All right, both very fair points. Let’s shift gears; please help me leave a line of retreat.
How do atheists generally cultivate altruism? Note that I’m NOT claiming that atheists are less moral on average, still less that theism is somehow required for certain levels of morality. Both of those are really stupid things to say.
What I am concerned about is that even upon being exposed to the logic of non-zero-sum games, some people remain remarkably selfish and/or cynical. Is there any way to deliberately increase their altruism and/or idealism without resorting to mysticism or religion?
I’m aware of no evidence that theistic belief even helps people be more altruistic. I subscribe to the view held by many psychologists, that philosophical rationales (including theistic ones) are usually the effects of behaviors, not their causes, while the actual causes are typically emotional in nature. As TheOtherDave suggests, the kind of emotional response people have to a situation is largely shaped by their previous social experience.
I’m aware of no evidence that theistic belief even helps people be more altruistic.
Note that I’m NOT claiming that atheists are less moral on average.
Right; I agree with you. Theism, in and of itself, doesn’t get you anywhere. It does, however, help enable the rest of organized religion. It’s hard to take church or whatever too seriously if you’re a confirmed atheist. Organized religion, in my opinion, does have many useful and powerful resources for building character. I doubt that getting access to these resources is worth the irrationality, though, so I’m looking for substitute character-building resources.
Other commenters have suggested teaching people about tit-for-tat, collective action problems, etc., but I’m not convinced that game theoretic education can take the place of character education—you can understand quite clearly how the world would be better off if everyone cooperated, and nevertheless feel that your best individual course of action is to defect around the edges and try to hide it.
Why would you expect church to be good character education compared to, say, television, which preaches a much more modern and sophisticated morality. I suggest Nip/Tuck, or for the young, Kimba: The White Lion and maybe the Ewoks Droids Adventure Hour.
If you want a religion though, there are surely factually accurate forms of atheistic Buddhism.
Well, if your church is just preaching at you, then I suppose it would be strictly dominated by good television shows. The churches I bother attending also involve studying, reflection, social activism, community service, mutual support, ritual, indoctrination, etc. It’s a much more participatory experience, and so it’s much more effective than watching television at changing your character.
As for whether the state that it’s changing your character to is desirable, well, that’s a matter of finding the right church. There are a few out there, and, more to the point (if you scroll up a few comments) I would like to identify a better, secular character-change institution. Watching TV wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
If you want a religion though, there are surely factually accurate forms of atheistic Buddhism.
I don’t want a religion; I want a character-building institution. Currently, my known list of sources for that is {Religion.} I would love your help expanding the set.
TV really isn’t so bad. I honestly find it difficult to entertain the possibility that the 90th percentile church is better than the 90th percentile TV show. I’m sure that there are 99th percentile churches, but I’d expect them to be much more like a good dojo, gym, skateboarding/surfing group, band, community theater or the like. The general purpose word for this sort of thing is civil society. Decent colleges are hotbeds of it.
I guess I’d suggest looking for a really good gym. Or in a major city, the local Less Wrong group.
you can understand quite clearly how the world would be better off if everyone cooperated, and nevertheless feel that your best individual course of action is to defect around the edges and try to hide it.
Semi-formally (and game-theoretic understandings should generate this independently) your best course of action is to defect only where pr(found out) disutility of being found out *< gain of defecting—gain of cooperating.
This is my understanding of what you wrote—given that it’s what you intended, this is the way society actually works. Even theistic people unconsciously perform this operation—witness the cases of evangelists thinking they can hide it.
What’s more, and this is only an informal observation on my part, success in society seems to involve some level of defecting around the edges. At least in Australia, the tall poppy syndrome and the popularity of trashy magazines seems to me like an outcome of people suspecting that successful people have defected around the edges, and trying to uncover where they have hidden it.
Basically, it’s my view that defecting around the edges (given that I define the edges correctly) is not something to avoid.
Semi-formally (and game-theoretic understandings should generate this independently) your best course of action is to defect only where pr(found out) * disutility of being found out < gain of defecting—gain of cooperating.
Yes, but only if you’re selfish. If you’re an idealist, then “your best course of action” might be to play by the rules even when P(caught)U(caught) << U(D) - U(C).
