.
I think you’re confusing the criticism “This evidence is not surprising enough to be strong evidence that lifts the prior improbability of Mormonism” with the criticism “You are not answering this question honestly.” The answer was to the point. It doesn’t lift Mormonism. It doesn’t even come close. But it wasn’t leaving anything out, I expect, because I expect that there isn’t anything else.
In my book, pretending to have evidence that non-trivially lifts Mormonism (or indeed, anything) and then, when prompted, offering evidence that does no such thing is dishonesty.
I considered that hypothesis, but confused people generally aren’t able to so specifically tailor their responses to be unhelpful. Confusion says, “Sure, let’s find its shape by tossing flour at it!”, not “Hah! Got that one covered—the dragon in my garage is flour-permeable!”
I think Sam is confused in the sense that he believes that these pleasant feelings he gets in connection with Mormonism do lift it.
Actually, I tend to agree with the statement that I just speculated Sam might believe. For example, Sam’s experiences seem to rule out the possibility that religious experience leads you to Truth and Hinduism is the One True Religion. If that possibility is ruled out, the probability that religious experience leads you to Truth and Mormonism is the One True Religion is slightly increased.
The possibility that you can feel anything if you pray enough is lifted even more, and should have been high to start with since there are so many reports of prayer getting that sort of result, but perhaps Sam didn’t consider that hypothesis. I could imagine human-looking creatures and a contrived universe for which feelings during prayer are a reliable means of investigating the truth.
Hmm, this seems to demolish the idea that DavidM’s reported meditation experiences are evidence of anything interesting, since DavidM has probably meditated much more than Sam prayed, and they’re essentially the same process. Damn, I was hoping there was something there.
pretending to have evidence that non-trivially lifts Mormonism
I don’t think he ever claimed to have that.
You seem to be commenting on the basis of an implicit norm that goes something like “if you make a claim, you’re also claiming that you have evidence for that claim strong enough to convince x-rationalists”. But AFAICT, calcsam has never done anything of the kind. To the contrary, he said he isn’t interested in preaching (read: trying to present evidence) and would be happy to not discuss religion at all.
He simply thought we were curious and offered to reply questions here, he didn’t say that he thought his answers would persuade us.
I don’t see how calcsam’s initial post in any way implies that he doesn’t intend to “present relevant evidence”; the clause you refer to would, if read the way you suggest, take away the entire purpose of anyone asking their questions here. In the context of discussions like this “not preach” means something more like “not condemn you for reaching different conclusions”, not “I will make no attempt to say relevant things”.
Further, he was aware the group was interested his basis for his Mormon-specific claims, not the more general ones that happen to also be used effectively by Mormons, like I would be doing (and did), if I said, in parody, that the proof of the LW worldview is in the very existence of technology. Presenting evidence for non-specific practices while purporting to justify Mormonism, and knowing everyone is interested in such Mormon-specific evidence, is hard to read as anything but dishonesty.
I have no such skill; I simply spend 2% more effort than than the median mouth-breather.
There was an article here about how people overestimate the difficulty of finding a creative middle way between two controversial options, while in reality, it’s simple: you just:
1) Look for better options. 2) When you find a superior option, go with it.
These are easy steps, yet people rarely do both. (If someone knows what article I’m talking about, please link it.)
I think something similar is going on here: my “secret” to the ease you see in my verbal logic is this:
1) Look for the inferential gap between you and the other person. 2) When you find it, trace it out.
The only difficulty in applying this method (once aware of it at least) is getting over one’s fear of losing a monopoly on knowledge.
I think you underestimate how hard it is to apply a little more effort in a realm where the objects of manipulation all seem vague.
What I had in mind was that you’re written about the difficulties you’ve had with social skills, to point where you’ve assumed that people were deliberately giving you unfollowable advice.
I suggest that most people have as much difficulty getting started on logic as you have (had?) with social skills.
In that case, like with the relative ease I have explaining other topics, the problem is that people cannot articulate the insight that will resolve the confusion. In the social skills issue, they either assumed or were unaware of pre-requisites. And even when they were aware of the pre-requisites, they didn’t know how you’d go about satisfying them. (Remember Alicorn’s infamous advice to “just do internet dating!” and “just sample the 1000s of women your friends can favorably introduce you to!”?)
Either way, the problem could be solved with just a little effort. Once I achieve a skill or ability (including social ones), I’m always able to bring others up to my level by articulating the inferential path therebetween. Yet others cannot do the same for me. Why? Do I really have abnormal skill, or do I just take a few easy steps that others haven’t?
Coincidentally, there was a great example of laziness destroying explanatory ability, with the lazy person perfectly fine with that result. On the OB blog, a poster named mtraven “tried” to justify why regulations apply in one case but not another, but gave a woefully inadequate explanation. Another poster and I tried to get him to give a more helpful explanation by saying what other criteria he needed to satisfy.
What’s especially interesting is how, in attempting to demonstrate how impossibly difficulty the task of articulating the relevant difference is, he compared it to how “hard” it is to sufficiently explain why prisons are locked while schools are not.
But … that’s easy to explain, and I showed him how. The fact that he sees both as hard tells more about his own effort than about inherent explanatory difficulty.
(Note: that exchange was also a test of whether people can be persuaded to play fair in debate if you can just be nice to them. In that exchange, Tyrrell was “good cop” to my “bad cop”, being far more polite and deferential in making the same criticisms I did. Did that do anything to perusade mtraven to unlock his monopoly on the knowledge he claimed to have? No.)
If what you can do were common, do you think LW would need so much rationality 101 material?
Possible test: find a person who doesn’t seem to be making obvious inferences. Teach them how to do so. Ask them how their thinking has changed.
If you do teach them, my bet is that their answer will be at least as much about having efficient methods of knowing what to pay attention to as it is about putting in more effort.
If you don’t succeed at teaching them, it might suggest that you have a non-obvious skill.
Why did you decide that laziness is a more plausible explanation than you having an unusual talent?
Part of attributing laziness is assuming that you know how much effort an action requires for a particular person. Is it plausible that actions take about the same amount of effort the vast majority of people?
That’s a good idea, and my article about how to “Explain Yourself!” has been in development hell way too long now. (I recently thought of doing a “Summary Execution” article, about how to summarize an article or another’s ideas, which is also a sorely lacking skill I see in others, and equally frustrating to me.) So I guess there’s laziness on my part, but not in my explanations when I do give them.
If what you can do were common, do you think LW would need so much rationality 101 material?
That’s not teaching quite the same thing (except of course, articles that tackle it directly like “Expecting Short Inferential Distance”—which partly disagrees with me on this anyway—and “Double Illusion of Transparency”). They talk about how to think correctly in general and how to avoid bias, not specifically how to explain.
Also, do you think mtraven is abnormally bad at whatever skillset you claim I’m good at? (I call the skill “explaining”, and I think you’re calling the same thing “verbal logic”.) I mean, how hard did you have to look to find an articulable reason why prisons but not schools are locked? [1]
People don’t honestly get stumped on that one, do they?
Alternatively, the issue may be one of understanding: I have abnormally high standards for what counts as “understanding” and only purport to be an expert (and therefore offer to explain something) when I’ve reached Level 2 in my hierarchy. Perhaps people think they’re qualified to explain when their understanding is actually much more shallow.
