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DaveInNYC comments on Raising the Sanity Waterline - Less Wrong
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I have wondered for many years what a good alternative would be, and have not been able to come up with one. Now that in itself doesn't mean anything; just because I can't think of one does not mean there isn't one. But given the antipathy of most on this site to religion (as evidenced by my comment getting dinged 4 times for merely suggesting that religion, though irrational, may be socially beneficial), I would think there would be posts upon posts explaining better alternatives. I have not seen them.
It seems to me that many rationalists hate religion so much, that they are loathe to admit it has any benefits at all, even if those benefits have NOTHING to do with the original reason for the loathing. It reminds me of a few years ago when someone said something to the effect of "Hitler's army had great uniforms" (I don't remember the exact details). Of course, the person had to end up apologizing a million times over, lost her job, etc. even though she was in no way endorsing Hitler's horrendous actions.
Again, I am not even saying that religion is necessarily worth keeping. But the unquestioned assumption that it would be desirable to get rid of it does not seem to get a lot of scrutiny around here.
We think that religions are false, and a shared priority of Less Wrong denizens is to believe things that are true instead. I'll readily admit that religion has some good effects. Many people find it comforting; it's inspired great works of art and music and architecture; it does a lot of work to funnel money to charitable causes, some of which are very helpful; it encourages community-building; and it has historically served as a cultural touchstone to enable the development of some very powerful iconography and tropes.
It's still false.
If you like the good things about religion, there are alternatives (although most of them only work piecemeal). For instance, there's Ethical Culture, which fills in the community gap a departing religion can leave.
You'll get no argument from me that religions are false. You will get practically no argument from me that it makes sense to want to believe things that are true. What I question is, is it always rational to make others believe things that are true? If I leave my lights on when I leave the house so that would-be robbers think I am home when I am not, I am making a rational decision to make others believe something that is false.
If I am playing the Prisoner's Dilemma with someone (just once, so no tit-for-tat or anything), and I have the choice of making my opponent either act rationally or irrationally, the rational thing for me to do is make him act irrationally.
See Bayesians vs. Barbarians. You may need the following posts for the background:
Thanks; the Bayesians vs. Barbarians post is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I'll have to read some of the posts that it links to (as well as re-read the background posts you referred to; haven't read them in a while), as the way it stands I still think the Barbarians would win.
Rationalists should win.
This depends on your values. If chief among them is "honesty", and you caveat the "make others believe things that are true" with a "for the right reasons" clause, then probably, yeah. If honesty has to compete with things like keeping your property, maybe not.
I'm not sure what the content of "making your opponent behave (ir)rationally" is supposed to be. It's certainly not an uncontroversial tidbit of received wisdom that the rational thing to do in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to defect, which is what you seem to imply.
Exactly, if I was able to make him act irrationally, he would not defect, whereas I would. And if the definition of rationality is that it makes you win, then it can be perfectly rational to have others act irrationally (i.e. believe wrong things).
If you both cooperate, instead of you both defecting, you'd both be better off, which is a more rational (more winning) outcome. Thus, making "cooperation" a synonym for "irrational" will irk people around here. (Of course if you defect and the other player cooperates, you'd have the best possible payoff.)
He didn't claim that religion isn't false.
I didn't say that he so claimed.
Yes you didn't, but the discussion is at cross-purposes.
If you are going to take religion's effects into account as well as the truth of it, you need to look at both sides of the ledger, and weigh the ills it brings against the good. No cherry-picking.
Morendil, I absolutely agree. It may very well be that the ills outweigh the good (though I happen to personally doubt it). I'm just saying that the weighing should be done independently of the rationality of religion (which I think we can all agree is about 0). I just fear that it is too easy for there to be a negative halo effect around religion, which is understandable seeing that this is a forum about rationality.