Note that this issue is harder than it looks to define away—if you define utility in terms of some ideology (international socialism) or species (humanity) so as to include your preference for playing by the rules, then we can still worry about cases where people of good faith but different ideologies (Spanish Civil War) or species (Three Worlds Collide) are trying to work together. In those cases, your urge to play by your own flavor of altruistic rules is in conflict with tropes like honesty, honor, and symmetry.
Institutions like markets can accomplish a whole hell of a lot with people who always cheat around the edges, but there are a few, erm, edge cases where it’s really handy to have a couple of reliably honest people around. Somebody has to watch the watchers, and it probably doesn’t hurt if they truly believe that God is watching them.
Even theistic people unconsciously perform this operation—witness the cases of evangelists thinking they can hide it.
I suspect that fundamentalists who take vacations with rent boys just have bad character; there are plenty of religious people with bad character. My claim isn’t that religion does make you a better person; my claim is that religion opens doors to self-improvement techniques that make you a better person. Any given theist still has to invest hundreds of hours in learning and applying the techniques in order to see any benefits. Most of 21st century organized religion is very bad at screening out religious leaders who don’t learn or don’t apply the techniques.
Well, yes: encourage them to develop social bonds to a group of secularists among whom altruist and/or idealist activities are highly valued, preferably one with mechanisms to prevent cheap methods for signaling altruism and/or idealism to displace those activities.
Of course, that raises the question of how to identify such a group… or create it in the first place.
Among secularists, the term ‘humanist’ is a good sign. I belong to a community of secular humanists (although it doesn’t have enough families to help with raising children yet).
You can get a close copy of mainline Protestant church socialisation at a Unitarian Universalist congregation in the United States. (Individual congregations vary widely, however, and not all are really secular, with various degrees of monotheism, neopaganism, and pantheism all possible in the culture, although they should be accepting of anybody.)
What I am concerned about is that even upon being exposed to the logic of non-zero-sum games, some people remain remarkably selfish and/or cynical. Is there any way to deliberately increase their altruism and/or idealism without resorting to mysticism or religion?
Interesting point. I have actually noticed that among my friends the religious ones are also the less selfish and cynical ones (even though that wasn’t what you were saying). However, they are less selfish even in zero-sum games, so there’s a point against resorting to mysticism or religion.
As for increasing their altruism, I found that learning of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma and the tit-for-tat strategy make a marked difference for me. Maybe this could generalise to “learn rationality”.
Comparing doing good things for your local community, even in a small way, to doing housework—it’s work, but you benefit from not drowning in crap—seems to get the point across IME. Note that there are no housecleaners to employ. (I’m not sure the police count in the meaning of the analogy I’m using.)
I think David_Gerard is getting at the point that because of interconnectedness, helping others also helps us. Mutual benefit is not the same as altruism, but a stronger awareness or understanding of it can encourage good acts.
If I hoover the living room, my housemates benefit more than I do from less dust, but I don’t have to listen to them sneezing. If I shovel the snow off my neighbours’ front pavement as well as my own, they (who don’t own snow shovels) don’t have to do it, but my post is easier to deliver. Goodwill from the postman goes a long way!The shelter I volunteer at makes some contribution to the safety of this neighbourhood. The money I send each month to a small school in Africa means the children who study there are less likely to be involved in violence which, while seeming far-removed from my life here in the UK, could conceivably have an effect. The idea that everything is interconnected, there are no externalities and the good of another really is to my benefit as well can be a strong argument.
It isn’t altruism, though, as I understand it. Altruism is my doing these things even though the benefit to me is low compared to the benefit if I were to spend my time and energy and money elsewhere. As I also derive significant warm fuzzies and a small amount of good reputation from these actions I cannot claim to be truly altruistic, though I would like to think I am. If this is true of most idealists or altruists, I’m not certain the distinction matters.
My best guess as to how to systematically inculcate altruism is by practical, structured volunteering coupled with discussion. With a bit of luck the warm fuzzies should kick in. In London I thought the Unitarians were fairly strong here but ultimately the community was too small and not theist enough for my other requirements.
I have learned or “caught” warm fuzzies from others being kind to me even when the benefit to them was small. Many of these people are theists but a significant number are not. I submit that if altruism is contagious, then acting altruistically whenever you can may help encourage altruism.
