I believe that religions contain lot of psychological and cultural insight, and it’s plausible to me that many of them contain many of the same insights.
Religions can be seen as solutions to the coordination problem of how to get many very different people to trust each other. However, most of them solve it in a way which conflicts with other valuable cultural technologies (like science, free speech, liberal democracy, etc). I’m also sympathetic to the Nietzschean critique that they solve it in a way which conflicts with individual human agency and flourishing.
Religions are, historically, a type of entity that consolidate power. E.g. Islam right now has a lot of power over a big chunk of the world. We should expect that the psychological insights within religions (and even the ones shared across religions) have been culturally selected in part for allowing those religions to gain power.
So my overall position here is something like: we should use religions as a source of possible deep insights about human psychology and culture, to a greater extent than LessWrong historically has (and I’m grateful to Alex for highlighting this, especially given the social cost of doing so).
But we shouldn’t place much trust in the heuristics recommended by religions, because those heuristics will often have been selected for some combination of:
Enabling the religion as a whole (or its leaders) to gain power and adherents.
Operating via mechanisms that break in the presence of science, liberalism, individualism, etc (e.g. the mechanism of being able to suppress criticism).
Operating via mechanisms that break in the presence of abrupt change (which I expect over the coming decades).
Relying on institutions that have become much more corrupt over time.
Where the difference between a heuristic and an insight is something like the difference between “be all-forgiving” and “if you are all-forgiving it’ll often defuse a certain type of internal conflict”. Insights are about what to believe, heuristics are about what to do. Insights can be cross-checked against the rest of our knowledge, heuristics are much less legible because in general they don’t explain why a given thing is a good idea.
IMO this all remains true even if we focus on the heuristics recommended by many religions, i.e. the pluralistic focus Alex mentions. And it’s remains true even given the point Alex made near the end: that “for people in Christian Western culture, I think using the language of Christianity in good ways can be a very effective way to reach the users.” Because if you understand the insights that Christianity is built upon, you can use those to reach people without the language of Christianity itself. And if you don’t understand those insights, then you don’t know how to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity.
So my overall position here is something like: we should use religions as a source of possible deep insights about human psychology and culture, to a greater extent than LessWrong historically has (and I’m grateful to Alex for highlighting this, especially given the social cost of doing so).
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
IMO this all remains true even if we focus on the heuristics recommended by many religions, i.e. the pluralistic focus Alex mentions.
I think we’re interpreting “pluralism” differently. Here are some central illustrations of what I consider to be the pluralist perspective:
the Catholic priest I met at the Parliament of World Religions who encouraged someone who had really bad experiences with Christianity to find spiritual truth in Hinduism
I don’t think “lots of religions recommend X” means the pluralist perspective thinks X is good. If anything, the pluralist perspective is actually pretty uncommon / unusual among religions, especially these days.
Because if you understand the insights that Christianity is built upon, you can use those to reach people without the language of Christianity itself. And if you don’t understand those insights, then you don’t know how to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity.
I think this doesn’t work for people with IQ ⇐ 100, which is about half the world. I agree that an understanding of these insights is necessary to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity, but I think this can be done even using the language of Christianity. (There’s a lot of latitude in how one can interpret the Bible!)
I think we’re interpreting “pluralism” differently. Here are some central illustrations of what I consider to be the pluralist perspective:
the Catholic priest I met at the Parliament of World Religions who encouraged someone who had really bad experiences with Christianity to find spiritual truth in Hinduism
If I change “i.e. the pluralist focus Alex mentions” to “e.g. the pluralist focus Alex mentions” does that work? I shouldn’t have implied that all people who believe in heuristics recommended by many religions are pluralists (in your sense). But it does seem reasonable to say that pluralists (in your sense) believe in heuristics recommended by many religions, unless I’m misunderstanding you. (In the examples you listed these would be heuristics like “seek spiritual truth”, “believe in (some version of) God”, “learn from great healers”, etc.)
I think this doesn’t work for people with IQ ⇐ 100, which is about half the world. I agree that an understanding of these insights is necessary to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity, but I think this can be done even using the language of Christianity. (There’s a lot of latitude in how one can interpret the Bible!)
I personally don’t have a great way of distinguishing between “trying to reach these people” and “trying to manipulate these people”. In general I don’t even think most people trying to do such outreach genuinely know whether their actual motivations are more about outreach or about manipulation. (E.g. I expect that most people who advocate for luxury beliefs sincerely believe that they’re trying to help worse-off people understand the truth.) Because of this I’m skeptical of elite projects that have outreach as a major motivation, except when it comes to very clearly scientifically-grounded stuff.
If I change “i.e. the pluralist focus Alex mentions” to “e.g. the pluralist focus Alex mentions” does that work? I shouldn’t have implied that all people who believe in heuristics recommended by many religions are pluralists (in your sense). But it does seem reasonable to say that pluralists (in your sense) believe in heuristics recommended by many religions, unless I’m misunderstanding you. (In the examples you listed these would be heuristics like “seek spiritual truth”, “believe in (some version of) God”, “learn from great healers”, etc.)
If your main point is “don’t follow religious heuristics blindly, only follow them if you actually understand why they’re good” I’m totally with you. I think I got thrown off a bit because, AFAIU, the way people tend to come to adopt pluralist views is by doing exactly that, and thereby coming to conclusions that go against mainstream religious interpretations. (I am super impressed that the Pope himself seems to have been going in this direction. The Catholic monks at the monastery I visited generally wished the Pope were a lot more conservative.)
