The Church has about 55,000 missionaries worldwide, all of whom follow the same basic dress code and go about in pairs, basically recruiting people to join the organization. For men, white shirt and ‘conservative’ tie, suitjacket if it’s cold. Clean-shaven. No chewing gum in public. Short hair. And so forth.
I have to wonder if this is really optimal. I’ve often heard people poke fun at LDS missionaries for exactly this image. Possibly it exudes respectability on a level that people who aren’t receptive don’t want to acknowledge, but has the church ever experimented with this?
It’s hard to compare the relative growth rates of religions because so many do not keep good statistics, and besides which, many databases do not keep statistics for the LDS church separate from those of mainstream Christianity, but the Baha’i faith seems to have had comparable if slightly lesser growth, and far more international success.
Many religions throughout history have achieved explosive growth rates, but none so far as I know have done significant experimentation to optimize their methodology, and a lot of religious conversion tactics rely on what we consider here to be Dark Arts, which are not nearly as conducive to encouraging people to become rationalists.
Yup, even a business shirt and tie. But I think the point is that it’s the consistency which creates the vulnerability. Suppose we took the look of anyone in our organization, including say Lukeprog, and duplicated it on all the members...
Yet Mormon missionaries act on the official behalf of an organization that cares very much about being perceived as beneficent and wholesome; if they didn’t have a dress code someone in their employ would offend someone and there would be kerfluffle about it. Albeit perhaps this portion of the purpose could be served by a less narrow dress code.
Eliezer uses the word ‘vulnerability’. I think this is close to what they are trying to signal, which is ‘harmless’. It is a good strategy to have a very disciplined dress code, and build a brand as having a ‘dorky’, squeaky-clean manner, so that people feel comfortable allowing the missionaries in their home. In my home town anyway, they went door to door and I had no qualms about inviting them in, knowing that any odd behavior would be newsworthy, and quickly become widely known, exactly because the branding is so strong.
I’m not sure that we should adopt any kind of dress code at all, other than not offending the fashion sense of others inadvertently. Perhaps something small, like a sigil that people could wear as jewelry would be sufficient?
Branding ourselves should only be done after we become an effective group, and one that is admired. We want to be known as ‘those sensible people that get things done’, not ‘that group of nerds that talks way too much about how my thinking sucks’. Eventually we’d like everyone to aspire to rationality, not just the people that test over some arbitrary IQ score.
What I’ve read of the psychology literature generally indicates that mirroring the dress sense and behavior of your target audience gets you further than adhering to some codified notion of respectability when you’re trying to sell something, and that this remains true when your product is a religion.
When what you’re trying to sell is status-linked, it can be useful to act one or two status levels above your target audience. But there’s no clear link to status here, so I’d imagine the Mormon uniform has more to do either with intra-group signaling or with an attempt at mirroring a large cross-section of potential recruits that became fossilized sometime in the past.
What I’ve read of the psychology literature generally indicates that mirroring the dress sense and behavior of your target audience gets you further than adhering to some codified notion of respectability when you’re trying to sell something, and that this remains true when your product is a religion.
This strikes me as a feature. Outside of hacker culture, recruiting people who wear collared shirts and not recruiting those that don’t is a very strong strategy.
I’d imagine the problem with trying to mirror “the dress sense and behavior of your target audience” is that if you’re not actually a member of that culture, you’ll mess up in the details and end up looking like a clueless phony. As such you’re probably better of with a generic vaguely respectable look.
That would make sense if the Mormon missionary dress code constituted a generic vaguely respectable look, but it’s a lot stricter than that: more like a uniform, and distinguished from mainstream respectable in several subtle ways. (The thin black ties are what comes first to mind; I’ve never seen one off of a Mormon missionary or, in one case, a classmate playing Orson Scott Card.) People pick up on that; it fairly screams “outgroup”, and in fact it’s why we’re having this conversation in the first place.
