It’s also worth noting that because Glenn Beck is a Mormon, we have ample evidence that his belief in the singularity (if he believes in it at all—this could still very well be a ghostwriter talking) is not a carefully considered belief. If he can convince himself of Mormonism, he is very well capable of convincing himself of just about anything.
If he can convince himself of Mormonism, he is very well capable of convincing himself of just about anything.
Eh. Few “beliefs” and “belief-systems”—or more accurately, decision-policy-systems and social-signaling-systems—are as attractive as Mormonism. I don’t think being Mormon is a sign of low epistemic standards so much as a sign of high instrumental rationality.
Furthermore I think Glenn Beck or his ghostwriter understands the Singularity’s political situation better than most LWers. That said I’ve never heard or read anything by Glenn Beck except the above excerpt.
Eh. Few “beliefs” and “belief-systems”—or more accurately, decision-policy-systems and social-signaling-systems—are as attractive as Mormonism. I don’t think being Mormon is a sign of low epistemic standards so much as a sign of high instrumental rationality.
Without a single exception, every convert to Mormonism I’ve met (and this includes several colleagues) professes to have converted because they find Mormons to be kind, conscientious, and positively directed people.
I suspect this is how most people evaluate membership in a community. The “beliefs” and “belief-systems” are somewhat arbitrary to most, like the colors on the jerseys of sports teams.
In fact, in a population where most professed “beliefs” and “belief-systems” are mainly signals of group affiliation and less subjects for serious thought, this is arguably a more rational way of evaluating the desirability of group membership.
I grew up Mormon and attended BYU for a few years, and a lot of descriptions of Mormons I read on here are completely foreign to me. Knowing that the LDS Church was literally true was always an extremely important aspect of the religion when I grew up—it wasn’t just about the community.
I suspect that the types of Mormons that people on LessWrong tend to come in contact with are very much outside the mainstream. While I can see that Mormon theology can be twisted to support a sort of trans-humanism, in my experience the typical Utah Mormon would find this very bizzarre.
I grew up Mormon and attended BYU for a few years, and a lot of descriptions of Mormons I read on here are completely foreign to me. Knowing that the LDS Church was literally true was always an extremely important aspect of the religion when I grew up—it wasn’t just about the community.
I think this is rather typical and also age and personal development related. As a child, I was a staunch believer of my Catholic Sunday school teachings, to the point where I found my parents to be alarmingly lax and contrary. This changes for lots of people as they get older. In my 30′s I had a girlfriend who described herself as a “cultural Catholic” and basically went to church because it’s what most of the people she knew did.
In any case, at the local Hackerspace, I found that most everyone professed beliefs in the importance of science and rationality, but much of this is indistinguishable from professing a preference for a genre of music or a type of gaming. As far as people rigorously applying rationally grounded beliefs to their own lives, I don’t think much was done which couldn’t be comfortably explained as people generally doing what their peers do.
I suspect that the types of Mormons that people on LessWrong tend to come in contact with are very much outside the mainstream.
My Mormon colleagues were all working for software companies.
While I can see that Mormon theology can be twisted to support a sort of trans-humanism, in my experience the typical Utah Mormon would find this very bizarre.
The typical human being finds trans-humanism bizarre. Most people are just doing what those around them are doing, saying what those around them are saying, and generally just getting on with their day to day lives.
Perhaps we should hold our leaders to a higher standard.
Few “beliefs” and “belief-systems”—or more accurately, decision-policy-systems and social-signaling-systems—are as attractive as Mormonism.
You’re claiming all religious beliefs reduce to decision policies and social signals? That’s pretty cynical, even for you.
I don’t think being Mormon is a sign of low epistemic standards so much as a sign of high instrumental rationality.
It can’t be both? (Not that I see its “high instrumental rationality” either.)
Furthermore I think Glenn Beck or his ghostwriter understands the political situation better than most LWers. That said I’ve never heard or read anything by Glenn Beck except the above excerpt.
Bleh. If I wanted to argue the merit of X’s thought to people who hadn’t read X, I’d go harass XiXiDu on G+. Consider me tapped out.