[1] I avoid mentioning, of course, that some schools do lock their kids in, but we can confine the question to the canonical case.
I believe we’re mostly interested in anticipations relating to the “supernatural” aspects of mormonisim—ie: what do you expect to see if the mormon god does in fact exist, if joseph smith was in fact a prophet that spoke to an angel, etc.
Calcsam’s answer is pretty much straight out of Preach My Gospel which is the missionary manual. I should clarify that it is from the section on how to be a better missionary and person rather then the section on what to present to investigators.
Actually, a lot of the posts he has made are boiling down that book into Less Wrongian terms. Which reading further down seems to be the point and why he was given the ability to post in the first place.
anticipations relating to the “supernatural” aspects of mormonisim
The restoration of the Ten Tribes from the land of the north and that Zion the New Jerusalem will be built pretty much where Kansas City MO currently stands. Also, the building of a temple on the temple mount in Jerusalem, Christ coming again. These are the scriptural ones, there might be more, unfortunately no specific time frame is given for any of that so while they are the most sure predictions unless one is living through one of those coming true they are relatively useless in evaluating claims of religions.
Here are some that are more specific and the first two do have more of a time table with which to evaluate, however they are not scripture:
In October 1916′s General Conference one of the Apostles said that someone there present would see the restoration of the Ten Tribes and would read the records they had. The first part could be interpreted in a variety of ways that don’t mean much at all if one is not a member of the church. The reading of the records could by itself just mean somebody present (possibly as a baby) was/will be given the special opportunity to read said records. However taken together and combined with the Biblical scriptures on the subject, and noting that said statement is still contained in official church teaching manuals, then said occurrence should occur with in the next 20 or so years (assuming there was some fairly new baby present at the meeting) or sooner (assuming some young adult or child that could understand was what was meant). There the potential problem that said Apostle was speaking from his limited understanding and did not actually receive any revelation on the subject, however given that the statement still appears in Church manuals for university students this leads me to believe that it is thought of as a revelation.
Lets see, there have been 4 presidents of the Church that have said that the New Deal programs and the continued expansion of government will lead the United States in to economic circumstances that will make the Great Depression pale in significance if not stopped and reverted. I am under the assumption that they have not been stopped or reverted as of yet.
There was some talks by general authorities about another civil war in the United States at some future point in time, this from around the time of the Civil War. I am not sure if this was coming from the section of the D&C that talks about the civil war and other wars and so was their interpretation of things (which is often and can always be wrong) or if actual prophecy was involved. No time table was given for this.
I’m inclined to agree. But I’m still mystified as to why our gracious patron Eliezer Y. saw fit to anoint this particular religious believer (out of all the many, many, educated and articulate religious believers who speak English in this world) with the special dispensation of karma points out of thin air. Beyond that, I’m further surprised that the LessWrong community at large was so enthusiastic in upvoting these insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult.
Because Divia and Will and I talked to him for a couple of hours and he had tremendously useful practical advice, like “Telling people to greet first-time newcomers and be nice to them is the difference between a 50% retention rate and a 90% retention rate.”
I was kind of surprised that, when I was a Fellow, Anna told me “maybe you should go make friends with this person” exactly twice. Because if it turned out to be a bad idea, or if I turned out to be an unsuitable person to perform this sort of task, she should have done it only once (or foreseen this unsuitability and never done it at all). But it seemed unlikely that there were only two people for whom this was a good idea.
Out of everybody who showed up at a meetup. Out of everybody who corresponded with her and might be useful to keep within arm’s reach even if they weren’t suited for the Fellows program. Out of… a lot of people.
Nope, he showed up at a Thursday LW meetup in Mountain View and he was like “Actually I just got back from a two-year stint organizing self-sustaining Mormon communities in India” and I was like “Awesome, got any advice for us?” and he was like “Yeah” and then it became clear the discussion was going to go on for a while and we decided to reconvene Tuesday so we could talk in detail.
Beyond that, I’m further surprised that the LessWrong community at large was so enthusiastic in upvoting these insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult.
Huh? calcsam wrote about ways to spread rationality more effectively. I upvoted his posts because I felt that advice is valuable, and that we have a lot to learn from organizations that have far more experience in spreading their beliefs.
Yes, Mormons use those techniques to teach people irrational beliefs. But to say, simply because of that, that the techniques are “insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult”? That’s like somebody making a post about the best ways to earn money, and somebody else saying they don’t want on LW “insights into how to help false, irrational and personally costly religious cults run their operations” (because cults, too, benefit from having money).
But I’m still mystified as to why our gracious patron Eliezer Y. saw fit to anoint this particular religious believer (out of all the many, many, educated and articulate religious believers who speak English in this world) with the special dispensation of karma points out of thin air.
That isn’t exactly what happened. As an editor, Eliezer could see calcsam’s posts before they were published and upvoted them thus giving calcsam the requisite karma to publish them. I wouldn’t characterize that as “out of thin air”. As to why Eliezer did this for calcsam in particular, I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that it is because calcsam asked him to, and Eliezer, on reading the then not published posts in question, decided it would be a good idea.
Beyond that, I’m further surprised that the LessWrong community at large was so enthusiastic in upvoting these insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult.
I am not so convinced about “personally costly”. It seems that Mormonism teaches its followers a lot of good habits. That it attributes the specification of these good habits to silly theistic beliefs doesn’t seem to hurt them beyond limiting them to a level most people don’t reach anyways. And the social network it provides (though it involves rallying around a theistic flag) also is highly beneficial, and I value input on how to build that sort of community (though I aim to use more rationality-friendly rallying points). Insights into seducing people into an irrational social group may generalize to insights to seducing them into a rational social group.
I’m further surprised that the LessWrong community at large was so enthusiastic in upvoting these insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult.
Because “Telling people to greet first-time attendees and be nice to them vastly improves the rate at which new attendees come back” is useful for seducing people into attending Less Wrong meetups as well as costly religious cults. I wouldn’t exactly call it Dark Arts, either.
We’ve been considering learning from Toastmasters too. If we ever want to be more effective than an online discussion, we need to go learn from (not imitate) real-world groups that are more effective than that.
Having been on both sides of it, I am quite certain it is a dark art. It is called love bombing. For a community dedicated to overcoming biases, using one of them (they like me so they must be right) to recruit is a bit rich.
I am afraid that if LessWrong recruits, it has to do it the hard way, through directly addressing the logical mind, not by pushing weird psychological switches. But this is another great differentiator we have from cult-like organizations, easy to point out to interested interlocutors, and one I am quite proud of.
Love-bombing is characteristic of most cults, especially the Jehovah’s Witnesses. New recruits are drowned in a sea of fake “love” and “caring.” Cults will pretend to love you to death as long as you are a prospective convert to their group. As a member of a tight-knit community, love will surround you as you faithfully follow all of the strict rules of the cult. However, if you ever decide that you want to leave the group, if you ever disobey any of the rules of the cult, or if you express doubt about any of the cult’s doctrine, then all “love” suddenly ceases. The member is then shunned and excommunicated (which Jehovah’s Witnesses call “disfellowshipping”), and all remaining members are instructed to never have any contact with them in the future, not even to greet them. Then all effort is directed towards finding new recruits to replace the shunned members who have “gone astray.”