In light of this, I think I’m more inclined to buy the theory mentioned elsethread, that the missionary tradition is meant to produce loyalty in existing members rather than new recruits. If that’s what you’re going for, you want distinctive identifying features for your ingroup.
Many religions throughout history have achieved explosive growth rates, but none so far as I know have done significant experimentation to optimize their methodology, and
I’d guess that most widespread religions have pretty good methodology for getting spread, because they were selected for effectively spreading. Like, every major religion started out smaller, and we don’t often hear about the ones that didn’t make it big.
a lot of religious conversion tactics rely on what we consider here to be Dark Arts, which are not nearly as conducive to encouraging people to become rationalists.
Is this true?
Like, I know the Dark Arts would be bad for rationalists to exploit, but I’m not sure that it would necessarily be less effective at introducing people to rationality.
The formatting here is confusing. You’ve lumped together responses to what I said with my own text in the quote.
Edit: Fixed.
Religions are the product of memetic evolution, and thus, are more fit than memes which haven’t been subject to selection pressure, but evolutions are stupid, and there’s little reason to suspect that any religion is truly optimal for propagation. Plus, optimizing for propagation tends to require playing upon biases that rationalists are encouraged to recognize and avoid.
but evolutions are stupid, and there’s little reason to suspect that any religion is truly optimal for propagation
I think that religious memes are probably more optimal than organisms because successful ones can spread much faster, rely less on pre-existing machinery, can change faster, and because so many of them have been tried.
However, its also possible that we’ve simply reached a local maxima, and that our current memes are too strong for most upstarts but many upstarts would, with further development, be much more effective.
Overall, I’m inclined to agree with you that rationalist memes would need to be designed.
Rationalist memes probably simply wouldn’t be selected for and would have to be designed, because of the fact that you’re specifically trying to get someone to weaken the biases that make it easier for religions to stay together.
Like, I know the Dark Arts would be bad for rationalists to exploit, but I’m
not sure that it would necessarily be less effective at introducing people to rationality.
A ‘defense against the Dark Arts’ focus might be a good way to implement this. Come join us and find a way to protect yourself from the worst parts of marketing and manipulation.
I would guess the Mormons are more successful, and more widely know. WP lists 14mio Mormons and 6million Baha’i, but i would expect both groups to inflate their numbers.
The Baha’i do not actively proselytize though. They do more indirect advertising by dance workshops and discussion events.
I have to wonder if this is really optimal. I’ve often heard people poke fun at LDS missionaries for exactly this image. Possibly it exudes respectability on a level that people who aren’t receptive don’t want to acknowledge, but has the church ever experimented with this?
It’s hard to compare the relative growth rates of religions because so many do not keep good statistics, and besides which, many databases do not keep statistics for the LDS church separate from those of mainstream Christianity, but the Baha’i faith seems to have had comparable if slightly lesser growth, and far more international success.
Many religions throughout history have achieved explosive growth rates, but none so far as I know have done significant experimentation to optimize their methodology, and a lot of religious conversion tactics rely on what we consider here to be Dark Arts, which are not nearly as conducive to encouraging people to become rationalists.
I’m pretty sure people would make fun of any consistent look adopted by Mormon missionaries.
Yup, even a business shirt and tie. But I think the point is that it’s the consistency which creates the vulnerability. Suppose we took the look of anyone in our organization, including say Lukeprog, and duplicated it on all the members...
Yet Mormon missionaries act on the official behalf of an organization that cares very much about being perceived as beneficent and wholesome; if they didn’t have a dress code someone in their employ would offend someone and there would be kerfluffle about it. Albeit perhaps this portion of the purpose could be served by a less narrow dress code.
Eliezer uses the word ‘vulnerability’. I think this is close to what they are trying to signal, which is ‘harmless’. It is a good strategy to have a very disciplined dress code, and build a brand as having a ‘dorky’, squeaky-clean manner, so that people feel comfortable allowing the missionaries in their home. In my home town anyway, they went door to door and I had no qualms about inviting them in, knowing that any odd behavior would be newsworthy, and quickly become widely known, exactly because the branding is so strong.
