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.
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.