That certainly is a bad thing. But dude, simply having some basic decency and being nice to people is not the thing that’s being described in there.
I am afraid that if LessWrong recruits, it has to do it the hard way, through directly addressing the logical mind, not by pushing weird psychological switches.
Rationalists seem to have this weird bias that everything else than strictly logical reasoning and persuasion is dishonest and wrong somehow, and you should never appeal to emotions. This seems to me nonsensical and counterproductive. Like it or not, even rationalists are still very strongly driven by pure emotional affect. We’re driven to visit those groups where we feel comfortable and welcome, and reluctant to visit groups where this isn’t the case. The rider may exert some guiding pull, but ultimately the elephant is the one in charge.
If LessWrong ever wants to build a real community, by which I mean a group that really motivates its members to act rational, motivates them to stay in touch with each other, makes them feel safe enough that they can openly discuss their problems and failings, helps promote their mental health, to provide each other concrete help, etc., then “pushing weirding psychological switches” is what you must do. And personally I’d much rather have a real community that makes people in the world better off and helps spread rationality, than just a loose gathering of people who are only united by the fact that they write things on the same Internet message board. And that they attended the occasional meet-up, but eventually drifted away because they saw little benefit in attending those.
Love bombing is the deliberate show of affection or friendship by an individual or a group of people toward another individual. Critics have asserted that this action may be motivated in part by the desire to recruit, convert or otherwise influence.
I don’t see the difference from what is proposed above.
Well, if we just use that definition, then there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with doing that.
Actually, it would seem like deliberately learning to act friendly towards people in one situation would also make it easier to act friendly towards people in general. So we’re not just making newcomers feel welcome, we’re also improving our social skills at the same time. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Yes, consciously being friendly is a feature not a bug. There are different types of communities. Read and writing here is high self-selvective and only appeals to certain types of people. There are many other types of people who are compatible with a rational worldview, who are not compatible with Less Wrong. Maybe they need more (literal) hand holding.
I think a big fraction of ‘normal people’ are compatible with a rational, or ‘not obviously insane’ culture. But that hypothetical mainstreamed rational culture (not existing now) is not Less Wrong culture. There are pieces missing.
Doing something to spread a more-compatible, more virulent, rational culture doesn’t have to water down what has been established here at Less Wrong. This is about eventually Raising The Sanity Waterline, sustainably.
I am not so convinced about “personally costly”. It seems that Mormonism teaches its followers a lot of good habits.
I can imagine that some alcoholics on the path to self destruction might view Mormonism or Islam or some other total-control group as the last safety net between them and death. I know for a fact that some people in similar circumstances are saved by being incarcerated. Good for them. But that’s not a very high bar, and it’s not a long-term path to rationality.
Mormonism is personally costly. For starters—tithing. Ten percent of your pre-tax income. That’s costly. Beyond that—required volunteer time, as cited by calcsam under the heading “everyone has a responsiblity.” Time is money. Demands on time are costly.
Beyond this are other costs that may be more difficult to measure in terms of currency, such as the personal burdens of conformity. For example, what is the price paid by a born Mormon who turns out to be gay?
ETA:
I can’t believe I forgot about the costs associated with going on a mission! Two years out of the life of the missionary, to say nothing of the preparation time. Also, as I understand it, the parents of the missionary are expected to fund it, above and beyond the requirement of tithing. This includes buying branded Mormon stuff.
I can imagine that some alcoholics on the path to self destruction might view Mormonism or Islam or some other total-control group as the last safety net between them and death. I know for a fact that some people in similar circumstances are saved by being incarcerated. Good for them. But that’s not a very high bar, and it’s not a long-term path to rationality.
So it turns out that you can help a lot of people without meeting a very high bar. Good. In building rationalist communities, we are not going to make a perfect clone of Mormonism. We will seek to eliminate obstacles to greater rationality.
Mormonism is personally costly. For starters—tithing. Ten percent of your pre-tax income. That’s costly. Beyond that—required volunteer time, as cited by calcsam under the heading “everyone has a responsiblity.” Time is money. Demands on time are costly.
The time and money that members put into a community does not just disappear, it generates returns as value to the community. You put in time providing service to the community, and when you have need, other community members will put in time to help you. And you do it in a way that builds comradery rather than as raw economic transactions. And yes, I want a rationalist community to put money and time into generally improving the world.
Beyond this are other costs that may be more difficult to measure in terms of currency, such as the personal burdens of conformity. For example, what is the price paid by a born Mormon who turns out to be gay?
Yes, I agree that this a real cost of Mormonism. Though it is easy to filter out of a rationalist community.
So it turns out that you can help a lot of people without meeting a very high bar. Good. In building rationalist communities, we are not going to make a perfect clone of Mormonism. We will seek to eliminate obstacles to greater rationality.
I’m thinking some especially desperate people may experience a net benefit from radically coercive restrictions on their freedom. I’m talking about the equivalent of at least temporary enslavement. I don’t propose this for the vast majority of the population, let alone anybody who would claim to be a successful rationalist.
The time and money that members put into a community does not just disappear, it generates returns as value to the community.
Not “scripture” study. I suggest scripture study is at least a deadweight loss, perhaps worse. I imagine the purpose of scripture study and so forth in the Mormon context is to enforce conformity. I’d suggest this actually harms the Mormons who are the supposed beneficiaries of this education, limiting their freedom and dulling their thinking.
ETA:
Yes, I agree that this a real cost of Mormonism. Though it is easy to filter out of a rationalist community.
The conformity may be necessary to the Mormon model. You filter out the conformity, you filter out the obedience, then the model breaks down.
I’m thinking some especially desperate people may experience a net benefit from radically coercive restrictions on their freedom. I’m talking about the equivalent of at least temporary enslavement.
That seems to be an extreme exaggeration of how low the bar is.
Not “scripture” study. I suggest scripture study is at least a deadweight loss, perhaps worse. I imagine the purpose of scripture study and so forth in the Mormon context is to enforce conformity. I’d suggest this actually harms the Mormons who are the supposed beneficiaries of this education, limiting their freedom and dulling their thinking.
Ok, if we import anything like scripture study into a rationalist community, it will be translated to studying something like probability theory, or decision theory, or applications of such to real life situations. For us, the equivalent will be useful.
The conformity may be necessary to the Mormon model. You filter out the conformity, you filter out the obedience, then the model breaks down.
I seriously doubt that homophobia is necessary to the Mormon model.
The thing is, I want to build effective rationalist communities. Discussion of how the Mormon communities work can generate lots of ideas, lot of things worth trying. That is why I am interested in that continuing discussion, and why I don’t appreciate attempts to dismiss it because it is associated with irrational religion, or because it doesn’t help all members (when it is observable that the community is pretty successful).
That seems to be an extreme exaggeration of how low the bar is.
I’m well aware that there are a lot of people who would choose to be a lot more coercive than me, given half the chance. I’m aware that a lot of people, in a lot of countries have chosen to be rather coercive, for a long, long time. So far, I’m interpreting the available data to suggest that the optimal level of social and governmental coercion is somewhat less than the historical standard, rather than more.