For my own part, I’m inclined to call someone who derives significant warm fuzzies from helping others “altruistic”, by comparison to someone who doesn’t. I’ll grant you that it might be more precise to say that they have altruistic values, rather than that they are performing altruistic acts.
how do we teach or pass on altruistic values outside a religious setting?
if this is difficult or impossible, is it better to convince people to perform altruistic acts even if that runs contrary to their values? Is that possible without an element of dishonesty?
I think religion can be a vehicle for the transmission of altruistic values, but I dislike the way it is often used to bamboozle people into behaving in certain ways (some of which, in more positive cases, are altruistic). I am also wary of some of the other values religion often transmits.
As I said here: encourage people to develop social bonds to a community of secularists among whom altruist activities are highly valued, preferably one with mechanisms to prevent cheap methods for signaling altruism from displacing those activities.
I doubt religion per se has much to do with altruism. But religious communities are typically tangible and visible and persistent, and that’s important for the transmission of values.
And, sure, encouraging people to perform acts that benefit others, even if they don’t want to, is possible without dishonesty. Force is a popular alternative, for example… either physical or social. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question.
For example, many countries collect taxes from residents and use a significant share of those taxes to provide resources to citizens in need; many taxpayers don’t especially value providing resources to their fellow citizens, but nevertheless pay taxes.
I see a lot of activism that is carried out by groups which, if not specifically secularist, are not explicitly religious, but this tends to be single-issue stuff. Religious communities, in my experience, tend to teach on or examine or respond to every aspect of life (though it is debateable how successful most are, as there is nowadays the problem of people leaving if they don’t like what they hear). Are there secular movements which attempt to be so all-embracing?
I don’t know, but I also don’t think attempting to be all-embracing is necessarily a good idea.
If a community acts altruistically in the contexts that arise to be acted in, then new members of that community will tend to adopt altruistic values, and will in turn act altruistically in contexts that arise to be acted in. That’s true regardless of what those contexts turn out to be.
They don’t ever have to talk about altruism or look for ways to manifest altruism in contexts that don’t seem to require it; indeed, doing so is one way that signaling ends up displacing doing.
Not that there’s anything wrong with talking about one’s values, any more than there’s anything wrong with talking about one’s tastes in food. But talking about food is a different kind of task than cooking or eating, and talking about altruism is different from behaving altruistically.
If a community gives up opportunities to behave altruistically in favor of talking, they communicate the value of talking rather than the value of altruism.
The analogy is community maintenance analogous to household maintenance. You can hire housecleaners, but hiring people for your community can be harder.
All right, both very fair points. Let’s shift gears; please help me leave a line of retreat.
How do atheists generally cultivate altruism? Note that I’m NOT claiming that atheists are less moral on average, still less that theism is somehow required for certain levels of morality. Both of those are really stupid things to say.
What I am concerned about is that even upon being exposed to the logic of non-zero-sum games, some people remain remarkably selfish and/or cynical. Is there any way to deliberately increase their altruism and/or idealism without resorting to mysticism or religion?
I’m aware of no evidence that theistic belief even helps people be more altruistic. I subscribe to the view held by many psychologists, that philosophical rationales (including theistic ones) are usually the effects of behaviors, not their causes, while the actual causes are typically emotional in nature. As TheOtherDave suggests, the kind of emotional response people have to a situation is largely shaped by their previous social experience.
Right; I agree with you. Theism, in and of itself, doesn’t get you anywhere. It does, however, help enable the rest of organized religion. It’s hard to take church or whatever too seriously if you’re a confirmed atheist. Organized religion, in my opinion, does have many useful and powerful resources for building character. I doubt that getting access to these resources is worth the irrationality, though, so I’m looking for substitute character-building resources.
Other commenters have suggested teaching people about tit-for-tat, collective action problems, etc., but I’m not convinced that game theoretic education can take the place of character education—you can understand quite clearly how the world would be better off if everyone cooperated, and nevertheless feel that your best individual course of action is to defect around the edges and try to hide it.
Why would you expect church to be good character education compared to, say, television, which preaches a much more modern and sophisticated morality. I suggest Nip/Tuck, or for the young, Kimba: The White Lion and maybe the Ewoks Droids Adventure Hour.
If you want a religion though, there are surely factually accurate forms of atheistic Buddhism.
