there’s a warm fuzziness to life that science just doesn’t seem to get
Not true. Science helps create new warm fuzzies whereas religion has been re-using the same old one for millennia. The problem with religion is not that it lets people have warm fuzzies but that it provides false explanations.
For example, the building in Ireland that is discussed in the first BHTV episode: I imagine the warm fuzzies one gets on visiting that place are to do with the atmosphere that has been created, that rare experience of the sunlight breaking through carefully crafted openings in dark walls. It must be beautiful because it’s scarce in both time and space. That’s why it works. No one needs to know that to enjoy it. But here’s the problem: religion’s claim is that it’s only by believing in God that such a beautiful thing has been possible. Which is not true. It has been made possible through people’s imagination, engineering and hard work.
The point is that with religion, it’s easy to forget that more is possible.
For example, imagine this future: one group of people builds a beautiful monument for another group of people as a gift. Most people in the second group would enjoy the sheer beauty of it, while some curious others could get extra warm fuzzies by figuring out how the first group made it.
certain religious stories and artwork may be of artistic value.
Yes, they certainly are. But I imagine a future where religious stories and art will pale in comparison to the ones people create without resorting to harmful lies.
His point seems to be that rationality isn’t the only way to experience the world, which is absolutely, 100% right.
But it’s the one that wins. And people do want to win.
You don’t experience the world through rationality.Appreciating art, or food, or sex, or life is not generally done by applying rationality.
Right. It’s done through intelligence, that’s why rats don’t paint. Remember EY’s intelligence scale? The distinction is not between village idiot and Einstein. It’s between amoeba, chimps, humans and higher intelligences.
And this I think is the biggest problem and it has been mentioned before.
Right now, individual rationality is bounded by individual intelligence. When someone needs to make a decision which is too much work for their intelligence or even beyond it i.e. a rational decision, they give up. It hurts their egos to think they can’t make the right decision. They start rationalising: “it’s not really necessary to always make rational choices.” “all this rationality business is for those super clever nerdy types.” And then they make bad decisions.
I wonder if over time a chemical structure has evolved in the brain which does this.
Hard problem->Computational limit->Rationalising->Wrong answer.
rationality isn’t the only way to experience the world...
But it’s the one that wins. And people do want to win.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Rationality is not how we experience the world; it’s how we process our experience. I’m eating something tasty; rationality has nothing whatsoever to do with that immediate experience. I can apply rationality to that experience to figure out how to have more like it, or if a somewhat similar experience would be similar in enough ways to give me a pleasant experience. But if you put “rationality” into “way to experience the world” you get a category error.
The point is that with religion, it’s easy to forget that more is possible.
I’m skeptical. Why do you think it would be difficult for a religious person to come up with the monument idea, for example?
Hrishimittal didn’t make that claim and even if he had, questioning it would not be particularly relevant to the point which you quoted and expressed skeptisism towards.
I didn’t say it would be difficult for a religious person to come up with that idea. But if a religious person did come up with it, what does that have to do with their religion?
His point seems to be that rationality isn’t the only way to experience the world, which is absolutely, 100% right.
But it’s the one that wins. And people do want to win.
I want to take issue with this Less Wrong mantra. It’s just not true for many people, and you’ll have a hard time winning them over if you can’t empathize with that. We value rationality first and foremost because if you take the long view it wins and in the world we populate it wins. But for many people recklessness wins, or faith wins—for whatever reason, the social systems they have inherited and constructed for themselves contain constraints which favor nonrational behavior.
Right. It’s done through intelligence, that’s why rats don’t paint. Remember EY’s intelligence scale? The distinction is not between village idiot and Einstein. It’s between amoeba, chimps, humans and higher intelligences.
What I’m basically getting at is that the tendency to emphasize the latter distinction can cause one to undervalue dissimilarity in the human social world.
We are challenging those social systems, which are unaccountable and only provide mysterious explanations when they fail. We aspire to build more robust systems. That’s what I think winning is.
I imagine you feel bad for all the religious people being left out, but that’s only because of their large numbers. No one feels bad for string theorists. A large following doesn’t make religion right. Lots of stupidity is not intelligence.
What I’m basically getting at is that the tendency to emphasize the latter distinction can cause one to undervalue dissimilarity in the human social world.
The point of emphasising this distinction is to put the value of human intelligence on the right order.
And if your main point is recognising the fact that bad or irrational decisions may perhaps be a result of variability in intelligence or its use, then religion only functions to hide that truth. We are at least admitting it and saying it’s not fair.
