The intersection of ideology and identity is all about defining winners to include you. Most ideologies have someone to look down on for that exact reason- we’re winners because we’re not X. I recently started listening to country music quite a bit, and it is somewhat amazing the number of songs that profess a preference for being poorer/simpler/etc, but it makes perfect sense when you imagine it as them redefining success to exclude people that own mansions but don’t have time to go to the fishin hole. (Side note: the rich people I know that like to fish regularly go fishing.)
And so it seems to me that LW’s brand of “not only should you be an altruist, but you should be a particular kind of altruist that doesn’t get warm fuzzies” will sell like warm dog poo, because that’s only barely about rationality. Even standard rationality- the “I’m often wrong but I try to be less wrong”- only sells to the analog of theologians among the religious. Christianity works for both the people who want the social club and to look down on the unsaved and for the people who want personal growth (and to look down at those who don’t get it). But generally speaking the first group is larger than the second group- and we only appeal to the second group.
Do people move from one group to the other? Yes, of course. (Unfortunately, it goes both ways.) Should we fret about how many people would be attracted to the stuff we do? Honestly, I don’t see why. One could get some validation that other people like it, or some validation that other people don’t like it. But rationality is fundamentally an individual thing and it should provide individual benefits. Turning it into a political or social movement introduces all the problems inherent with political or social movements- and it seems better to just live so well other people ask you what you’re doing.
As far as I can tell, “rationalism” as a social movement actually does pretty well on the “people who want the social club and to look down on the unsaved” front among people who identify as smart (where the “unsaved” equivalent is “people not as smart as us”), and not so well among those who don’t.
In any case: yeah, if one doesn’t want to “sell” it in the first place, one’s problems become simpler.
It is and it isn’t.
The intersection of ideology and identity is all about defining winners to include you. Most ideologies have someone to look down on for that exact reason- we’re winners because we’re not X. I recently started listening to country music quite a bit, and it is somewhat amazing the number of songs that profess a preference for being poorer/simpler/etc, but it makes perfect sense when you imagine it as them redefining success to exclude people that own mansions but don’t have time to go to the fishin hole. (Side note: the rich people I know that like to fish regularly go fishing.)
And so it seems to me that LW’s brand of “not only should you be an altruist, but you should be a particular kind of altruist that doesn’t get warm fuzzies” will sell like warm dog poo, because that’s only barely about rationality. Even standard rationality- the “I’m often wrong but I try to be less wrong”- only sells to the analog of theologians among the religious. Christianity works for both the people who want the social club and to look down on the unsaved and for the people who want personal growth (and to look down at those who don’t get it). But generally speaking the first group is larger than the second group- and we only appeal to the second group.
Do people move from one group to the other? Yes, of course. (Unfortunately, it goes both ways.) Should we fret about how many people would be attracted to the stuff we do? Honestly, I don’t see why. One could get some validation that other people like it, or some validation that other people don’t like it. But rationality is fundamentally an individual thing and it should provide individual benefits. Turning it into a political or social movement introduces all the problems inherent with political or social movements- and it seems better to just live so well other people ask you what you’re doing.
As far as I can tell, “rationalism” as a social movement actually does pretty well on the “people who want the social club and to look down on the unsaved” front among people who identify as smart (where the “unsaved” equivalent is “people not as smart as us”), and not so well among those who don’t.
In any case: yeah, if one doesn’t want to “sell” it in the first place, one’s problems become simpler.