Well, if your church is just preaching at you, then I suppose it would be strictly dominated by good television shows. The churches I bother attending also involve studying, reflection, social activism, community service, mutual support, ritual, indoctrination, etc. It’s a much more participatory experience, and so it’s much more effective than watching television at changing your character.
As for whether the state that it’s changing your character to is desirable, well, that’s a matter of finding the right church. There are a few out there, and, more to the point (if you scroll up a few comments) I would like to identify a better, secular character-change institution. Watching TV wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
I don’t want a religion; I want a character-building institution. Currently, my known list of sources for that is {Religion.} I would love your help expanding the set.
TV really isn’t so bad. I honestly find it difficult to entertain the possibility that the 90th percentile church is better than the 90th percentile TV show. I’m sure that there are 99th percentile churches, but I’d expect them to be much more like a good dojo, gym, skateboarding/surfing group, band, community theater or the like. The general purpose word for this sort of thing is civil society. Decent colleges are hotbeds of it.
I guess I’d suggest looking for a really good gym. Or in a major city, the local Less Wrong group.
Semi-formally (and game-theoretic understandings should generate this independently) your best course of action is to defect only where pr(found out) disutility of being found out *< gain of defecting—gain of cooperating.
This is my understanding of what you wrote—given that it’s what you intended, this is the way society actually works. Even theistic people unconsciously perform this operation—witness the cases of evangelists thinking they can hide it.
What’s more, and this is only an informal observation on my part, success in society seems to involve some level of defecting around the edges. At least in Australia, the tall poppy syndrome and the popularity of trashy magazines seems to me like an outcome of people suspecting that successful people have defected around the edges, and trying to uncover where they have hidden it.
Basically, it’s my view that defecting around the edges (given that I define the edges correctly) is not something to avoid.
Yes, but only if you’re selfish. If you’re an idealist, then “your best course of action” might be to play by the rules even when P(caught)U(caught) << U(D) - U(C).
Note that this issue is harder than it looks to define away—if you define utility in terms of some ideology (international socialism) or species (humanity) so as to include your preference for playing by the rules, then we can still worry about cases where people of good faith but different ideologies (Spanish Civil War) or species (Three Worlds Collide) are trying to work together. In those cases, your urge to play by your own flavor of altruistic rules is in conflict with tropes like honesty, honor, and symmetry.
Institutions like markets can accomplish a whole hell of a lot with people who always cheat around the edges, but there are a few, erm, edge cases where it’s really handy to have a couple of reliably honest people around. Somebody has to watch the watchers, and it probably doesn’t hurt if they truly believe that God is watching them.
I suspect that fundamentalists who take vacations with rent boys just have bad character; there are plenty of religious people with bad character. My claim isn’t that religion does make you a better person; my claim is that religion opens doors to self-improvement techniques that make you a better person. Any given theist still has to invest hundreds of hours in learning and applying the techniques in order to see any benefits. Most of 21st century organized religion is very bad at screening out religious leaders who don’t learn or don’t apply the techniques.
Well, yes: encourage them to develop social bonds to a group of secularists among whom altruist and/or idealist activities are highly valued, preferably one with mechanisms to prevent cheap methods for signaling altruism and/or idealism to displace those activities.
Of course, that raises the question of how to identify such a group… or create it in the first place.
Among secularists, the term ‘humanist’ is a good sign. I belong to a community of secular humanists (although it doesn’t have enough families to help with raising children yet).
You can get a close copy of mainline Protestant church socialisation at a Unitarian Universalist congregation in the United States. (Individual congregations vary widely, however, and not all are really secular, with various degrees of monotheism, neopaganism, and pantheism all possible in the culture, although they should be accepting of anybody.)
Interesting point. I have actually noticed that among my friends the religious ones are also the less selfish and cynical ones (even though that wasn’t what you were saying). However, they are less selfish even in zero-sum games, so there’s a point against resorting to mysticism or religion.
As for increasing their altruism, I found that learning of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma and the tit-for-tat strategy make a marked difference for me. Maybe this could generalise to “learn rationality”.
Comparing doing good things for your local community, even in a small way, to doing housework—it’s work, but you benefit from not drowning in crap—seems to get the point across IME. Note that there are no housecleaners to employ. (I’m not sure the police count in the meaning of the analogy I’m using.)
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your last comment. Would you please try other words or phrases?