Ok, if we import anything like scripture study into a rationalist community, it will be translated to studying something like probability theory, or decision theory, or applications of such to real life situations. For us, the equivalent will be useful.
And in the utopia that we shall build, the skateboards will be free! Right now, our kind can’t cooperate,. I would agree that the Mormons can cooperate. So can the North Koreans. So can the Scientologists. So can the Objectivists, at least the ones who haven’t been exiled from the community. So, for that matter, could the Soviets, until the collapse of the Soviet system.
Modelling a rational community by the example of a manifestly irrational community like the Mormons seems like an exercise in futility. I suggest that the Mormon model is one of many, many, models that works limiting the freedom and intelligence and rationality of its members. It’s a cult. It’s the dark arts. It’s a lie. When did LessWrong decide that this kind of approach would be the one to pursue?
I think that depends on how one defines homophobia. Given a basic understanding of the LDS view of the purpose of life and what our eventual destiny is then homosexual relations are necessarily contrary to that purpose. That is one of the major goals of life is to form procreative units, male and female, that will endure past death.
The doctrine is not that God hates gays, though He does disapprove of any actions in that regard. However, the doctrine is also that everyone should be free to act according to what they think is right as long as it does not interfere with others ability to also act according to what they think is right. Hence the reason the LDS Church got involved in allowing homosexual rights in Salt Lake City but also are against homosexual marriage.
Colloquially, “homophobia” is used to refer to any attitudes or policies which negatively affect gay people but not straight people. It is an unfortunate term, since the “phobia” part implies fear, but it’s what we have to work with. So, homophobia includes believing that the kind of sex gay people have is immoral, believing that gay people should not be allowed to marry their chosen partners, and generally privileging opposite-sex relationships over same-sex ones in any way, shape, or form. This is regardless of whether these attitudes or policies are motivated by one’s beliefs about God and his preferences or come with a corresponding belief that the disapproved acts should be forcibly prevented. Hate per se is not called for.
Under this particular (and extremely broad) definition of homophobia then homophobia is indeed necessary to the LDS belief structure. However, I do think this definition is overly broad especially given the connotations of homophobia that have been pointed out. Some sort of gradient terms of homophobia would be more useful in my opinion.
Not “scripture” study. I suggest scripture study is at least a deadweight loss, perhaps worse. I imagine the purpose of scripture study and so forth in the Mormon context is to enforce conformity.
I had a friend who did family scripture study every day and he (and his 5 or 6 siblings) were among the best readers in school, because they’d sat there and practiced it every single day since they were born. So there are definitively benefits to the scripture reading.
Also, many Mormons do appear to benefit from going on a mission. (To my surprise, many will say it was the “best two years” of their life—do I need to update my model?) Many 20 somethings turn into aimless “kidults” and Mormon Missions do a lot to prevent this by giving a very clear path to move forward with life (High School --> Mission --> College --> Marriage -- > Job).
However, there is a big problem with the conformity. Everyone has a different opportunity cost for scripture study or a mission. For many people, 2 1⁄2 hours a week of esoteric reading is probably better then the tube; but for those who would otherwise be reading the sequences…
And with missions, they say EVERY young man should serve a mission. It doesn’t matter how bad of a fit you are for it (with some health exceptions) or what you would be doing with your time otherwise, you are expected to go. That’s a huge conformity cost for kids who are turning down scholarships and delaying important endeavors (Newton and Einstein were both in there 20s when they developed their most important ideas; would they have been able to do so if they went on a Mormon mission at that important time in their life?).
So what a rationalist community could learn from that is not to expect/encourage everyone to derive the same benefits from the same actions.
You haven’t read the Sequences?!? seems to have a similar cultural connotation for LessWrongers as You haven’t been on a mission?!? does for Mormons. Having other culturally acceptable ways for rational progression seems like a good lesson to learn. For example,
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality seems to be a great partial alternative. If someone has read that but not the sequences does the community look down on them?
How many of the sequence ideas could be converted to a RSAnimate type video?
Even having the most important 100,000 words of the sequences in a (printed) book form would be a great help. I feel like I could give a friend a 100k word LessWrong book, but telling someone they should read a million words of blog posts seems odd.
I’m thinking some especially desperate people may experience a net benefit from radically coercive restrictions on their freedom. I’m talking about the equivalent of at least temporary enslavement. I don’t propose this for the vast majority of the population, let alone anybody who would claim to be a successful rationalist.
Joining the military of your country seems like it would offer a similar experience...
Upvoting isn’t the same as agreeing. This is a topic of interest (getting more people to be more rational) and calcsam addressed it in a clear manner based on his experiences. You could probably get a lot of upvotes for describing with equal clarity things that religions do and why not to do them.
Hmm. I assign an exceedingly low probability to the proposition that an omnipotent, omniscient being exists and has existed for as long as the universe has existed, but I don’t disagree with your anticipations. I don’t see how your anticipations are very connected to this proposition.
I can easily imagine you gaining a sense of mental clarity from the act of prayer and procuring certain benefits from the lifestyle choices that you mention. I’m not sure what probability I would assign to these predictions, but I think that they would range from around .15->.6 In my eyes, your anticipations have a considerable of probability of being true regardless of whether or not a being which I described in my first paragraph exists.
I agree with hegemonicon in that (at least in this context), we’re more interested in your anticipations that are related to the above proposition rather than those regarding the effects of certain lifestyle choices.
My conclusion: You’re here to answer questions, not to debate. But at some point I’d enjoy talking with you about your beliefs with respect to Bayes’ Theorem, and about breaking “Mormonism” into multiple hypotheses.
What has led you to anticipate (for brevity, some of) these things? Including some benefits for you and the predicted detriments for your fraternity brothers.
What do you anticipate now that you didn’t before?
This is possibly the best question in the thread. Thank you.
All of my anticipations seem to be driven by stuff. I expect stuff to happen as I, or other people, do, or don’t do, things.
When I pray, I expect to feel a greater sense of clarity in my thoughts. I will expect to occasionally feel a great sense of inner peace. This feeling has been described as “A small voice that pierces to the very soul.” “It causes the heart to burn.” “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness.”
As I follow basic Church lifestyle and standards, such as reading the scriptures daily, praying often, attending church and serving therein, avoiding alcohol tobacco, etc, waiting until marriage for sex, and so forth, I expect to develop “Christlike attributes.” I expect to become more patient and loving; I expect to be able to keep clean thoughts and to be humility. I expect to develop related social skills: projecting love through genuine enthusiasm about other people. I expect to be able to maintain a vision of the future motivated by my faith that translates into happiness and an optimistic attitude.
I expect that these things will operate not only in me but in others. I expected that these things would happen to the people I taught in India, for example. I expect to marry another Latter-day Saint; if she continues faithful, I expect these things will similarly help my future wife. I expect that doing these things will help me to have a happy, successful family.
I anticipate that others’ actions not in harmony with these principles will make them less happy in the medium-to-long run (and sometimes the short run). For example, when my fraternity brothers go and watch their porn, I anticipate that they will slowly extinguish their consciences and find difficulty taking joy in the simple, innocent pleasures of life. I anticipate them having greater difficulties having successful relationships and marriages.