You’re claiming all religious beliefs reduce to decision policies and social signals? That’s pretty cynical, even for you.
Not all, just a pretty big chunk, especially among Mormons. I guess I didn’t think of it as “cynical”. That’s a weird word.
It can’t be both? (Not that I see its “high instrumental rationality” either.)
’Course it can. But the existence of two causal factors makes it hard to determine which of the two causal factors contributed most of the causal juices to our observation, such that “low epistemic standards” isn’t quite as obviously a big factor.
I edited my comment to “Singularity’s political situation”. I didn’t mean to imply Beck has a good political model more generally. Priors say he doesn’t.
Eh. Few “beliefs” and “belief-systems”—or more accurately, decision-policy-systems and social-signaling-systems—are as attractive as Mormonism.
Well, about the only thing I know about most Mormons—besides the now-incorrect notion of polygamy—is that they’d hate on my entirely consensual, loving union with my boyfriend—so kindly forgive me for pattern-matching their beliefs to awful Unfriendly shit and dropping them somewhere around Maoism and Wahabbism in priority of thorough, “in-algorithm” assessment!
There are also many gay Mormons who wish to overcome their same-sex attraction in order to have a successful eternal marriage and gain all the blessings promised by the Lord. It is a long and difficult struggle to change one’s sexual orientation, but despite the denial of many pro-gay groups and psychologists, there are many formerly gay Mormons that have done it.
Cool torture bro! No, seriously, how is this deceitful manipulation of followers and unwilling dependents not evil, awful and sick?
This is no longer a feature of the mainstream Mormon church (and has not been for a rather long time) except as regards sealing to a second wife after the first one has died. Spreading misinformation about groups you personally dislike is a bad mindkilling behavior.
This is completely true, although it’s probably worth pointing out that Mormons believe marriage is eternal, so in the afterlife polygamy still exists.
To both points: this thing is done to victims (in this case gay Mormons & family) by people with great emotional leverage over them—friends, family, clerics—and not just random disapproving strangers. Have your family ever guilt-tripped you? If it did, you’d surely agree that it’s emotional torture, when people you care about are pulling at your heartstrings until you “change”.
Seems like a sweeping generalization. I know many Mormons who would merely quietly disapprove of such a union at most. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and what not.
Heh, you know, it’d be funny if that passage went like, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. …Wait, that’s me, isn’t it? …Shit. /thusbeginsthestoningofthewhore”
Then what the fuck is so good about official Mormon dogma, if people are forced to filter and compartmentalize a significant teaching of their God’s own prophets just not to behave and think like bigoted scumbags?
I think that e.g. liberal secular humanism doesn’t have any such glaring flaw—at least not for the average person (thorough/neurotic thinkers who obsess over the meaning of life not included—perhaps you indeed need something others would call fundamentalism, and perhaps, in a lesser way, do I).
A choice between “Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice, just because” and “Omega will give you heaps of utility, but it hates normal, socially affordable behaviors X, Y, Z” is very obvious for me.
Then what the fuck is so good about official Mormon dogma, if people are forced to filter and compartmentalize a significant teaching of their God’s own prophets just not to behave and think like bigoted scumbags?
Provides Schelling points for socio-political coordination. You think the suffering of a few gays outweighs all the benefits of cooperation provided by Mormon institutions? Puh-lease.
Even if it does, this is a freakish, unacceptable cost for me, along with slut shaming and other such cruelly restrictive shit. And your socio-political coordination simply wouldn’t take off as long as a proportion of the elites are on my side of these issues—you first need at least a pretense of consensus.
(I realize, of course, that you’re saying all this in a spirit of curiosity and wouldn’t actually work against today’s mainstream ethics in their more solid aspect. This is a purely friendly conversation.)
Hm? I’m talking about already-existent benefits. Mormons are like the happiest, most fulfilled, most transhumanist-friendly people on the planet, and they’re rapidly spreading those memes throughout the world. Maybe you have a deontological soft-spot for gays, or you have an egoistic preference for the wellbeing of gays. But from a right and proper utilitarian standpoint, Mormonism is a huge win.
