I have just now noticed that using words like should about things like religion stopped making sense to me at some point. I don’t know when this happened.
It feels like a more natural way to approach this question is to ask: if long-termism were to embrace ritual, community, and other activities of religion, would long-termism benefit?
Phrased this way, it feels like the answer is yes. There are a slew of reasons for this, but here are a few obvious ones:
Use the bias to destroy the bias: people have a hard time with long-termism because of things like future discounting and scope insensitivity. The systematic employment social proof would go a long way to counteract these problems.
Learn from the best: religious institutions are heavily over-represented among long-term institutions. This includes things which are practical in purpose, like universities or libraries, but were built under religious auspices or as an extension of other religious institutions. Further, several religions have a lot of rhetorical experience on the subject of eternity (which thanks to scope insensitivity is not distinguishable from the long term among the laity).
Administration: a religious organization is a convenient place through which to offer useful long-term services, like financial planning to ensure a stable future for members and help them budget for that 10% charity tithe. Likewise for other areas that are neglected, like mental health, or poorly managed, like the rest of medicine.
And then of course there are the regular concerns like how people in this community often lack physical community, which have been talked about here before. As a single institution, a long-termist religious org has the opportunity to do a reasonable job of harmonizing any sort of village/mission dichotomy.
if long-termism were to embrace ritual, community, and other activities of religion, would long-termism benefit?
While that is worth asking, it’s not the brunt of the question I’m wrestling with. I agree we should do more of that, I think that falls under the consequences of simply taking adequately seriously a system of claims that touch on many aspects of life, which doesn’t necessarily need to be described as religious.
The question is, should we call it a religion now, or soon after a thorough account of its religion-like qualities is written, or should we only start calling it a religion if it is forced.
Physical community
I’m not sure how identifying as a religion would help, in that respect. I think it would make it harder to grow, at least in the current atmosphere, than just sticking with EA. I don’t think it would make it easier to acquire physical churchehouses/community centers, but I should probably look into that more. Maybe talk to my Quaker friends.
I have just now noticed that using words like should about things like religion stopped making sense to me at some point. I don’t know when this happened.
It feels like a more natural way to approach this question is to ask: if long-termism were to embrace ritual, community, and other activities of religion, would long-termism benefit?
Phrased this way, it feels like the answer is yes. There are a slew of reasons for this, but here are a few obvious ones:
Use the bias to destroy the bias: people have a hard time with long-termism because of things like future discounting and scope insensitivity. The systematic employment social proof would go a long way to counteract these problems.
Learn from the best: religious institutions are heavily over-represented among long-term institutions. This includes things which are practical in purpose, like universities or libraries, but were built under religious auspices or as an extension of other religious institutions. Further, several religions have a lot of rhetorical experience on the subject of eternity (which thanks to scope insensitivity is not distinguishable from the long term among the laity).
Administration: a religious organization is a convenient place through which to offer useful long-term services, like financial planning to ensure a stable future for members and help them budget for that 10% charity tithe. Likewise for other areas that are neglected, like mental health, or poorly managed, like the rest of medicine.
And then of course there are the regular concerns like how people in this community often lack physical community, which have been talked about here before. As a single institution, a long-termist religious org has the opportunity to do a reasonable job of harmonizing any sort of village/mission dichotomy.
While that is worth asking, it’s not the brunt of the question I’m wrestling with. I agree we should do more of that, I think that falls under the consequences of simply taking adequately seriously a system of claims that touch on many aspects of life, which doesn’t necessarily need to be described as religious.
The question is, should we call it a religion now, or soon after a thorough account of its religion-like qualities is written, or should we only start calling it a religion if it is forced.
I’m not sure how identifying as a religion would help, in that respect. I think it would make it harder to grow, at least in the current atmosphere, than just sticking with EA. I don’t think it would make it easier to acquire physical churchehouses/community centers, but I should probably look into that more. Maybe talk to my Quaker friends.