I could go on in this vein, but I think that should be enough.
Because my other reply may seem rude, I want to make my point a different way: by giving a reply to calcsam that looks to Mormons, as his response looks to me (and probably several others here).
Why, this sure is the best response I’ve ever seen about this issue. I whole-heartedly thank you, and let me just say, I totally support Mormonism where Mormonism is good for America.
Now, all of my anticipations are sort of about “reality”, so when I look at reality, I expect certain things to happen based on being a rationalist rather than a Mormon. Let’s go over some of those things I expect to be true if I’m correct.
When I think about a problem, I expect to come closer to finding an answer. I will expect to occasionally come to a correct answer. This feeling has been described as an “aha!” moment or a “that’s funny...” moment. “America, apple pie, science, greatness, courage, applause lights.”
As society follows methods similar to what rationalists do, I expect to see them produce technology that will satisfy our goals. I expect engineers and scientists to come up with land vehicles better than previous generations had. I expect them to find more and better energy that was accessible before.
I expect that these things will not just happen in America, even though she’s the greatest nation on earth but in a way that doesn’t offend non-Americans, but elsewhere too. I expect that all over the world engineers will be able to produce technologies that make difficult work less difficult.
I expect that when others abandon these rationalist ideas and so don’t have curiousity or clear thinking, they won’t understand how technology works. I expect they’ll be unable to troubleshoot and fix things when they have minor operational breakdowns. I expect that R&D arms that don’t follow rationalist ideas won’t turn out good technology. So rationalism gives me more accurate expectations than Mormonism.
I could list some more technologies that work, but that should be enough to show beyond a shadow of a doubt Mormonism is completely wrong and incapable of producing technology.
That about covers it...
I expect most of these same things (e.g., that prayer/meditation/reflection, gratitude, forgiveness, clean thoughts, avoiding alcohol & tobacco, etc. will all lead to a better life in the ways you’ve mentioned) and am not LDS, and have no LDS reason for these beliefs. These beliefs are true regardless of LDS, not because of it. The self-help / positive psychology / happiness literature is sufficient for the above beliefs, and so are not meaningful support for LDS.
They are known to be true now but when given were not and were and are generally thought to be not worth following by most people.
All commandments are of this nature, they are true and there are actual reasons why they are true even if we do not currently understand those reasons. For instance even tithing (or giving a set percentage to charity) is recommended in most books on organizing ones finances, unfortunately I haven’t read any good explanations as to why this works just that it does.
Tax deductible...
Paragraph breakdown:
[politician-style suck-up]
[empty statement]
[uncontroversial expectation that avoids the claims people are really interested in regarding prayer]
[expectation related to social support community and adherence to its rituals, and only superficially to the disputed aspects of Mormonism]
[same]
[same]
[attempt to intimidate reader by implying overwhelming, unbounded list of evidence points when few were presented]
This seems like the most useful part of your breakdown. I don’t think that the rest of it’s very helpful.
Also downvoted, mostly for being a mostly empty and needlessly rude reply.
This in particular seemed to break principle of charity:
How do you know who downvoted you? Anyway, atleast one downvote was by me.
Just a reasonable inference based on the general attitude about proper use of voting that seems to be prevalent and that people pick up here.
Could you walk me through the reasoning for your downvote so I can better avoid making unhelpful posts in the future?
The question was “What do you anticipate now that you didn’t before?”
If he answers that he anticipates devotion and prayer making him more patient, loving, and humble, and also more happy and optimistic—that indeed answers the question and doesn’t justify your open contempt.
That you call it “uncontroversial” or that you say you’re personally interested in other aspects of Mormonism, is both false and irrelevant—it wasn’t even your question that he was responding to. If the original person asking the question was more interested in miraculous (not psychological) anticipations, then he should have specified it better.
In short you criticized the answer, when it seems you should have criticized the question.
Then you kept proclaiming what calcsam’s intentions were.
Lastly, if I could downvote you twice for the same post, I’d have done it again after you edited for wrongly assuming and falsely proclaiming that it was calcsam who downvoted you. You have no excuse for that. It was just a falsehood with which you slandered calcsam, and even attributed it on his “inability to otherwise express frustration”.
I’d urge you stop cheaply psychoanalyzing people, especially when you end up wrong about your conclusions.
calcsam knows very well what regulars here are curious about. A legalistic focus on giving answers that are technically responsive while evading the very things he knows people want answers to is not defensible, and you should not be blaming the questioner for failing to close enough loopholes.
Or perhaps you consider this to be a good refutation of Mormonism, rather than a condescending dodge of the central points of dispute?
Wait, are there other instances where you think I’ve cheaply psychoanalyzed people? I want to know if there’s a trend I didn’t notice.
I think you’re confusing the criticism “This evidence is not surprising enough to be strong evidence that lifts the prior improbability of Mormonism” with the criticism “You are not answering this question honestly.” The answer was to the point. It doesn’t lift Mormonism. It doesn’t even come close. But it wasn’t leaving anything out, I expect, because I expect that there isn’t anything else.
In my book, pretending to have evidence that non-trivially lifts Mormonism (or indeed, anything) and then, when prompted, offering evidence that does no such thing is dishonesty.
If you confuse dishonesty with confusion, you’ll perceive a lot of ill-will that isn’t really there.
I considered that hypothesis, but confused people generally aren’t able to so specifically tailor their responses to be unhelpful. Confusion says, “Sure, let’s find its shape by tossing flour at it!”, not “Hah! Got that one covered—the dragon in my garage is flour-permeable!”
I think Sam is confused in the sense that he believes that these pleasant feelings he gets in connection with Mormonism do lift it.
Actually, I tend to agree with the statement that I just speculated Sam might believe. For example, Sam’s experiences seem to rule out the possibility that religious experience leads you to Truth and Hinduism is the One True Religion. If that possibility is ruled out, the probability that religious experience leads you to Truth and Mormonism is the One True Religion is slightly increased.
The possibility that you can feel anything if you pray enough is lifted even more, and should have been high to start with since there are so many reports of prayer getting that sort of result, but perhaps Sam didn’t consider that hypothesis. I could imagine human-looking creatures and a contrived universe for which feelings during prayer are a reliable means of investigating the truth.
Hmm, this seems to demolish the idea that DavidM’s reported meditation experiences are evidence of anything interesting, since DavidM has probably meditated much more than Sam prayed, and they’re essentially the same process. Damn, I was hoping there was something there.
I don’t think he ever claimed to have that.
You seem to be commenting on the basis of an implicit norm that goes something like “if you make a claim, you’re also claiming that you have evidence for that claim strong enough to convince x-rationalists”. But AFAICT, calcsam has never done anything of the kind. To the contrary, he said he isn’t interested in preaching (read: trying to present evidence) and would be happy to not discuss religion at all.
He simply thought we were curious and offered to reply questions here, he didn’t say that he thought his answers would persuade us.
I don’t see how calcsam’s initial post in any way implies that he doesn’t intend to “present relevant evidence”; the clause you refer to would, if read the way you suggest, take away the entire purpose of anyone asking their questions here. In the context of discussions like this “not preach” means something more like “not condemn you for reaching different conclusions”, not “I will make no attempt to say relevant things”.