I’m not sure that we should adopt any kind of dress code at all, other than not offending the fashion sense of others inadvertently. Perhaps something small, like a sigil that people could wear as jewelry would be sufficient?
Branding ourselves should only be done after we become an effective group, and one that is admired. We want to be known as ‘those sensible people that get things done’, not ‘that group of nerds that talks way too much about how my thinking sucks’. Eventually we’d like everyone to aspire to rationality, not just the people that test over some arbitrary IQ score.
Edit—please disregard this post
It does probably help make them Those Silly Outgroup People, yes.
What I’ve read of the psychology literature generally indicates that mirroring the dress sense and behavior of your target audience gets you further than adhering to some codified notion of respectability when you’re trying to sell something, and that this remains true when your product is a religion.
When what you’re trying to sell is status-linked, it can be useful to act one or two status levels above your target audience. But there’s no clear link to status here, so I’d imagine the Mormon uniform has more to do either with intra-group signaling or with an attempt at mirroring a large cross-section of potential recruits that became fossilized sometime in the past.
This strikes me as a feature. Outside of hacker culture, recruiting people who wear collared shirts and not recruiting those that don’t is a very strong strategy.
I’d imagine the problem with trying to mirror “the dress sense and behavior of your target audience” is that if you’re not actually a member of that culture, you’ll mess up in the details and end up looking like a clueless phony. As such you’re probably better of with a generic vaguely respectable look.
That would make sense if the Mormon missionary dress code constituted a generic vaguely respectable look, but it’s a lot stricter than that: more like a uniform, and distinguished from mainstream respectable in several subtle ways. (The thin black ties are what comes first to mind; I’ve never seen one off of a Mormon missionary or, in one case, a classmate playing Orson Scott Card.) People pick up on that; it fairly screams “outgroup”, and in fact it’s why we’re having this conversation in the first place.
In light of this, I think I’m more inclined to buy the theory mentioned elsethread, that the missionary tradition is meant to produce loyalty in existing members rather than new recruits. If that’s what you’re going for, you want distinctive identifying features for your ingroup.
I’d guess that most widespread religions have pretty good methodology for getting spread, because they were selected for effectively spreading. Like, every major religion started out smaller, and we don’t often hear about the ones that didn’t make it big.
Is this true?
Like, I know the Dark Arts would be bad for rationalists to exploit, but I’m not sure that it would necessarily be less effective at introducing people to rationality.
The formatting here is confusing. You’ve lumped together responses to what I said with my own text in the quote.
Edit: Fixed.
Religions are the product of memetic evolution, and thus, are more fit than memes which haven’t been subject to selection pressure, but evolutions are stupid, and there’s little reason to suspect that any religion is truly optimal for propagation. Plus, optimizing for propagation tends to require playing upon biases that rationalists are encouraged to recognize and avoid.
I think that religious memes are probably more optimal than organisms because successful ones can spread much faster, rely less on pre-existing machinery, can change faster, and because so many of them have been tried.
However, its also possible that we’ve simply reached a local maxima, and that our current memes are too strong for most upstarts but many upstarts would, with further development, be much more effective.
Overall, I’m inclined to agree with you that rationalist memes would need to be designed.
Rationalist memes probably simply wouldn’t be selected for and would have to be designed, because of the fact that you’re specifically trying to get someone to weaken the biases that make it easier for religions to stay together.
A ‘defense against the Dark Arts’ focus might be a good way to implement this. Come join us and find a way to protect yourself from the worst parts of marketing and manipulation.
Edit—please disregard this post
I would guess the Mormons are more successful, and more widely know. WP lists 14mio Mormons and 6million Baha’i, but i would expect both groups to inflate their numbers.
The Baha’i do not actively proselytize though. They do more indirect advertising by dance workshops and discussion events.
I expect that the Mormons are more widely known in the US and the Bahai’i are more widely known in the middle east.