Your mutually contradictory anecdotes cancel each other out, but even a casual glance at the statistics seems to confirm Will’s view that Mormon’s are particularly functional members of society. Compared to non-Mormons, Mormon’s are more likely to graduate from college, less likely to be diagnosed with alchoholism, less likely to commit a felony, less likely to get divorced, less likely to smoke, less likely to suffer from depression, etc...
Well, you would know. Personally I’ve met maybe a hundred Mormons and noticed a distinct tendency towards apparent overall happiness, social wellbeing, et cetera. FWIW most of the Mormons I know are from Tucson, and some of them look on the Utahans as being a somewhat separate tribe.
It’s probably like zero information, but the only Mormon who I know went to BYU, also happened to be the surliest one.
(And obviously this is all modulo huge selection effects on who I’ve met. I don’t exactly live a normal life.)
Yeah, I’m most familiar with Utah/Idaho Mormons who tend to be on the more extreme spectrum. The problem is that these are the guys who hold the power in the Church.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned is that Mormons give 10% of their income to the church. AFAIK, the vast majority goes into building and maintaining churches and large, extravagant temples, and a very small portion actually goes to real charitable work. If you could convince a Mormon to leave the church but still donate 10% of his income to a more effective charity, I think you’d end up doing a lot more good from a utilitarian perspective.
It’s also pretty well-known that the state of Utah has an abnormally high rate of mental illness, and a lot of people suggest that Mormons often claim that they’re a lot happier than they really are. I tend to agree: as a Mormon, you’re taught all the time about how the Church is so great and how it’s the best path to happiness, so you’re naturally going to want to appear happy to other people.
My hunch is that Mormonism tends to make certain people a lot happier and other people more depressed. I definitely fell into the latter group—when I was Mormon I was constantly wracked with guilt because I—gasp—masturbated. At the same time, because I held the Mormon priesthood, I was essentially told that I had magical powers, and that I had more authority to act in God’s name than the Pope. So I think for some people Mormonism is a big guilt trip, and for others it’s a big power trip. Both are unhealthy.
From a relatively outside view (my upbringing was semi-secular Jewish), belief in heaven and hell is really strong stuff for some proportion of people—I’m not sure how high the proportion is, but people can make themselves acutely miserable from fear of hell and/or fear of not getting into heaven.
To be fair to Mormons, they don’t have the concept of an eternal hell like most Christian fundamentalists. There is something called “outer darkness”, but you’d have to work really, really hard to get there—like, harder than Hitler.
To be fair, some people can also make themselves acutely miserable from fear of not being asked to the prom. It’s hard to overestimate people’s ability to make ourselves acutely miserable; it’s not entirely clear to me that the causes we attribute that misery to are at all causal to it.
Maybe you have a deontological soft-spot for gays, or you have an egoistic preference for the wellbeing of gays.
Not for gays specifically, of course, just for all minorities who share the “born that way but can be broken into a different mold by torture+brainwashing” pattern. If Mormons tried those “shaming” tactics, etc on, say, opponents of transhumanism or borderline-autistic geeks, I’d speak out for those. Because I feel that, socially, manipulating people like that is a line that should not be crossed.
Well, of course I take it personally being bisexual myself, but still—I spoke out for gay rights even before I realized my own sexuality, just because it always looked like a glaring injustice to me.
Aren’t you currently shaming Mormonism? Not tolerating intolerance isn’t exactly self-defeating, but if you look at the antifa guys, you really start to wonder whether that’s a path you want to go down.
I might be, but that’s basically throwing rocks at a mob to protect/avenge the “whore” they’re stoning. This said, I’d defend their right to be bigoted or Nazi or pedophiles or whatever in their own minds and in conversations between ideologically similar folks—just as long as the problematic meme doesn’t harm a real person or spread its poison.
Not for gays specifically, of course, just for all minorities who share the “born that way but can be broken into a different mold by torture+brainwashing” pattern.
That description would cover psychopaths, alcoholics, people with anger management problems, etc. - and in their case, the brainwashing seems much more justified if it works. It might even justify the occasional “fixing” of someone that doesn’t need to be fixed (though I don’t know if that’s the case for Mormonism).