Further, he was aware the group was interested his basis for his Mormon-specific claims, not the more general ones that happen to also be used effectively by Mormons, like I would be doing (and did), if I said, in parody, that the proof of the LW worldview is in the very existence of technology. Presenting evidence for non-specific practices while purporting to justify Mormonism, and knowing everyone is interested in such Mormon-specific evidence, is hard to read as anything but dishonesty.
I think you’re overestimating how clear-headed most people are about verbal logic—a subject that’s easy for you.
I have no such skill; I simply spend 2% more effort than than the median mouth-breather.
There was an article here about how people overestimate the difficulty of finding a creative middle way between two controversial options, while in reality, it’s simple: you just:
1) Look for better options.
2) When you find a superior option, go with it.
These are easy steps, yet people rarely do both. (If someone knows what article I’m talking about, please link it.)
I think something similar is going on here: my “secret” to the ease you see in my verbal logic is this:
1) Look for the inferential gap between you and the other person.
2) When you find it, trace it out.
The only difficulty in applying this method (once aware of it at least) is getting over one’s fear of losing a monopoly on knowledge.
I think you underestimate how hard it is to apply a little more effort in a realm where the objects of manipulation all seem vague.
What I had in mind was that you’re written about the difficulties you’ve had with social skills, to point where you’ve assumed that people were deliberately giving you unfollowable advice.
I suggest that most people have as much difficulty getting started on logic as you have (had?) with social skills.
In that case, like with the relative ease I have explaining other topics, the problem is that people cannot articulate the insight that will resolve the confusion. In the social skills issue, they either assumed or were unaware of pre-requisites. And even when they were aware of the pre-requisites, they didn’t know how you’d go about satisfying them. (Remember Alicorn’s infamous advice to “just do internet dating!” and “just sample the 1000s of women your friends can favorably introduce you to!”?)
Either way, the problem could be solved with just a little effort. Once I achieve a skill or ability (including social ones), I’m always able to bring others up to my level by articulating the inferential path therebetween. Yet others cannot do the same for me. Why? Do I really have abnormal skill, or do I just take a few easy steps that others haven’t?
Coincidentally, there was a great example of laziness destroying explanatory ability, with the lazy person perfectly fine with that result. On the OB blog, a poster named mtraven “tried” to justify why regulations apply in one case but not another, but gave a woefully inadequate explanation. Another poster and I tried to get him to give a more helpful explanation by saying what other criteria he needed to satisfy.
What’s especially interesting is how, in attempting to demonstrate how impossibly difficulty the task of articulating the relevant difference is, he compared it to how “hard” it is to sufficiently explain why prisons are locked while schools are not.
But … that’s easy to explain, and I showed him how. The fact that he sees both as hard tells more about his own effort than about inherent explanatory difficulty.
(Note: that exchange was also a test of whether people can be persuaded to play fair in debate if you can just be nice to them. In that exchange, Tyrrell was “good cop” to my “bad cop”, being far more polite and deferential in making the same criticisms I did. Did that do anything to perusade mtraven to unlock his monopoly on the knowledge he claimed to have? No.)
I think you have an unusual skill.
If what you can do were common, do you think LW would need so much rationality 101 material?
Possible test: find a person who doesn’t seem to be making obvious inferences. Teach them how to do so. Ask them how their thinking has changed.
If you do teach them, my bet is that their answer will be at least as much about having efficient methods of knowing what to pay attention to as it is about putting in more effort.
If you don’t succeed at teaching them, it might suggest that you have a non-obvious skill.
Why did you decide that laziness is a more plausible explanation than you having an unusual talent?
Part of attributing laziness is assuming that you know how much effort an action requires for a particular person. Is it plausible that actions take about the same amount of effort the vast majority of people?
That’s a good idea, and my article about how to “Explain Yourself!” has been in development hell way too long now. (I recently thought of doing a “Summary Execution” article, about how to summarize an article or another’s ideas, which is also a sorely lacking skill I see in others, and equally frustrating to me.) So I guess there’s laziness on my part, but not in my explanations when I do give them.
That’s not teaching quite the same thing (except of course, articles that tackle it directly like “Expecting Short Inferential Distance”—which partly disagrees with me on this anyway—and “Double Illusion of Transparency”). They talk about how to think correctly in general and how to avoid bias, not specifically how to explain.
Also, do you think mtraven is abnormally bad at whatever skillset you claim I’m good at? (I call the skill “explaining”, and I think you’re calling the same thing “verbal logic”.) I mean, how hard did you have to look to find an articulable reason why prisons but not schools are locked? [1]
People don’t honestly get stumped on that one, do they?
Alternatively, the issue may be one of understanding: I have abnormally high standards for what counts as “understanding” and only purport to be an expert (and therefore offer to explain something) when I’ve reached Level 2 in my hierarchy. Perhaps people think they’re qualified to explain when their understanding is actually much more shallow.
[1] I avoid mentioning, of course, that some schools do lock their kids in, but we can confine the question to the canonical case.
I believe we’re mostly interested in anticipations relating to the “supernatural” aspects of mormonisim—ie: what do you expect to see if the mormon god does in fact exist, if joseph smith was in fact a prophet that spoke to an angel, etc.
Calcsam’s answer is pretty much straight out of Preach My Gospel which is the missionary manual. I should clarify that it is from the section on how to be a better missionary and person rather then the section on what to present to investigators.
Actually, a lot of the posts he has made are boiling down that book into Less Wrongian terms. Which reading further down seems to be the point and why he was given the ability to post in the first place.
The restoration of the Ten Tribes from the land of the north and that Zion the New Jerusalem will be built pretty much where Kansas City MO currently stands. Also, the building of a temple on the temple mount in Jerusalem, Christ coming again. These are the scriptural ones, there might be more, unfortunately no specific time frame is given for any of that so while they are the most sure predictions unless one is living through one of those coming true they are relatively useless in evaluating claims of religions.
Here are some that are more specific and the first two do have more of a time table with which to evaluate, however they are not scripture:
In October 1916′s General Conference one of the Apostles said that someone there present would see the restoration of the Ten Tribes and would read the records they had. The first part could be interpreted in a variety of ways that don’t mean much at all if one is not a member of the church. The reading of the records could by itself just mean somebody present (possibly as a baby) was/will be given the special opportunity to read said records. However taken together and combined with the Biblical scriptures on the subject, and noting that said statement is still contained in official church teaching manuals, then said occurrence should occur with in the next 20 or so years (assuming there was some fairly new baby present at the meeting) or sooner (assuming some young adult or child that could understand was what was meant). There the potential problem that said Apostle was speaking from his limited understanding and did not actually receive any revelation on the subject, however given that the statement still appears in Church manuals for university students this leads me to believe that it is thought of as a revelation.
Lets see, there have been 4 presidents of the Church that have said that the New Deal programs and the continued expansion of government will lead the United States in to economic circumstances that will make the Great Depression pale in significance if not stopped and reverted. I am under the assumption that they have not been stopped or reverted as of yet.