I personally don’t have a great way of distinguishing between “trying to reach these people” and “trying to manipulate these people”.
I use heuristics similar to those for communicating to young children.
In general I don’t even think most people trying to do such outreach genuinely know whether their actual motivations are more about outreach or about manipulation. (E.g. I expect that most people who advocate for luxury beliefs sincerely believe that they’re trying to help worse-off people understand the truth.) Because of this I’m skeptical of elite projects that have outreach as a major motivation, except when it comes to very clearly scientifically-grounded stuff.
This is why I mostly want religious pluralist leaders who already have an established track record of trustworthiness in their religious communities to be in charge of getting the message across to the people of their religion.
Some quick reactions:
I believe that religions contain lot of psychological and cultural insight, and it’s plausible to me that many of them contain many of the same insights.
Religions can be seen as solutions to the coordination problem of how to get many very different people to trust each other. However, most of them solve it in a way which conflicts with other valuable cultural technologies (like science, free speech, liberal democracy, etc). I’m also sympathetic to the Nietzschean critique that they solve it in a way which conflicts with individual human agency and flourishing.
Religions are, historically, a type of entity that consolidate power. E.g. Islam right now has a lot of power over a big chunk of the world. We should expect that the psychological insights within religions (and even the ones shared across religions) have been culturally selected in part for allowing those religions to gain power.
So my overall position here is something like: we should use religions as a source of possible deep insights about human psychology and culture, to a greater extent than LessWrong historically has (and I’m grateful to Alex for highlighting this, especially given the social cost of doing so).
But we shouldn’t place much trust in the heuristics recommended by religions, because those heuristics will often have been selected for some combination of:
Enabling the religion as a whole (or its leaders) to gain power and adherents.
Operating via mechanisms that break in the presence of science, liberalism, individualism, etc (e.g. the mechanism of being able to suppress criticism).
Operating via mechanisms that break in the presence of abrupt change (which I expect over the coming decades).
Relying on institutions that have become much more corrupt over time.
Where the difference between a heuristic and an insight is something like the difference between “be all-forgiving” and “if you are all-forgiving it’ll often defuse a certain type of internal conflict”. Insights are about what to believe, heuristics are about what to do. Insights can be cross-checked against the rest of our knowledge, heuristics are much less legible because in general they don’t explain why a given thing is a good idea.
IMO this all remains true even if we focus on the heuristics recommended by many religions, i.e. the pluralistic focus Alex mentions. And it’s remains true even given the point Alex made near the end: that “for people in Christian Western culture, I think using the language of Christianity in good ways can be a very effective way to reach the users.” Because if you understand the insights that Christianity is built upon, you can use those to reach people without the language of Christianity itself. And if you don’t understand those insights, then you don’t know how to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity.
I think this:
is the actual reason religions matter so much, and to a larger extent why they were created so much.
In slogan form, religion turns prisoner’s dilemmas into stag hunts.
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
I think we’re interpreting “pluralism” differently. Here are some central illustrations of what I consider to be the pluralist perspective:
the Catholic priest I met at the Parliament of World Religions who encouraged someone who had really bad experiences with Christianity to find spiritual truth in Hinduism
the passage in the Quran that says the true believers of Judaism and Christianity will also be saved
the Vatican calling the Buddha and Jesus great healers
I don’t think “lots of religions recommend X” means the pluralist perspective thinks X is good. If anything, the pluralist perspective is actually pretty uncommon / unusual among religions, especially these days.
I think this doesn’t work for people with IQ ⇐ 100, which is about half the world. I agree that an understanding of these insights is necessary to avoid incorporating the toxic parts of Christianity, but I think this can be done even using the language of Christianity. (There’s a lot of latitude in how one can interpret the Bible!)
If I change “i.e. the pluralist focus Alex mentions” to “e.g. the pluralist focus Alex mentions” does that work? I shouldn’t have implied that all people who believe in heuristics recommended by many religions are pluralists (in your sense). But it does seem reasonable to say that pluralists (in your sense) believe in heuristics recommended by many religions, unless I’m misunderstanding you. (In the examples you listed these would be heuristics like “seek spiritual truth”, “believe in (some version of) God”, “learn from great healers”, etc.)
I personally don’t have a great way of distinguishing between “trying to reach these people” and “trying to manipulate these people”. In general I don’t even think most people trying to do such outreach genuinely know whether their actual motivations are more about outreach or about manipulation. (E.g. I expect that most people who advocate for luxury beliefs sincerely believe that they’re trying to help worse-off people understand the truth.) Because of this I’m skeptical of elite projects that have outreach as a major motivation, except when it comes to very clearly scientifically-grounded stuff.
If your main point is “don’t follow religious heuristics blindly, only follow them if you actually understand why they’re good” I’m totally with you. I think I got thrown off a bit because, AFAIU, the way people tend to come to adopt pluralist views is by doing exactly that, and thereby coming to conclusions that go against mainstream religious interpretations. (I am super impressed that the Pope himself seems to have been going in this direction. The Catholic monks at the monastery I visited generally wished the Pope were a lot more conservative.)
I use heuristics similar to those for communicating to young children.
This is why I mostly want religious pluralist leaders who already have an established track record of trustworthiness in their religious communities to be in charge of getting the message across to the people of their religion.