Hello,
I am a young person who recently discovered Less Wrong, HP:MOR, Yudkowsky, and all of that. My whole life I’ve been taught reason and science but I’d never encountered people so dedicated to rationality.
I quite like much of what I've found. I'm delighted to have been exposed to this new way of thinking, but I'm not entirely sure how much to embrace it. I don't love everything I've read although some of it is indeed brilliant. I've always been taught to be skeptical, but as I discovered this site my elders warned me to be skeptical of skepticism as well.
My problem is that I'd like an alternate viewpoint. New ideas are always refreshing, and it's certainly not healthy to constantly hear a single viewpoint, no matter how right your colleagues think they are. (It becomes even worse if you start thinking about a cult.)
Clearly, the Less Wrong community generally (unanimously?) agrees about a lot of major things. For example, religion. The vast majority of "rationalists" (in the [avoid unnecessary Yudkowsky jab] LW-based sense of the term) and all of the "top" contributors, as far as I can tell, are atheists.
Here I need to be careful to stay on topic. I was raised religious, and still am, and I'm not planning to quit anytime soon. I don't want to get into defending religion or even defending those who defend religion. My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking? If you say there aren't any, I won't believe you. I sincerely hope that you aren't afraid to expose your young ones to alternate viewpoints, as some parents and religions are. The optimal situation for you is that you've heard intelligent, thoughtful, *rational* criticism but your position remains strong.
In other words, one way to demonstrate an argument's strength is by successfully defending it against able criticism. I sometimes see refutations of pro-religious arguments on this site, but no refutations of good arguments.
Can you help? I don't necessarily expect you to go to all this trouble to help along one young soul, but most religious leaders are more than happy to. In any case, I think that an honest summary of your own weak points would go a long way toward convincing me that you guys are any better than my ministers.
Sincerely, and hoping not to be bitten,
a thoughtful but impressionable youth
Hello, I am a young person who recently discovered Less Wrong, HP:MOR, Yudkowsky, and all of that. My whole life I’ve been taught reason and science but I’d never encountered people so dedicated to rationality.
Sincerely, and hoping not to be bitten, a thoughtful but impressionable youth