There was some talks by general authorities about another civil war in the United States at some future point in time, this from around the time of the Civil War. I am not sure if this was coming from the section of the D&C that talks about the civil war and other wars and so was their interpretation of things (which is often and can always be wrong) or if actual prophecy was involved. No time table was given for this.
Upvoted.
I’m starting to think this will not end well. We’ve started down a much too familiar non-theist and religionist conversation path.
I’m inclined to agree. But I’m still mystified as to why our gracious patron Eliezer Y. saw fit to anoint this particular religious believer (out of all the many, many, educated and articulate religious believers who speak English in this world) with the special dispensation of karma points out of thin air. Beyond that, I’m further surprised that the LessWrong community at large was so enthusiastic in upvoting these insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult.
Because Divia and Will and I talked to him for a couple of hours and he had tremendously useful practical advice, like “Telling people to greet first-time newcomers and be nice to them is the difference between a 50% retention rate and a 90% retention rate.”
I was kind of surprised that, when I was a Fellow, Anna told me “maybe you should go make friends with this person” exactly twice. Because if it turned out to be a bad idea, or if I turned out to be an unsuitable person to perform this sort of task, she should have done it only once (or foreseen this unsuitability and never done it at all). But it seemed unlikely that there were only two people for whom this was a good idea.
Only 2 out of how many?
Out of everybody who showed up at a meetup. Out of everybody who corresponded with her and might be useful to keep within arm’s reach even if they weren’t suited for the Fellows program. Out of… a lot of people.
What led to this mutli-hour talk? Had one of you known him before, or...?
Nope, he showed up at a Thursday LW meetup in Mountain View and he was like “Actually I just got back from a two-year stint organizing self-sustaining Mormon communities in India” and I was like “Awesome, got any advice for us?” and he was like “Yeah” and then it became clear the discussion was going to go on for a while and we decided to reconvene Tuesday so we could talk in detail.
Huh? calcsam wrote about ways to spread rationality more effectively. I upvoted his posts because I felt that advice is valuable, and that we have a lot to learn from organizations that have far more experience in spreading their beliefs.
Yes, Mormons use those techniques to teach people irrational beliefs. But to say, simply because of that, that the techniques are “insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult”? That’s like somebody making a post about the best ways to earn money, and somebody else saying they don’t want on LW “insights into how to help false, irrational and personally costly religious cults run their operations” (because cults, too, benefit from having money).
That isn’t exactly what happened. As an editor, Eliezer could see calcsam’s posts before they were published and upvoted them thus giving calcsam the requisite karma to publish them. I wouldn’t characterize that as “out of thin air”. As to why Eliezer did this for calcsam in particular, I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that it is because calcsam asked him to, and Eliezer, on reading the then not published posts in question, decided it would be a good idea.
I am not so convinced about “personally costly”. It seems that Mormonism teaches its followers a lot of good habits. That it attributes the specification of these good habits to silly theistic beliefs doesn’t seem to hurt them beyond limiting them to a level most people don’t reach anyways. And the social network it provides (though it involves rallying around a theistic flag) also is highly beneficial, and I value input on how to build that sort of community (though I aim to use more rationality-friendly rallying points). Insights into seducing people into an irrational social group may generalize to insights to seducing them into a rational social group.
Because “Telling people to greet first-time attendees and be nice to them vastly improves the rate at which new attendees come back” is useful for seducing people into attending Less Wrong meetups as well as costly religious cults. I wouldn’t exactly call it Dark Arts, either.
We’ve been considering learning from Toastmasters too. If we ever want to be more effective than an online discussion, we need to go learn from (not imitate) real-world groups that are more effective than that.
Having been on both sides of it, I am quite certain it is a dark art. It is called love bombing. For a community dedicated to overcoming biases, using one of them (they like me so they must be right) to recruit is a bit rich.
I am afraid that if LessWrong recruits, it has to do it the hard way, through directly addressing the logical mind, not by pushing weird psychological switches. But this is another great differentiator we have from cult-like organizations, easy to point out to interested interlocutors, and one I am quite proud of.
From the Wikipedia article:
That certainly is a bad thing. But dude, simply having some basic decency and being nice to people is not the thing that’s being described in there.
Rationalists seem to have this weird bias that everything else than strictly logical reasoning and persuasion is dishonest and wrong somehow, and you should never appeal to emotions. This seems to me nonsensical and counterproductive. Like it or not, even rationalists are still very strongly driven by pure emotional affect. We’re driven to visit those groups where we feel comfortable and welcome, and reluctant to visit groups where this isn’t the case. The rider may exert some guiding pull, but ultimately the elephant is the one in charge.
If LessWrong ever wants to build a real community, by which I mean a group that really motivates its members to act rational, motivates them to stay in touch with each other, makes them feel safe enough that they can openly discuss their problems and failings, helps promote their mental health, to provide each other concrete help, etc., then “pushing weirding psychological switches” is what you must do. And personally I’d much rather have a real community that makes people in the world better off and helps spread rationality, than just a loose gathering of people who are only united by the fact that they write things on the same Internet message board. And that they attended the occasional meet-up, but eventually drifted away because they saw little benefit in attending those.
Why not just use the definition at the top?
I don’t see the difference from what is proposed above.
Well, if we just use that definition, then there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with doing that.
Actually, it would seem like deliberately learning to act friendly towards people in one situation would also make it easier to act friendly towards people in general. So we’re not just making newcomers feel welcome, we’re also improving our social skills at the same time. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Yes, consciously being friendly is a feature not a bug. There are different types of communities. Read and writing here is high self-selvective and only appeals to certain types of people. There are many other types of people who are compatible with a rational worldview, who are not compatible with Less Wrong. Maybe they need more (literal) hand holding.
I think a big fraction of ‘normal people’ are compatible with a rational, or ‘not obviously insane’ culture. But that hypothetical mainstreamed rational culture (not existing now) is not Less Wrong culture. There are pieces missing.
Doing something to spread a more-compatible, more virulent, rational culture doesn’t have to water down what has been established here at Less Wrong. This is about eventually Raising The Sanity Waterline, sustainably.
I can imagine that some alcoholics on the path to self destruction might view Mormonism or Islam or some other total-control group as the last safety net between them and death. I know for a fact that some people in similar circumstances are saved by being incarcerated. Good for them. But that’s not a very high bar, and it’s not a long-term path to rationality.
Mormonism is personally costly. For starters—tithing. Ten percent of your pre-tax income. That’s costly. Beyond that—required volunteer time, as cited by calcsam under the heading “everyone has a responsiblity.” Time is money. Demands on time are costly.
Beyond this are other costs that may be more difficult to measure in terms of currency, such as the personal burdens of conformity. For example, what is the price paid by a born Mormon who turns out to be gay?
ETA:
I can’t believe I forgot about the costs associated with going on a mission! Two years out of the life of the missionary, to say nothing of the preparation time. Also, as I understand it, the parents of the missionary are expected to fund it, above and beyond the requirement of tithing. This includes buying branded Mormon stuff.
So it turns out that you can help a lot of people without meeting a very high bar. Good. In building rationalist communities, we are not going to make a perfect clone of Mormonism. We will seek to eliminate obstacles to greater rationality.