I think David_Gerard is getting at the point that because of interconnectedness, helping others also helps us. Mutual benefit is not the same as altruism, but a stronger awareness or understanding of it can encourage good acts.
If I hoover the living room, my housemates benefit more than I do from less dust, but I don’t have to listen to them sneezing. If I shovel the snow off my neighbours’ front pavement as well as my own, they (who don’t own snow shovels) don’t have to do it, but my post is easier to deliver. Goodwill from the postman goes a long way!The shelter I volunteer at makes some contribution to the safety of this neighbourhood. The money I send each month to a small school in Africa means the children who study there are less likely to be involved in violence which, while seeming far-removed from my life here in the UK, could conceivably have an effect. The idea that everything is interconnected, there are no externalities and the good of another really is to my benefit as well can be a strong argument.
It isn’t altruism, though, as I understand it. Altruism is my doing these things even though the benefit to me is low compared to the benefit if I were to spend my time and energy and money elsewhere. As I also derive significant warm fuzzies and a small amount of good reputation from these actions I cannot claim to be truly altruistic, though I would like to think I am. If this is true of most idealists or altruists, I’m not certain the distinction matters.
My best guess as to how to systematically inculcate altruism is by practical, structured volunteering coupled with discussion. With a bit of luck the warm fuzzies should kick in. In London I thought the Unitarians were fairly strong here but ultimately the community was too small and not theist enough for my other requirements.
I have learned or “caught” warm fuzzies from others being kind to me even when the benefit to them was small. Many of these people are theists but a significant number are not. I submit that if altruism is contagious, then acting altruistically whenever you can may help encourage altruism.
For my own part, I’m inclined to call someone who derives significant warm fuzzies from helping others “altruistic”, by comparison to someone who doesn’t. I’ll grant you that it might be more precise to say that they have altruistic values, rather than that they are performing altruistic acts.
That makes sense.
Assuming altruism in general is desirable:
how do we teach or pass on altruistic values outside a religious setting?
if this is difficult or impossible, is it better to convince people to perform altruistic acts even if that runs contrary to their values? Is that possible without an element of dishonesty?
I think religion can be a vehicle for the transmission of altruistic values, but I dislike the way it is often used to bamboozle people into behaving in certain ways (some of which, in more positive cases, are altruistic). I am also wary of some of the other values religion often transmits.
As I said here: encourage people to develop social bonds to a community of secularists among whom altruist activities are highly valued, preferably one with mechanisms to prevent cheap methods for signaling altruism from displacing those activities.
I doubt religion per se has much to do with altruism. But religious communities are typically tangible and visible and persistent, and that’s important for the transmission of values.
And, sure, encouraging people to perform acts that benefit others, even if they don’t want to, is possible without dishonesty. Force is a popular alternative, for example… either physical or social. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question.
For example, many countries collect taxes from residents and use a significant share of those taxes to provide resources to citizens in need; many taxpayers don’t especially value providing resources to their fellow citizens, but nevertheless pay taxes.
I’d quite forgotten about force.
I see a lot of activism that is carried out by groups which, if not specifically secularist, are not explicitly religious, but this tends to be single-issue stuff. Religious communities, in my experience, tend to teach on or examine or respond to every aspect of life (though it is debateable how successful most are, as there is nowadays the problem of people leaving if they don’t like what they hear). Are there secular movements which attempt to be so all-embracing?
I don’t know, but I also don’t think attempting to be all-embracing is necessarily a good idea.
If a community acts altruistically in the contexts that arise to be acted in, then new members of that community will tend to adopt altruistic values, and will in turn act altruistically in contexts that arise to be acted in. That’s true regardless of what those contexts turn out to be.
They don’t ever have to talk about altruism or look for ways to manifest altruism in contexts that don’t seem to require it; indeed, doing so is one way that signaling ends up displacing doing.
Not that there’s anything wrong with talking about one’s values, any more than there’s anything wrong with talking about one’s tastes in food. But talking about food is a different kind of task than cooking or eating, and talking about altruism is different from behaving altruistically.
If a community gives up opportunities to behave altruistically in favor of talking, they communicate the value of talking rather than the value of altruism.
Incidentally, none of this is unique to altruism.
The analogy is community maintenance analogous to household maintenance. You can hire housecleaners, but hiring people for your community can be harder.