Obvious caveat: the above is for “socially affordable” minority behavior. “Socially affordable” means basically “the kind that doesn’t in its essense hurt other people too badly”. Gays don’t, (many) Muslims don’t, weed smokers don’t, psychopaths do. There are borderline cases, but the harm principle is pretty easy to use here overall.
(Oh yeah, maybe I should disclose that I just met a very pretty, very sexist, very Confederate Mormon girl who happens to play a lot of Diablo 3. So uh, I’m feeling a little bit pro-Mormon as of a few days ago. :P )
Yes, this.
It’s also worth noting that because Glenn Beck is a Mormon, we have ample evidence that his belief in the singularity (if he believes in it at all—this could still very well be a ghostwriter talking) is not a carefully considered belief. If he can convince himself of Mormonism, he is very well capable of convincing himself of just about anything.
Eh. Few “beliefs” and “belief-systems”—or more accurately, decision-policy-systems and social-signaling-systems—are as attractive as Mormonism. I don’t think being Mormon is a sign of low epistemic standards so much as a sign of high instrumental rationality.
Furthermore I think Glenn Beck or his ghostwriter understands the Singularity’s political situation better than most LWers. That said I’ve never heard or read anything by Glenn Beck except the above excerpt.
Without a single exception, every convert to Mormonism I’ve met (and this includes several colleagues) professes to have converted because they find Mormons to be kind, conscientious, and positively directed people.
I suspect this is how most people evaluate membership in a community. The “beliefs” and “belief-systems” are somewhat arbitrary to most, like the colors on the jerseys of sports teams.
In fact, in a population where most professed “beliefs” and “belief-systems” are mainly signals of group affiliation and less subjects for serious thought, this is arguably a more rational way of evaluating the desirability of group membership.
I grew up Mormon and attended BYU for a few years, and a lot of descriptions of Mormons I read on here are completely foreign to me. Knowing that the LDS Church was literally true was always an extremely important aspect of the religion when I grew up—it wasn’t just about the community.
I suspect that the types of Mormons that people on LessWrong tend to come in contact with are very much outside the mainstream. While I can see that Mormon theology can be twisted to support a sort of trans-humanism, in my experience the typical Utah Mormon would find this very bizzarre.
I think this is rather typical and also age and personal development related. As a child, I was a staunch believer of my Catholic Sunday school teachings, to the point where I found my parents to be alarmingly lax and contrary. This changes for lots of people as they get older. In my 30′s I had a girlfriend who described herself as a “cultural Catholic” and basically went to church because it’s what most of the people she knew did.
In any case, at the local Hackerspace, I found that most everyone professed beliefs in the importance of science and rationality, but much of this is indistinguishable from professing a preference for a genre of music or a type of gaming. As far as people rigorously applying rationally grounded beliefs to their own lives, I don’t think much was done which couldn’t be comfortably explained as people generally doing what their peers do.
My Mormon colleagues were all working for software companies.
The typical human being finds trans-humanism bizarre. Most people are just doing what those around them are doing, saying what those around them are saying, and generally just getting on with their day to day lives.
Perhaps we should hold our leaders to a higher standard.
You’re claiming all religious beliefs reduce to decision policies and social signals? That’s pretty cynical, even for you.
It can’t be both? (Not that I see its “high instrumental rationality” either.)
Bleh. If I wanted to argue the merit of X’s thought to people who hadn’t read X, I’d go harass XiXiDu on G+. Consider me tapped out.
Not all, just a pretty big chunk, especially among Mormons. I guess I didn’t think of it as “cynical”. That’s a weird word.
’Course it can. But the existence of two causal factors makes it hard to determine which of the two causal factors contributed most of the causal juices to our observation, such that “low epistemic standards” isn’t quite as obviously a big factor.
I edited my comment to “Singularity’s political situation”. I didn’t mean to imply Beck has a good political model more generally. Priors say he doesn’t.
How is Mormonism attractive? You don’t even get multiple wives anymore. And most people think you’re crazy.
Well, about the only thing I know about most Mormons—besides the now-incorrect notion of polygamy—is that they’d hate on my entirely consensual, loving union with my boyfriend—so kindly forgive me for pattern-matching their beliefs to awful Unfriendly shit and dropping them somewhere around Maoism and Wahabbism in priority of thorough, “in-algorithm” assessment!
