It’s one of the standard stories – a couple isn’t really religious, but they have a kid and think their children needs religion so they start going to church. What are they looking for? An identity; a set of moral guidelines for their children. Less Wrong needs to move into this market space.
The problem with this is that rationality is not warm, fuzzy, or comforting. In the example you give, parents are seeking religion so that they don’t have to tell their children things like this. Quite frankly, some people just don’t want to face the truth if that truth is ugly enough. This is why it’s really hard to teach people rationality, because it requires significantly more effort and independent thought than becoming a member of a religious community. While I would certainly like to see more parents teaching rationality to their kids, the unfortunate reality is that a lot of parents would rather have their children be exposed to spiritual untruths rather than unsettling facts. Though the existence of rationalist groups would reduce this effect somewhat, I don’t think this totally mitigates the “ugh, I don’t want to think about that” mentality that some people have towards rationality.
The problem with this is that rationality is not warm, fuzzy, or comforting.
I’m a possible outlier, but I find rationality warm, fuzzy, and comforting. I read a cool article on LW that explains something I didn’t understand before, and I go “Oh, wow! Cool!”, and it improves my general mood afterwards for a few hours or so.
A lot of this effect is probably due to the fact that I’ve been an atheist for a long time, so I’m not really losing any comforting ideals by engaging here. But, although it’s hard to compete on the warm-fuzziness scale with an afterlife, we do have something that comes reasonably close: guilt-free transhumanism (“Not only should you get cryo-preserved and/or support life-extension research, but you should be kind of annoyed that it’s not already commonplace.”)
It would be useful to highlight the rewards of being rational to parents and I suspect it wouldn’t matter much that the messages aren’t “comfortable” as long as they can see a payoff in smarter / wiser / less gullible / more successful children.
If rationality isn’t useful as a tool to build a better life there wouldn’t much practical use in it. I would think parents would be hungry for a message that gives their kids (and themselves) a better chance in the world.
I feel like you are not address OP’s main point. Yes, rationality is hard, but it’s hard for everyone. If for some reason LW community consisted primarily from Japanese females, I would feel a lot more out of place. I would still join, but it would be a wholly different experience. OP is suggesting we need to diversify LW group, particularly by recruiting older people.
OP is suggesting we need to diversify LW group, particularly by recruiting older people.
In that sense I completely agree with the OP. My concern is that religion and rationality are not interchangeable—rationality is not a religion substitute in the sense that the act of rational thought itself doesn’t give too many fuzzies. (At least, that’s how it looks to people on the outside.) To clarify further: my argument is that rationality itself, not rationalist communities, is lacking in emotional appeal. Because of this, you can’t always expect people looking for a belief system that will give their children comforting thoughts to pick rationality over religion.
My concern is that religion and rationality are not interchangeable
I agree, we should no more expect them to be interchangeable than we should expect a random building built for a random purpose to be interchangeable with a church optimized for a religion.
Exactly how far are we from interchangeability, though? A gas station isn’t at all like an office building, as random buildings go, but it’d be easier to remodel each to the other purpose than to remodel a termite mound or bird’s nest to accommodate human use.
How much can we learn from the models of religious organizations? It is hard to even know how much people are disagreeing about the answer to this question, because all answers resemble “some, but not too much”; I can’t sensibly give a measure such as “We should learn 74kg worth from them, and discard the rest.”
A gas station is more like an office building than it is like a bird’s nest… sure.
That said, if I want a gas station, I might still be better off starting with a plot of land that contains only a bird’s nest (which I can destroy or relocate before I start building my gas station) than with one that contains an office building.
That said, I’m all in favor of learning stuff about organizations from studying organizations, including (but not limited to) religious ones. But there’s a big difference between “learn stuff from studying X that I might use in constructing Y” and “model Y on X”.
And yet, I know plenty of people who seem to derive emotional satisfaction from thinking of themselves as rational, and from signaling their rationality to others.
I don’t think “unsettliness” of reality is a relevant factor. It’s just hard to master the skills, and harder without a culture that carries them. Seeing the world as it truly is, on the other hand, is also quite rewarding, so one might emphasize either aspect, but it would be filtering of evidence to only pay attention to one of the sides.
I disagree—as I’ve mentioned here, I’ve encountered many people who consider a godless universe to be extremely scary, to the point where they refuse to give up theism despite their doubts. However, I do agree that rationality’s difficulty is the largest deterring factor.
I’ve encountered many people who consider a godless universe to be extremely scary, to the point where they refuse to give up theism despite their doubts.
