Oversimplifying a little, let’s divide the factors that lead to memetic success into two classes: those based on corresponding to evidence, and those detached from evidence. If we imagine a two-dimensional scattergram of memes rated against these two criteria, we can define a frontier of maximum success, along which any idea can only gain in one criterion by losing on the other.
Religion is what you get when you push totally for non-evidential memetic success. All ties to reality are essentially cut. As a result, all the other dials can be pushed up to 11. God is not just wise, nice, and powerful—he is all knowing, omnibenificent, and omnipotent. Heaven and Hell are not just pleasant and unpleasant places you can spend a long time in—they are the very best possible and the very worst possible experiences, and for all eternity. And so on; because all of these things happen “offstage”, there’s no contradictory evidence when you turn them up, so of course that’s where they’re going to end up.
This freedom is theism’s defining characteristic. Even the most stupid pseudoscience is to some extent about “evidence”: people wouldn’t believe in it if they didn’t think they had evidence for it, though we now understand the cognitive biases and other effects that lead them to think so. That’s why there are no homeopathic cures for amputation.
I agree with other commentators that the drug war is the other real world idea that I would attack here without fear of contradiction, but I would still say that drug prohibition is a model of sanity compared to theism. Theism really is the maddest thing you can believe without being considered mad.
EDIT: as per requests, I’ve made a post about this: How Theism Works
No—I think this comment just makes my earlier point, that we have such a negative impression of religion because we categorize anything irrational as “religion”.
Consider Scientology. I think we can agree it’s a religion. But it doesn’t presuppose a spiritual realm which can cause effects in the natural world and yet not be investigated. It doesn’t disclaim evidential reasoning; it actually relies on evidential reasoning. Just not very good evidential reasoning, which is designed primarily to have good stagecraft.
Consider Hinduism. It doesn’t have much dogma. It isn’t about making claims about the world the way Christianity or Islam is. It’s more like a catalog of Jungian archetypes and models for thinking about the world. A Hindu “God” isn’t a cause of events in the world, it’s more like a manifestation of patterns of events.
Consider Buddhism. It doesn’t have any “offstage” place for events that impact our world.
Consider animism. It also is very brief on dogma. It’s very evidential. The volcano erupted; therefore, the volcano god is angry.
Consider Unitarianism. Brief on dogma. It’s mainly about community.
So why do we call these things religions? Because “religion”, the way most non-LW people (can we call them MW people?) use it, has to do with providing explanations, perspectives, guidelines, and community.
Just to suggest another belief (and belief system) that at least approaches that frontier:
“There has not been one tax increase in history that actually raised revenue. And every tax cut, from the 1920s to Kennedy’s to ours, has produced more.”
-Ronald Reagan to David Stockman and Martin Feldstein.
(It is perhaps only coincidental that the year was 1984.)
I remember Reagan claiming that a nuclear test ban treaty couldn’t be enforced because underground tests couldn’t be detected. I had recently learnt in physics class how to do just that with an ordinary seismograph.
Not sure how to put any more meat on it than that—is there any point that either of you (or anyone else) thinks could benefit from being expanded upon in a top-level post?
Can you explain why you think that there is a bound to success (implying a frontier and a tradeoff along that frontier of evidential/not)?
I don’t think that changes your essential point though, that religion is a zero on the ratio. But I’m not sure that’s so. Religions claim evidence, and used to claim it as matter-of-factly as a history textbook, before they learned the need to dodge. The big ones also base their case on the claimed evidence—pure gnostic mysticism has proven a memetic loser.
Yes, theism is really a uniquely awful example.
Oversimplifying a little, let’s divide the factors that lead to memetic success into two classes: those based on corresponding to evidence, and those detached from evidence. If we imagine a two-dimensional scattergram of memes rated against these two criteria, we can define a frontier of maximum success, along which any idea can only gain in one criterion by losing on the other.