Cool torture bro! No, seriously, how is this deceitful manipulation of followers and unwilling dependents not evil, awful and sick?
This is no longer a feature of the mainstream Mormon church (and has not been for a rather long time) except as regards sealing to a second wife after the first one has died. Spreading misinformation about groups you personally dislike is a bad mindkilling behavior.
This is completely true, although it’s probably worth pointing out that Mormons believe marriage is eternal, so in the afterlife polygamy still exists.
Yes, thence my remark about sealing.
Cached thought! Cached thought! Aborted.
Would you mind explaining why helping people who want to change their sexual orientation is “torture”?
I advise,
you manipulate.
Seriously, I don’t see what the word “manipulate” is doing in that sentence besides sneaking in connotations.
To both points: this thing is done to victims (in this case gay Mormons & family) by people with great emotional leverage over them—friends, family, clerics—and not just random disapproving strangers. Have your family ever guilt-tripped you? If it did, you’d surely agree that it’s emotional torture, when people you care about are pulling at your heartstrings until you “change”.
Seems like a sweeping generalization. I know many Mormons who would merely quietly disapprove of such a union at most. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and what not.
Heh, you know, it’d be funny if that passage went like, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. …Wait, that’s me, isn’t it? …Shit. /thusbeginsthestoningofthewhore”
Then what the fuck is so good about official Mormon dogma, if people are forced to filter and compartmentalize a significant teaching of their God’s own prophets just not to behave and think like bigoted scumbags?
I think that e.g. liberal secular humanism doesn’t have any such glaring flaw—at least not for the average person (thorough/neurotic thinkers who obsess over the meaning of life not included—perhaps you indeed need something others would call fundamentalism, and perhaps, in a lesser way, do I).
A choice between “Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice, just because” and “Omega will give you heaps of utility, but it hates normal, socially affordable behaviors X, Y, Z” is very obvious for me.
Provides Schelling points for socio-political coordination. You think the suffering of a few gays outweighs all the benefits of cooperation provided by Mormon institutions? Puh-lease.
/trolololol
Even if it does, this is a freakish, unacceptable cost for me, along with slut shaming and other such cruelly restrictive shit. And your socio-political coordination simply wouldn’t take off as long as a proportion of the elites are on my side of these issues—you first need at least a pretense of consensus.
(I realize, of course, that you’re saying all this in a spirit of curiosity and wouldn’t actually work against today’s mainstream ethics in their more solid aspect. This is a purely friendly conversation.)
Hm? I’m talking about already-existent benefits. Mormons are like the happiest, most fulfilled, most transhumanist-friendly people on the planet, and they’re rapidly spreading those memes throughout the world. Maybe you have a deontological soft-spot for gays, or you have an egoistic preference for the wellbeing of gays. But from a right and proper utilitarian standpoint, Mormonism is a huge win.
/trolololol
I am an ex-Mormon who attended BYU. Your description of Mormons is completely foreign to me.
Your mutually contradictory anecdotes cancel each other out, but even a casual glance at the statistics seems to confirm Will’s view that Mormon’s are particularly functional members of society. Compared to non-Mormons, Mormon’s are more likely to graduate from college, less likely to be diagnosed with alchoholism, less likely to commit a felony, less likely to get divorced, less likely to smoke, less likely to suffer from depression, etc...
Well, you would know. Personally I’ve met maybe a hundred Mormons and noticed a distinct tendency towards apparent overall happiness, social wellbeing, et cetera. FWIW most of the Mormons I know are from Tucson, and some of them look on the Utahans as being a somewhat separate tribe.
It’s probably like zero information, but the only Mormon who I know went to BYU, also happened to be the surliest one.
(And obviously this is all modulo huge selection effects on who I’ve met. I don’t exactly live a normal life.)
