One of the reasons this post is of interest is that it likely represents the feelings of some/many would-be rationalists and the struggles they have. The reasons this person has for continuing their current mode of living cuts across many different lines. How many people choose to not come out of the closet, don’t admit to being childfree, or refuse to be the sexual libertines they wish they could be because of fear of potentially being ostracized (and losing their social and economic support networks)? Thought experiment:
In a theoretical future society where the following conditions are true:
New people are “grown” or simply do not know their parents. A highly advanced AI raises everyone. This means that there are no familial attachment. All attachments are to others who you voluntarily enter into relationships with (friends, sexual partners, mentors, whatever.) Modern analogue would “raised by the state” (and not necessarily in underfunded orphanages.)
The link between work and survival has been completely severed. Robots do all the work, and all the basics are provided. You can work if you want to, but it’s not required, and you’re in no greater danger of starving, being homeless, being involved in a violent situation, etc. if you don’t. This means the economic reasons for maintaining links to others are also severed. Modern equivalent could be generous welfare states with universal job systems.
Finding people who you feel you’d want to associate with has become trivial. A system exists that can very quickly find others who share you interests, and due to sophisticated “intent” reading technology (meaning that it’s impossible to lie or deceive said system) there’s no question that those you are connected with are honest about their intentions for wanting to associate with you. No modern equivalent.
To sum up the above, it’s a society of free associations, no economic dependence, and total transparency with regards to interpersonal connections.
In this society, how many people would be afraid to be rationalists (or irreligious, childfree, libertines, take your pick)? What does the data say about societies which tend more in these directions than the US? Here’s one interesting datapoint: http://t.co/E2WEIxR
Bottom line for this comment: I would speculate that the ability to be an open rationalist is likely heavily influenced by which society you live in, though obviously some real data would be helpful here. Using both educational attainment and level of religiosity as a proxy for open rationalism, are countries which score high on those ranks more accepting of open rationality? Top fits would be places like the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and maybe Germany. It would be interesting to know.
Right. I think this is one of the key issues. When things like ‘natural’, ‘random’ (both in where, when, and how often they happen) or are otherwise uncontrollable, humans are much keener to accept them. When agency comes into play, it changes the perspective on it completely: “how could we have changed culture/society/national policies/our surveillance system/educational system/messaging/nudges/pick your favorite human-controllable variable” to have prevented this, or prevent it in the future? It’s the very idea that we could influence it and/or that it’s perpetuated by ‘one of us’ that makes it so salient and disturbing. From a consequentialist perspective, it’s definitely not rational, and we shouldn’t (ideally) affect our allocation of resources to combat threats.
Is there a particular bias that covers “caring about something more, however irrelevant/not dangerous, just because a perceived intelligent agent was responsible?”