Religion is what you get when you push totally for non-evidential memetic success. All ties to reality are essentially cut. As a result, all the other dials can be pushed up to 11. God is not just wise, nice, and powerful—he is all knowing, omnibenificent, and omnipotent. Heaven and Hell are not just pleasant and unpleasant places you can spend a long time in—they are the very best possible and the very worst possible experiences, and for all eternity. And so on; because all of these things happen “offstage”, there’s no contradictory evidence when you turn them up, so of course that’s where they’re going to end up.
This freedom is theism’s defining characteristic. Even the most stupid pseudoscience is to some extent about “evidence”: people wouldn’t believe in it if they didn’t think they had evidence for it, though we now understand the cognitive biases and other effects that lead them to think so. That’s why there are no homeopathic cures for amputation.
I agree with other commentators that the drug war is the other real world idea that I would attack here without fear of contradiction, but I would still say that drug prohibition is a model of sanity compared to theism. Theism really is the maddest thing you can believe without being considered mad.
EDIT: as per requests, I’ve made a post about this: How Theism Works
No—I think this comment just makes my earlier point, that we have such a negative impression of religion because we categorize anything irrational as “religion”.
Consider Scientology. I think we can agree it’s a religion. But it doesn’t presuppose a spiritual realm which can cause effects in the natural world and yet not be investigated. It doesn’t disclaim evidential reasoning; it actually relies on evidential reasoning. Just not very good evidential reasoning, which is designed primarily to have good stagecraft.
Consider Hinduism. It doesn’t have much dogma. It isn’t about making claims about the world the way Christianity or Islam is. It’s more like a catalog of Jungian archetypes and models for thinking about the world. A Hindu “God” isn’t a cause of events in the world, it’s more like a manifestation of patterns of events.
Consider Buddhism. It doesn’t have any “offstage” place for events that impact our world.
Consider animism. It also is very brief on dogma. It’s very evidential. The volcano erupted; therefore, the volcano god is angry.
Consider Unitarianism. Brief on dogma. It’s mainly about community.
So why do we call these things religions? Because “religion”, the way most non-LW people (can we call them MW people?) use it, has to do with providing explanations, perspectives, guidelines, and community.
I don’t categorize everything irrational as religion. But moving from irrationality to religion is merely a matter of emphasis and systemization.
Just to suggest another belief (and belief system) that at least approaches that frontier:
“There has not been one tax increase in history that actually raised revenue. And every tax cut, from the 1920s to Kennedy’s to ours, has produced more.”
-Ronald Reagan to David Stockman and Martin Feldstein.
(It is perhaps only coincidental that the year was 1984.)
http://books.google.com/books?id=dBlELVvaj4cC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=%22There+has+not+been+one+tax+increase+in+history%22+reagan+stockman&source=bl&ots=MbAlKL-1Xt&sig=FXF-KfDngpgcArtRX5ERD7gvlic&hl=en&ei=oaYFSqL_PKG8tAPXiKn3AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
I remember Reagan claiming that a nuclear test ban treaty couldn’t be enforced because underground tests couldn’t be detected. I had recently learnt in physics class how to do just that with an ordinary seismograph.
Deserves its own post.
Thanks!
Not sure how to put any more meat on it than that—is there any point that either of you (or anyone else) thinks could benefit from being expanded upon in a top-level post?
There’s nothing wrong with a short but good top-level post.
Your second sentence begins with “Oversimplifying a little...”. Perhaps oversimplifying the memetic taxonomy a bit less would be a reasonable start?
I’m not sure how much more you could really say usefully about theism. Expanding on the bit about the drug war might work.
Can you explain why you think that there is a bound to success (implying a frontier and a tradeoff along that frontier of evidential/not)?
I don’t think that changes your essential point though, that religion is a zero on the ratio. But I’m not sure that’s so. Religions claim evidence, and used to claim it as matter-of-factly as a history textbook, before they learned the need to dodge. The big ones also base their case on the claimed evidence—pure gnostic mysticism has proven a memetic loser.
Seconding Eliezer. This is insightful.
You’re right. Religion really is distilled, purified essence of bullshit.