Yeah, I’m most familiar with Utah/Idaho Mormons who tend to be on the more extreme spectrum. The problem is that these are the guys who hold the power in the Church.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned is that Mormons give 10% of their income to the church. AFAIK, the vast majority goes into building and maintaining churches and large, extravagant temples, and a very small portion actually goes to real charitable work. If you could convince a Mormon to leave the church but still donate 10% of his income to a more effective charity, I think you’d end up doing a lot more good from a utilitarian perspective.
It’s also pretty well-known that the state of Utah has an abnormally high rate of mental illness, and a lot of people suggest that Mormons often claim that they’re a lot happier than they really are. I tend to agree: as a Mormon, you’re taught all the time about how the Church is so great and how it’s the best path to happiness, so you’re naturally going to want to appear happy to other people.
My hunch is that Mormonism tends to make certain people a lot happier and other people more depressed. I definitely fell into the latter group—when I was Mormon I was constantly wracked with guilt because I—gasp—masturbated. At the same time, because I held the Mormon priesthood, I was essentially told that I had magical powers, and that I had more authority to act in God’s name than the Pope. So I think for some people Mormonism is a big guilt trip, and for others it’s a big power trip. Both are unhealthy.
From a relatively outside view (my upbringing was semi-secular Jewish), belief in heaven and hell is really strong stuff for some proportion of people—I’m not sure how high the proportion is, but people can make themselves acutely miserable from fear of hell and/or fear of not getting into heaven.
To be fair to Mormons, they don’t have the concept of an eternal hell like most Christian fundamentalists. There is something called “outer darkness”, but you’d have to work really, really hard to get there—like, harder than Hitler.
To be fair, some people can also make themselves acutely miserable from fear of not being asked to the prom. It’s hard to overestimate people’s ability to make ourselves acutely miserable; it’s not entirely clear to me that the causes we attribute that misery to are at all causal to it.
Not for gays specifically, of course, just for all minorities who share the “born that way but can be broken into a different mold by torture+brainwashing” pattern. If Mormons tried those “shaming” tactics, etc on, say, opponents of transhumanism or borderline-autistic geeks, I’d speak out for those. Because I feel that, socially, manipulating people like that is a line that should not be crossed.
Well, of course I take it personally being bisexual myself, but still—I spoke out for gay rights even before I realized my own sexuality, just because it always looked like a glaring injustice to me.
Aren’t you currently shaming Mormonism? Not tolerating intolerance isn’t exactly self-defeating, but if you look at the antifa guys, you really start to wonder whether that’s a path you want to go down.
I might be, but that’s basically throwing rocks at a mob to protect/avenge the “whore” they’re stoning. This said, I’d defend their right to be bigoted or Nazi or pedophiles or whatever in their own minds and in conversations between ideologically similar folks—just as long as the problematic meme doesn’t harm a real person or spread its poison.
That description would cover psychopaths, alcoholics, people with anger management problems, etc. - and in their case, the brainwashing seems much more justified if it works. It might even justify the occasional “fixing” of someone that doesn’t need to be fixed (though I don’t know if that’s the case for Mormonism).
Obvious caveat: the above is for “socially affordable” minority behavior. “Socially affordable” means basically “the kind that doesn’t in its essense hurt other people too badly”. Gays don’t, (many) Muslims don’t, weed smokers don’t, psychopaths do. There are borderline cases, but the harm principle is pretty easy to use here overall.
Could you taboo what you mean by “torture+brainwashing”.
See my other reply; it’s aggressive influence by people in a position of emotional power—influence that has no justifiable social goal.
So, by “torture+brainwashing”, you mean persuasion? Your terminology is slightly confusing, to say the least.
(Oh yeah, maybe I should disclose that I just met a very pretty, very sexist, very Confederate Mormon girl who happens to play a lot of Diablo 3. So uh, I’m feeling a little bit pro-Mormon as of a few days ago. :P )
Should we also expect you to be
more pro-sexism and pro-confederacy because she’s pretty
more pro-confederacy and pro-beauty because she’s sexist
more pro-beauty and pro-sexism because she’s confederate
more pro-sexism because she’s confederate and pretty
more pro-confederacy because she’s sexist and pretty, or
more pro-beauty because she’s sexist and confederate?
That’s hard to think about. You’d think the answer would be “yes” to all of them, modulo errors of double-counting, but I don’t actually know.