I would like to have a community that strives to be rational also “outside the lab”. The words “professional bayesianism” feel like bayesianism within the lab. (I haven’t read the book, so perhaps I am misinterpreting the author’s intent.)
Google seems to invest huge amounts of effort into making sure they have a good internal community.
That’s nice, but ultimately, if there is a tension between “what is better for you” and “what is better for Google”, Google will probably choose the latter. What could possibly be good for you but bad for Google? Thinking for less than one minute I’d say: becoming financially independent, so you no longer have to work; building your own startup; finding a spouse, having kids, and refusing to work overtime...
Yeah, this is a fully general argument against any society, but it seems to me that a Village, simply by not being profit oriented, would have greater freedom to optimize for the benefit of its members. For a business company, every employer is a cost. In a village, well-behaving citizens pay their own bills, and provide some value to each other, whether that value is greater or smaller, it is still positive or zero.
“Church” is something that can continues to succeed even in a large town or city where people come and go more easily (although I’m not confident this is a stable arrangement – once you have large cities, atomic individualism and the gradual erosion of Church might be inevitable)
An important part of being in the Church is being physically present at its religious activities, e.g. every Sunday morning. So even if you happen to be surrounded mostly by non-believers in your city, at least once in a week you become physically surrounded by believers. (A temporary Village.) Physical proximity creates the kind of emotions that internet cannot substitute.
Church is an “eukaryotic” organization: it has a boundary on the outside (believers vs non-believers), but also inside (clergy vs lay members). This slows down value shift: you can accept many believers, while only worrying about value alignment of the clergy: potential heretical opinions of the lay members are just their personal opinions, not the official teaching; if necessary, the clergy will make this clear in a coordinated way. Having stronger filter in the inner boundary allows you to have weaker filter on the outer boundary, because there is no democracy in the outer circle.
Translated to the language of the article: Mission can have multiple Villages, but Village can only have one Mission. As an example, if meditation becomes popular among some rationalists, and they start going to Buddhist retreats and hanging out with Buddhist, and then they bring their nerdy Buddhist friends to rationality meetups… it should be clear that the rationalist community is in absolutely no risk of becoming a religious community, because the mysterious bullshit of Buddhism will be rejected (at least by the inner circle) just like the mysterious bullshit of any other religion. Similarly when people will try to conquer the rationalist community for their political faction; but I believe we are doing quite well here.
You listen to sermons that establish common knowledge of what your people do-and-don’t-do.
The important thing here is that the sermons come from the top. They do not represent the latest fashionable contrarian opinion. The Church provides many things for its members, but freedom to give sermons is not one of them.
(To avoid misunderstanding: I am not praising dictatorship for the dictatorship’s sake here. Rather, it is my experience from various projects, that there is a type of people who come to introduce controversy, but don’t contribute to the core mission. These people will cause drama, and provide nothing useful in return. If they win, they will only keep pushing further; if they lose, they will ragequit and maybe spend some time slandering you. It is nice to have a mechanism that stops them at the door. Even more importantly in a group that attracts so many contrarians, and where “hey, you call yourselves ‘rationalists’, but you irrationally refuse my opinion before you spent thousand hours debating it thoroughly?!” is a powerful argument. The sermons are a tool of coordination, and coordination is hard.)
I would like to have a community that strives to be rational also “outside the lab”. The words “professional bayesianism” feel like bayesianism within the lab. (I haven’t read the book, so perhaps I am misinterpreting the author’s intent.)
That’s nice, but ultimately, if there is a tension between “what is better for you” and “what is better for Google”, Google will probably choose the latter. What could possibly be good for you but bad for Google? Thinking for less than one minute I’d say: becoming financially independent, so you no longer have to work; building your own startup; finding a spouse, having kids, and refusing to work overtime...
Yeah, this is a fully general argument against any society, but it seems to me that a Village, simply by not being profit oriented, would have greater freedom to optimize for the benefit of its members. For a business company, every employer is a cost. In a village, well-behaving citizens pay their own bills, and provide some value to each other, whether that value is greater or smaller, it is still positive or zero.
An important part of being in the Church is being physically present at its religious activities, e.g. every Sunday morning. So even if you happen to be surrounded mostly by non-believers in your city, at least once in a week you become physically surrounded by believers. (A temporary Village.) Physical proximity creates the kind of emotions that internet cannot substitute.
Church is an “eukaryotic” organization: it has a boundary on the outside (believers vs non-believers), but also inside (clergy vs lay members). This slows down value shift: you can accept many believers, while only worrying about value alignment of the clergy: potential heretical opinions of the lay members are just their personal opinions, not the official teaching; if necessary, the clergy will make this clear in a coordinated way. Having stronger filter in the inner boundary allows you to have weaker filter on the outer boundary, because there is no democracy in the outer circle.
Translated to the language of the article: Mission can have multiple Villages, but Village can only have one Mission. As an example, if meditation becomes popular among some rationalists, and they start going to Buddhist retreats and hanging out with Buddhist, and then they bring their nerdy Buddhist friends to rationality meetups… it should be clear that the rationalist community is in absolutely no risk of becoming a religious community, because the mysterious bullshit of Buddhism will be rejected (at least by the inner circle) just like the mysterious bullshit of any other religion. Similarly when people will try to conquer the rationalist community for their political faction; but I believe we are doing quite well here.
The important thing here is that the sermons come from the top. They do not represent the latest fashionable contrarian opinion. The Church provides many things for its members, but freedom to give sermons is not one of them.
(To avoid misunderstanding: I am not praising dictatorship for the dictatorship’s sake here. Rather, it is my experience from various projects, that there is a type of people who come to introduce controversy, but don’t contribute to the core mission. These people will cause drama, and provide nothing useful in return. If they win, they will only keep pushing further; if they lose, they will ragequit and maybe spend some time slandering you. It is nice to have a mechanism that stops them at the door. Even more importantly in a group that attracts so many contrarians, and where “hey, you call yourselves ‘rationalists’, but you irrationally refuse my opinion before you spent thousand hours debating it thoroughly?!” is a powerful argument. The sermons are a tool of coordination, and coordination is hard.)