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gwern comments on Building rationalist communities: lessons from the Latter-day Saints - Less Wrong
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I have heard it said (here, even, I think) that the main point of the door to door stuff and overseas missionary work is to inculcate an extremer faith in the Mormons doing them - a sort of cognitive dissonance/brainwash-yourself strategy. Strategies which result in more conversions may result in fewer zealots, and as Jesus tells us, zealots are more valuable than the lukewarm.
Is this the comment you were thinking of?
Probably not; looking through that thread, I haven't previously up or downvoted any of them, interesting though some of them are.
Well, sort of. There is a common understanding that one of the biggest effects of "missionary work" is on the missionaries themselves. A joke line I've heard is "I had one convert on my mission: me." This is a common theme in Mormonism, for example.
But I see this as experience rather than cognitive dissonance/brainwashing. For example, if you spent two years exclusive trying to explain to people about rationality, you'd probably get a far better understanding of what rationality is. As a result, you would become more rational. You would also be happier that you were able to become more rational.
But isn't the "experience" of a Mormon missionary rather different than trying to argue with people rationally? Aren't missionaries forbidden to debate or argue ? Aren't they required instead to attempt to lead potential converts along the so-called stairway to heaven ? What would happen to a missionary who said to his superiors, "If Joseph Smith was a prophet, I desire to believe he was a prophet. If he was not a prophet, I desire to believe he was not a prophet"? Is Mormonism trying to win converts by rational means?
Costanza, I'd be happy to answer that. But for purposes of keeping the thread more on the community organization topic, I wanted to channel discussion of my religious beliefs over on this discussion thread. Would you like to repost your comment over there?
But if you spent a couple years trying to convert people to Islam, or Buddhism, or Baha'i, you'd probably come away with stronger faith in those. The increase in faith is independent of the truth of the religions one proselytizes, given that they can't all be true, and the idea of gaining a better understanding of something that's divorced from reality, without realizing that it's divorced from reality, isn't even coherent. So if there's more to it than cognitive dissonance, how would you demonstrate that?
Well, I'm sure cognitive dissonance is the case for some -- probably a lot -- of people. But there's an alternative explanation for others.
True. Remember what I said in my previous comment, that "you would become more rational" -- the increase in faith is due to successful application of principles.
Not true. Remember, the above faith-growing effect is due to practicing the religion you're preaching. All major religions tap into a subset of a large group of techniques generally useful for improving life quality: forgiveness, prayer/meditation, belief that good deeds will ultimately be rewarded, discouragement from taking addictive substances, etc.
My argument, basically, is that fervently religious people can mistake a successful experience implementing universally good principles as a truth claim for a particular religious system.
Do you believe that this scenario is entirely impossible, or do you believe that at least some people would fall under this rubric?
I believe that some religious prescriptions are useful for many people, and that the community aspects of religion improve a lot of people's quality of life. But this is an entirely different matter from gaining a better understanding of the religions in question.
When I was a teenager, I was part of an online community based on a shared interest in fantasy and fantasy creatures. There was a strong community spirit, and a lot of close relationships among the members. There were also a lot of members who actually believed in the existence of said fantasy creatures, in a literal or spiritual sense, and some believed that they were themselves fantasy creatures, in a spiritual sense.
If a member of that community improved their life through the bonds with other members, and thus strengthened their own spiritual beliefs, do you think it would be fair to say that they gained a better understanding of fantasy creatures?
Framing the improvement in quality of life as an improvement in understanding of the belief system is either a falsehood, or, at best, a misuse of words.
Are you actually disagreeing with calcsam, or is this what they call a heated agreement?
I don't think he's "framing the improvement in quality of life as an improvement in understanding of the belief system" - he's saying that some religious people mistakenly do that:
I'm not really sure; if he's not actually asserting that people are gaining a better understanding of their religions, then I can't tell what it is he's claiming is there aside from cognitive dissonance.
Does the church openly acknowledge this? Do the leaders see it this way in their secret planning meetings?
I sometimes wonder how strong delusions of reality effect the goal achievements. Here: would the Church be more successfull in their PR when the leaders or designers of the methods were conscious of their real world factors, or is it better if they are actual believers in their respective faith?
My bet would be that they do, but don't phrase it the way gwern did - maybe something like "missionary work puts your faith through the test of fire" or "talking with unbelievers will give you a deeper understanding of your own faith".
Door to door is for the most part discouraged when there is any other reasonable form of finding people to teach available. The stats I have seen is that on average it takes 100,000 doors answered for a conversion to occur. Contrast this to teaching someone that has a friend that is in the Church and (the important part) the friend is present. This gives a success rate of something like 1 in 12 or so.
Half of all missionaries from any given country serve within the country of origin. This doesn't by itself contradict anything you said but is interesting.
Depending on what you mean then you are either wrong or right here. Actually practicing the religion and believing and seeking out to know, if considered to be zealots, then you are right. Unthinking practicing is discouraged which is generally part of what people mean when they use zealot.