Religious ritual are effective at indoctrinating people: make people recite your “Truths” until they memorize and chant them mechanically without paying attention to their implications, associate them with all kinds of positive rewards, from large carbohydrate-rich meals to the sense of belonging to a close-knit community, and the effect you get is that you lower people’s critical thinking skills and make them more prone to accept your “Truths” without question, and become emotionally attached to them so that they will find rationalizations instead of throwing them away when presented with contrary evidence.
Is this the proper way of disseminating rationalist values? I don’t think so.
Sure, people believing in truths because they’ve repeated them a lot rather than because they’ve digested them and updated all their beliefs correspondingly is a problem. But it’s also a problem to see a new belief, agree with it, and then not repeat it enough to update all of your beliefs correspondingly. Getting a skill to the 5-second level takes practice, and often a lot of practice.
Sure, but the way to practice these skills is to apply them to actual problems, not to mindlessly recite their principles.
Recitation and worship can turn even good rational principles into articles of faith, disconnected from anything else, which you just “believe to believe” rather actually understand and apply.
V_V and Vaniver both make really good points, but the fact is that the U.S was not built to be completely rationalist, and people in general are not rationalists.
It’s a communal set of rules for a people and a place that’s designed to give the members the most freedom while still ensuring stability and order. And it has a really good track record of success in doing that.
I agree that it’s not an optimal solution in a future, ideally rationalist world. But it’s not a tool for teaching children to think for themselves. It’s a tool to get them to follow the social rules. And I’ll tell you, children want their own way and DO NOT want to follow rules. And if you let them have their way all the time you WILL spoil them. There’s a time to teach rules-following (especially rules that protect liberties and freedoms) and a time to teach mistrust of authority and rules-breaking.
What other device would you propose for a future, ideally rationalist world? I’m not being fecetious here. I’m curious. Spawned by the Wierdtopia idea, can you think of a better solution?
I personally think of it as like teaching an apprentice. Apprentices weren’t taught the why’s. They were taught the how’s. As a journeyman and a master you discovered the why’s. Kids are apprentice citizens.
Sure, people believing in truths because they’ve repeated them a lot rather than because they’ve digested them and updated all their beliefs correspondingly is a problem. But it’s also a problem to see a new belief, agree with it, and then not repeat it enough to update all of your beliefs correspondingly. Getting a skill to the 5-second level takes practice, and often a lot of practice.
Sure, but the way to practice these skills is to apply them to actual problems, not to mindlessly recite their principles.
Recitation and worship can turn even good rational principles into articles of faith, disconnected from anything else, which you just “believe to believe” rather actually understand and apply.
V_V and Vaniver both make really good points, but the fact is that the U.S was not built to be completely rationalist, and people in general are not rationalists.
It’s a communal set of rules for a people and a place that’s designed to give the members the most freedom while still ensuring stability and order. And it has a really good track record of success in doing that.
I agree that it’s not an optimal solution in a future, ideally rationalist world. But it’s not a tool for teaching children to think for themselves. It’s a tool to get them to follow the social rules. And I’ll tell you, children want their own way and DO NOT want to follow rules. And if you let them have their way all the time you WILL spoil them. There’s a time to teach rules-following (especially rules that protect liberties and freedoms) and a time to teach mistrust of authority and rules-breaking.
What other device would you propose for a future, ideally rationalist world? I’m not being fecetious here. I’m curious. Spawned by the Wierdtopia idea, can you think of a better solution?
I personally think of it as like teaching an apprentice. Apprentices weren’t taught the why’s. They were taught the how’s. As a journeyman and a master you discovered the why’s. Kids are apprentice citizens.