Not true. Science helps create new warm fuzzies whereas religion has been re-using the same old one for millennia. The problem with religion is not that it lets people have warm fuzzies but that it provides false explanations.
For example, the building in Ireland that is discussed in the first BHTV episode: I imagine the warm fuzzies one gets on visiting that place are to do with the atmosphere that has been created, that rare experience of the sunlight breaking through carefully crafted openings in dark walls. It must be beautiful because it’s scarce in both time and space. That’s why it works. No one needs to know that to enjoy it. But here’s the problem: religion’s claim is that it’s only by believing in God that such a beautiful thing has been possible. Which is not true. It has been made possible through people’s imagination, engineering and hard work.
The point is that with religion, it’s easy to forget that more is possible.
For example, imagine this future: one group of people builds a beautiful monument for another group of people as a gift. Most people in the second group would enjoy the sheer beauty of it, while some curious others could get extra warm fuzzies by figuring out how the first group made it.
Yes, they certainly are. But I imagine a future where religious stories and art will pale in comparison to the ones people create without resorting to harmful lies.
But it’s the one that wins. And people do want to win.
Right. It’s done through intelligence, that’s why rats don’t paint. Remember EY’s intelligence scale? The distinction is not between village idiot and Einstein. It’s between amoeba, chimps, humans and higher intelligences.
And this I think is the biggest problem and it has been mentioned before.
Right now, individual rationality is bounded by individual intelligence. When someone needs to make a decision which is too much work for their intelligence or even beyond it i.e. a rational decision, they give up. It hurts their egos to think they can’t make the right decision. They start rationalising: “it’s not really necessary to always make rational choices.” “all this rationality business is for those super clever nerdy types.” And then they make bad decisions.
I wonder if over time a chemical structure has evolved in the brain which does this.
Hard problem->Computational limit->Rationalising->Wrong answer.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Rationality is not how we experience the world; it’s how we process our experience. I’m eating something tasty; rationality has nothing whatsoever to do with that immediate experience. I can apply rationality to that experience to figure out how to have more like it, or if a somewhat similar experience would be similar in enough ways to give me a pleasant experience. But if you put “rationality” into “way to experience the world” you get a category error.
I’m skeptical. Why do you think it would be difficult for a religious person to come up with the monument idea, for example?
Hrishimittal didn’t make that claim and even if he had, questioning it would not be particularly relevant to the point which you quoted and expressed skeptisism towards.
I didn’t say it would be difficult for a religious person to come up with that idea. But if a religious person did come up with it, what does that have to do with their religion?
“Love your neighbor as yourself”, perhaps?
That reply does not seem to answer hrishimittal’s question or even convey a tangental insight.
His point seems to be that rationality isn’t the only way to experience the world, which is absolutely, 100% right.
But it’s the one that wins. And people do want to win.
I want to take issue with this Less Wrong mantra. It’s just not true for many people, and you’ll have a hard time winning them over if you can’t empathize with that. We value rationality first and foremost because if you take the long view it wins and in the world we populate it wins. But for many people recklessness wins, or faith wins—for whatever reason, the social systems they have inherited and constructed for themselves contain constraints which favor nonrational behavior.
Right. It’s done through intelligence, that’s why rats don’t paint. Remember EY’s intelligence scale? The distinction is not between village idiot and Einstein. It’s between amoeba, chimps, humans and higher intelligences.
What I’m basically getting at is that the tendency to emphasize the latter distinction can cause one to undervalue dissimilarity in the human social world.
You seem to be making an argument both for and against our cause in the same breath.
The reason irrationality “wins” for the “many people” you mention is that they re-define winning in hindsight when things don’t work out.
We are challenging those social systems, which are unaccountable and only provide mysterious explanations when they fail. We aspire to build more robust systems. That’s what I think winning is.
I imagine you feel bad for all the religious people being left out, but that’s only because of their large numbers. No one feels bad for string theorists. A large following doesn’t make religion right. Lots of stupidity is not intelligence.
The point of emphasising this distinction is to put the value of human intelligence on the right order.
And if your main point is recognising the fact that bad or irrational decisions may perhaps be a result of variability in intelligence or its use, then religion only functions to hide that truth. We are at least admitting it and saying it’s not fair.
Denial is not a path to improvement.
Does it really matter if the definition of winning shifts, as long as you still experience the warm fuzzies? I think for some people it doesn’t. Quoting Eliezer’s OB post If satisfying your intuitions is more important to you than money, do whatever the heck you want. Drop the money over Niagara falls. Blow it all on expensive champagne. Set fire to your hair. Whatever. If the largest utility you care about is the utility of feeling good about your decision, then any decision that feels good is the right one.