The time and money that members put into a community does not just disappear, it generates returns as value to the community. You put in time providing service to the community, and when you have need, other community members will put in time to help you. And you do it in a way that builds comradery rather than as raw economic transactions. And yes, I want a rationalist community to put money and time into generally improving the world.
Yes, I agree that this a real cost of Mormonism. Though it is easy to filter out of a rationalist community.
I’m thinking some especially desperate people may experience a net benefit from radically coercive restrictions on their freedom. I’m talking about the equivalent of at least temporary enslavement. I don’t propose this for the vast majority of the population, let alone anybody who would claim to be a successful rationalist.
Not “scripture” study. I suggest scripture study is at least a deadweight loss, perhaps worse. I imagine the purpose of scripture study and so forth in the Mormon context is to enforce conformity. I’d suggest this actually harms the Mormons who are the supposed beneficiaries of this education, limiting their freedom and dulling their thinking.
ETA:
The conformity may be necessary to the Mormon model. You filter out the conformity, you filter out the obedience, then the model breaks down.
That seems to be an extreme exaggeration of how low the bar is.
Ok, if we import anything like scripture study into a rationalist community, it will be translated to studying something like probability theory, or decision theory, or applications of such to real life situations. For us, the equivalent will be useful.
I seriously doubt that homophobia is necessary to the Mormon model.
The thing is, I want to build effective rationalist communities. Discussion of how the Mormon communities work can generate lots of ideas, lot of things worth trying. That is why I am interested in that continuing discussion, and why I don’t appreciate attempts to dismiss it because it is associated with irrational religion, or because it doesn’t help all members (when it is observable that the community is pretty successful).
I’m well aware that there are a lot of people who would choose to be a lot more coercive than me, given half the chance. I’m aware that a lot of people, in a lot of countries have chosen to be rather coercive, for a long, long time. So far, I’m interpreting the available data to suggest that the optimal level of social and governmental coercion is somewhat less than the historical standard, rather than more.
And in the utopia that we shall build, the skateboards will be free! Right now, our kind can’t cooperate,. I would agree that the Mormons can cooperate. So can the North Koreans. So can the Scientologists. So can the Objectivists, at least the ones who haven’t been exiled from the community. So, for that matter, could the Soviets, until the collapse of the Soviet system.
Modelling a rational community by the example of a manifestly irrational community like the Mormons seems like an exercise in futility. I suggest that the Mormon model is one of many, many, models that works limiting the freedom and intelligence and rationality of its members. It’s a cult. It’s the dark arts. It’s a lie. When did LessWrong decide that this kind of approach would be the one to pursue?
I think that depends on how one defines homophobia. Given a basic understanding of the LDS view of the purpose of life and what our eventual destiny is then homosexual relations are necessarily contrary to that purpose. That is one of the major goals of life is to form procreative units, male and female, that will endure past death.
The doctrine is not that God hates gays, though He does disapprove of any actions in that regard. However, the doctrine is also that everyone should be free to act according to what they think is right as long as it does not interfere with others ability to also act according to what they think is right. Hence the reason the LDS Church got involved in allowing homosexual rights in Salt Lake City but also are against homosexual marriage.
Colloquially, “homophobia” is used to refer to any attitudes or policies which negatively affect gay people but not straight people. It is an unfortunate term, since the “phobia” part implies fear, but it’s what we have to work with. So, homophobia includes believing that the kind of sex gay people have is immoral, believing that gay people should not be allowed to marry their chosen partners, and generally privileging opposite-sex relationships over same-sex ones in any way, shape, or form. This is regardless of whether these attitudes or policies are motivated by one’s beliefs about God and his preferences or come with a corresponding belief that the disapproved acts should be forcibly prevented. Hate per se is not called for.
Under this particular (and extremely broad) definition of homophobia then homophobia is indeed necessary to the LDS belief structure. However, I do think this definition is overly broad especially given the connotations of homophobia that have been pointed out. Some sort of gradient terms of homophobia would be more useful in my opinion.
There’s “heteronormativity”.
As given by Wikipedia the term heteronormativity appears to fit nearly perfectly, see The Family: A Proclamation to the World
I had a friend who did family scripture study every day and he (and his 5 or 6 siblings) were among the best readers in school, because they’d sat there and practiced it every single day since they were born. So there are definitively benefits to the scripture reading.
Also, many Mormons do appear to benefit from going on a mission. (To my surprise, many will say it was the “best two years” of their life—do I need to update my model?) Many 20 somethings turn into aimless “kidults” and Mormon Missions do a lot to prevent this by giving a very clear path to move forward with life (High School --> Mission --> College --> Marriage -- > Job).
However, there is a big problem with the conformity. Everyone has a different opportunity cost for scripture study or a mission. For many people, 2 1⁄2 hours a week of esoteric reading is probably better then the tube; but for those who would otherwise be reading the sequences…
And with missions, they say EVERY young man should serve a mission. It doesn’t matter how bad of a fit you are for it (with some health exceptions) or what you would be doing with your time otherwise, you are expected to go. That’s a huge conformity cost for kids who are turning down scholarships and delaying important endeavors (Newton and Einstein were both in there 20s when they developed their most important ideas; would they have been able to do so if they went on a Mormon mission at that important time in their life?).
So what a rationalist community could learn from that is not to expect/encourage everyone to derive the same benefits from the same actions.
You haven’t read the Sequences?!? seems to have a similar cultural connotation for LessWrongers as You haven’t been on a mission?!? does for Mormons. Having other culturally acceptable ways for rational progression seems like a good lesson to learn. For example,
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality seems to be a great partial alternative. If someone has read that but not the sequences does the community look down on them?
How many of the sequence ideas could be converted to a RSAnimate type video?
Even having the most important 100,000 words of the sequences in a (printed) book form would be a great help. I feel like I could give a friend a 100k word LessWrong book, but telling someone they should read a million words of blog posts seems odd.
Joining the military of your country seems like it would offer a similar experience...
Upvoting isn’t the same as agreeing. This is a topic of interest (getting more people to be more rational) and calcsam addressed it in a clear manner based on his experiences. You could probably get a lot of upvotes for describing with equal clarity things that religions do and why not to do them.
Hmm. I assign an exceedingly low probability to the proposition that an omnipotent, omniscient being exists and has existed for as long as the universe has existed, but I don’t disagree with your anticipations. I don’t see how your anticipations are very connected to this proposition.
I can easily imagine you gaining a sense of mental clarity from the act of prayer and procuring certain benefits from the lifestyle choices that you mention. I’m not sure what probability I would assign to these predictions, but I think that they would range from around .15->.6 In my eyes, your anticipations have a considerable of probability of being true regardless of whether or not a being which I described in my first paragraph exists.
I agree with hegemonicon in that (at least in this context), we’re more interested in your anticipations that are related to the above proposition rather than those regarding the effects of certain lifestyle choices.
calcsam, did you not realize this? If not, why?
My conclusion: You’re here to answer questions, not to debate. But at some point I’d enjoy talking with you about your beliefs with respect to Bayes’ Theorem, and about breaking “Mormonism” into multiple hypotheses.
Thanks for replying! I’ll think on this for a little while.
What has led you to anticipate (for brevity, some of) these things? Including some benefits for you and the predicted detriments for your fraternity brothers.