I have a similar experience whenever I find myself in a church nowadays (happens sometimes for social reasons), and I can say confidently that it’s steadily intensified as I’ve delved into rationality. As best as I can tell, what really makes me furious isn’t the speaking end, but the receiving.
It’s some combination of the social setting, the groupthink, and (what I imagine to be) the mentality of the individuals nodding along. When I sort of “put myself in their shoes”, it’s as though I can feel the biases and motivated cognition and self-deceptive signaling behavior and strawmen arguments and rehearsed evidence by which these people convince themselves of their beliefs (in both the “belief” and “belief in belief” sense), and that is what makes me furious. If I could, even in principle, stand up and cry out in frustration at what nonsense the minister is preaching, and reasonably expect people to notice it was nonsense once it was pointed out, I’d be fine. What I find intolerable is the self-crippling psychological defenses in the audience: you can’t help them, because they don’t want to be helped, and have gone far, far out of their way to remain beyond the reach of reality.
Unless I’m modeling them very incorrectly. But what little conversation on the subject I’ve had/heard with them doesn’t suggest this is the case.
Anyway, this just resonated with me because of the culture of non-criticism you mentioned Charlie cultivating. It has the same memetic defense structure: we should stand up and cry out against it, but in doing so we only guarantee that we will be shut out or dismissed. It’s a very frustrating situation, and perhaps that was a part of what you experienced as well.
I’m not sure what you mean here… the church example doesn’t seem to be ‘related to my personal history’ except for the fact that I’m there when it’s happening. I never been religious or attended church regularly (though there were a couple of hilariously baffling Sunday school sessions a babysitter once took me too...), so I don’t mean to imply that I feel this way because I used to actually be in their shoes, the way e.g. Luke did.
I’ve had similar feelings in some liberal arts classes: someone would speak, I would perceive their opinion to be either egregiously wrong or vacuous dribble, but I couldn’t do anything but groan because of the sort of warm-fuzzy-sharing-non-judgemental atmosphere.
At this point I feel like I’m coming off as an angry, pretentious grouch, so I’d like to add that I never feel this way outside of these very unusual situations, and in general consider myself to be a friendly person who is plenty capable of polite discussion :-)
If your question was just whether I feel this way about settings I haven’t personally experienced, I guess the answer is only distantly. I’ve never, for example, been in a cult, and the strength of my frustration at the idea is limited by my inability and disinclination to imagine it concretely.
If neither of those answers your question, my apologies. I’ll be happy to retry if you can clarify.
I have a similar experience whenever I find myself in a church nowadays (happens sometimes for social reasons), and I can say confidently that it’s steadily intensified as I’ve delved into rationality. As best as I can tell, what really makes me furious isn’t the speaking end, but the receiving.
It’s some combination of the social setting, the groupthink, and (what I imagine to be) the mentality of the individuals nodding along. When I sort of “put myself in their shoes”, it’s as though I can feel the biases and motivated cognition and self-deceptive signaling behavior and strawmen arguments and rehearsed evidence by which these people convince themselves of their beliefs (in both the “belief” and “belief in belief” sense), and that is what makes me furious. If I could, even in principle, stand up and cry out in frustration at what nonsense the minister is preaching, and reasonably expect people to notice it was nonsense once it was pointed out, I’d be fine. What I find intolerable is the self-crippling psychological defenses in the audience: you can’t help them, because they don’t want to be helped, and have gone far, far out of their way to remain beyond the reach of reality.
Unless I’m modeling them very incorrectly. But what little conversation on the subject I’ve had/heard with them doesn’t suggest this is the case.
Anyway, this just resonated with me because of the culture of non-criticism you mentioned Charlie cultivating. It has the same memetic defense structure: we should stand up and cry out against it, but in doing so we only guarantee that we will be shut out or dismissed. It’s a very frustrating situation, and perhaps that was a part of what you experienced as well.
I’m curious: do you feel this strongly about similarly irrational settings that aren’t related to your own personal history?
I’m not sure what you mean here… the church example doesn’t seem to be ‘related to my personal history’ except for the fact that I’m there when it’s happening. I never been religious or attended church regularly (though there were a couple of hilariously baffling Sunday school sessions a babysitter once took me too...), so I don’t mean to imply that I feel this way because I used to actually be in their shoes, the way e.g. Luke did.
I’ve had similar feelings in some liberal arts classes: someone would speak, I would perceive their opinion to be either egregiously wrong or vacuous dribble, but I couldn’t do anything but groan because of the sort of warm-fuzzy-sharing-non-judgemental atmosphere.
At this point I feel like I’m coming off as an angry, pretentious grouch, so I’d like to add that I never feel this way outside of these very unusual situations, and in general consider myself to be a friendly person who is plenty capable of polite discussion :-)
If your question was just whether I feel this way about settings I haven’t personally experienced, I guess the answer is only distantly. I’ve never, for example, been in a cult, and the strength of my frustration at the idea is limited by my inability and disinclination to imagine it concretely.
If neither of those answers your question, my apologies. I’ll be happy to retry if you can clarify.
Nope, that answered my question. Thanks!