Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Raising the Sanity Waterline - Less Wrong

112 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 March 2009 04:28AM

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Comment author: HughRistik 12 March 2009 09:20:12PM *  20 points [-]

Here's another way of evaluating the sanity of religious belief:

It's arguable that the original believers of religion were insane (e.g. shamans with schizotypical personality disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, etc...), yet with each subsequent believer in your culture, you are less and less insane to believe in it. During past history, it would only take a few insane or gullible people with good oratorical skills getting together to make religion sanely believable.

If you are religious because you see spirits, you are insane. If you are religious because your friend Shaman Bob sees spirits and predicts the rainfall, you aren't very smart, but you aren't insane either. If you are religious because your whole tribe believes in the spirits seen by Shaman Bob and has indoctrinated you from birth, you are not insane at all, you are a typical human.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 March 2009 11:37:59PM 4 points [-]

It's arguable that the original believers of religion were insane (e.g. shamans with schizotypical personality disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, etc...), yet with each subsequent believer in your culture, you are less and less insane to believe in it.

But this would be true only if the subsequent believers were not taking into account previous believers as evidence - if they had all come to the same view independently. Otherwise we have an information cascade.

Comment author: HughRistik 02 April 2009 11:27:40PM 9 points [-]

Information cascades may be irrational, but they seem fully sane and neurotypical.