These people probably don’t see clearly enough to characterize their state of mind as being scared of reality as it is. They are instead scared of reality as it appears to them, perhaps through the lens of finding contrasting features to what they perceive as distinguishing the theistic worldview. To the extent the difference is significant, you haven’t expressed a disagreement with me, as you are talking about a different claim.
The problem with this is that rationality is not warm, fuzzy, or comforting. In the example you give, parents are seeking religion so that they don’t have to tell their children things like this. Quite frankly, some people just don’t want to face the truth if that truth is ugly enough. This is why it’s really hard to teach people rationality, because it requires significantly more effort and independent thought than becoming a member of a religious community. While I would certainly like to see more parents teaching rationality to their kids, the unfortunate reality is that a lot of parents would rather have their children be exposed to spiritual untruths rather than unsettling facts. Though the existence of rationalist groups would reduce this effect somewhat, I don’t think this totally mitigates the “ugh, I don’t want to think about that” mentality that some people have towards rationality.
I’m a possible outlier, but I find rationality warm, fuzzy, and comforting. I read a cool article on LW that explains something I didn’t understand before, and I go “Oh, wow! Cool!”, and it improves my general mood afterwards for a few hours or so.
A lot of this effect is probably due to the fact that I’ve been an atheist for a long time, so I’m not really losing any comforting ideals by engaging here. But, although it’s hard to compete on the warm-fuzziness scale with an afterlife, we do have something that comes reasonably close: guilt-free transhumanism (“Not only should you get cryo-preserved and/or support life-extension research, but you should be kind of annoyed that it’s not already commonplace.”)
It would be useful to highlight the rewards of being rational to parents and I suspect it wouldn’t matter much that the messages aren’t “comfortable” as long as they can see a payoff in smarter / wiser / less gullible / more successful children.
If rationality isn’t useful as a tool to build a better life there wouldn’t much practical use in it. I would think parents would be hungry for a message that gives their kids (and themselves) a better chance in the world.
I feel like you are not address OP’s main point. Yes, rationality is hard, but it’s hard for everyone. If for some reason LW community consisted primarily from Japanese females, I would feel a lot more out of place. I would still join, but it would be a wholly different experience. OP is suggesting we need to diversify LW group, particularly by recruiting older people.
In that sense I completely agree with the OP. My concern is that religion and rationality are not interchangeable—rationality is not a religion substitute in the sense that the act of rational thought itself doesn’t give too many fuzzies. (At least, that’s how it looks to people on the outside.) To clarify further: my argument is that rationality itself, not rationalist communities, is lacking in emotional appeal. Because of this, you can’t always expect people looking for a belief system that will give their children comforting thoughts to pick rationality over religion.
I agree, we should no more expect them to be interchangeable than we should expect a random building built for a random purpose to be interchangeable with a church optimized for a religion.
Exactly how far are we from interchangeability, though? A gas station isn’t at all like an office building, as random buildings go, but it’d be easier to remodel each to the other purpose than to remodel a termite mound or bird’s nest to accommodate human use.
How much can we learn from the models of religious organizations? It is hard to even know how much people are disagreeing about the answer to this question, because all answers resemble “some, but not too much”; I can’t sensibly give a measure such as “We should learn 74kg worth from them, and discard the rest.”
A gas station is more like an office building than it is like a bird’s nest… sure. That said, if I want a gas station, I might still be better off starting with a plot of land that contains only a bird’s nest (which I can destroy or relocate before I start building my gas station) than with one that contains an office building.
That said, I’m all in favor of learning stuff about organizations from studying organizations, including (but not limited to) religious ones. But there’s a big difference between “learn stuff from studying X that I might use in constructing Y” and “model Y on X”.
And yet, I know plenty of people who seem to derive emotional satisfaction from thinking of themselves as rational, and from signaling their rationality to others.
Agreed. I’m guilty of both.
I don’t think “unsettliness” of reality is a relevant factor. It’s just hard to master the skills, and harder without a culture that carries them. Seeing the world as it truly is, on the other hand, is also quite rewarding, so one might emphasize either aspect, but it would be filtering of evidence to only pay attention to one of the sides.
I disagree—as I’ve mentioned here, I’ve encountered many people who consider a godless universe to be extremely scary, to the point where they refuse to give up theism despite their doubts. However, I do agree that rationality’s difficulty is the largest deterring factor.
These people probably don’t see clearly enough to characterize their state of mind as being scared of reality as it is. They are instead scared of reality as it appears to them, perhaps through the lens of finding contrasting features to what they perceive as distinguishing the theistic worldview. To the extent the difference is significant, you haven’t expressed a disagreement with me, as you are talking about a different claim.