OK, Bryan Caplan is actually pretty impressive on this account, and doing things that are very clearly pointed in the right direction. I agree that that is a pretty good thing to try and do. It’s pretty hard to do while living in community with people unless there’s a shared understanding of what the thing is, and that it’s valuable—so I think we should prioritize building that understanding.
Regardless of whether you call it a religion, I claim that it would be very useful to do the work of building a shared and accurate narrative that such a thing is difficult but attainable, embedding into the narrative information about what the high-value practices are that point towards achieving Bryan Caplan’s state, and creating the social institutions that allow people to hold onto that narrative despite pervasive outside pressure to do otherwise.
I think Bryan Caplan has succeeded.
OK, Bryan Caplan is actually pretty impressive on this account, and doing things that are very clearly pointed in the right direction. I agree that that is a pretty good thing to try and do. It’s pretty hard to do while living in community with people unless there’s a shared understanding of what the thing is, and that it’s valuable—so I think we should prioritize building that understanding.
Regardless of whether you call it a religion, I claim that it would be very useful to do the work of building a shared and accurate narrative that such a thing is difficult but attainable, embedding into the narrative information about what the high-value practices are that point towards achieving Bryan Caplan’s state, and creating the social institutions that allow people to hold onto that narrative despite pervasive outside pressure to do otherwise.