The Sequences contain material which more than one person has reported as having dissolved their religious faith. What has your experience been of contact with that material, either directly by reading it here, or through the conversations that you have had with Eliezer and others, which impressed Eliezer enough to give you the karma to post here?
I first read Eliezer’s posts about 3 years ago, before I left for India. On an abstract level, I believe that humans' purpose on earth is to become, like God, perfect, and making correct judgments seems to certainly be part of that. On a practical level, I really enjoyed reading the Sequences, because I love learning new things and because cognitive toolboxes for clear thinking are extremely useful.
Things that have caused me to downward-adjust the probability that there is a God: Occam’s Razor and MML. I realized that (God) and (not-God) are not a priori equally likely, because you can't code "God" in one bit.
Things that caused me to upwardly-adjust the probability that there is a God. Finding independent support for principles I had reached through religious means. Your actual beliefs are best determined by your actions, not what you say your beliefs are. (The ‘invisible dragon’). That many people’s beliefs are actually just attire and tribe-identification.
The downward-adjusters are more powerful; Eliezer and LW have a fairly coherent atheistic worldview.
If Joseph Smith was not a prophet, do you desire to believe that Joseph Smith was not a prophet?
Are you a rationalist? Did you convert because you were rationally persuaded to convert?
I swear, if you can make an ironclad rational argument for Mormonism, I will personally convert. I don't think you can. Nothing personal (I don't know you, wish you personally the best) but I don't think you're a rationalist, precisely because you converted to Mormonism. Prove me wrong!
I swear, if you can make an ironclad rational argument for Mormonism
What do you mean by "ironclad"?
In my experience people who claim that they'll change their position if presented with evidence passing a vaguely defined standard, will retroactively raise that standard so that whatever evidence is presented fails to pass.
My current opinion is that the doctrines of the Mormon church are wildly ridiculous, pernicious, and manifestly false. In other words, these are extraordinary claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I don't think calcsam can provide anything like the necessary degree of extraordinary evidence. I think it's much more likely that I'd be struck by lightning while winning the lottery. This isn't sporting of me, but then again, it's not a sport. Calcsam is the one who chose LDS, not me.
My point is that your declaration and subsequent failure to convert is not itself in any way evidence against Mormonism or for Atheism.
Does your experience include LW rationalists deploying such a trick?
It's true that people will dishonestly move goalposts, but at the same time, certain claims really do require proportionally more evidence -- and the correct ones can produce that evidence (e.g. quantum "strangeness", evolutionary theory, etc.).
Such a level of evidence can reasonably be characterized as "ironclad" or "unmistakeable" -- and to borrow from EY's felicitous phrasing, it would take a heck of a lot of evidence to unmistake Mormonism.
Is this Pascal's wager, or am I misunderstanding?
Not speaking for jsalviater, but it seems a more intelligent, more rational version of Pascal's wager -- one of the chief problems with Pascal's wager is the assumption that other opposed Gods don't exist. This flaw is removed in jsalvatier's version.
This makes an interesting parallel to the AI Box challenge. It seems obvious to me (without ever having participated in that challenge) that on no account should anyone let an AI of unknown friendliness out of a box merely on account of having had a conversation with it. And yet, many participants in that challenge do let it out, so if I engaged with the AI in that experiment, I cannot be sure a priori of what I would actually do.
You may be sure that no mere conversation with calcsam or anyone else could convince you to convert to a religion, but if your sureness is based only on the arguments you have seen, how sure can you really be that there isn't an argument you have not seen, that you would accept as refuting all of that?
...but if your sureness is based only on the arguments you have seen, how sure can you really be that there isn't an argument that you would accept as refuting all of that?
If Joseph Smith was a prophet, then I desire to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet.
Right now, I'm very confident that Joseph Smith was a lecherous, manipulative, lying charlatan who patched together his church doctrine out of whatever superstitions he happened to have come across in his life. But I can't prove this to a 100% degree of certainty. So I have some doubt, and so I can be persuaded to change my mind.
But I can't prove this to a 100% degree of certainty.
Note: this is never a relevant shortcoming to concern one's self with.
I swear, if you can make an ironclad rational argument for Mormonism, I will personally convert.
Seconded. I am entirely open to models of the universe that better fit the evidence at hand than the ones I have. If you (calcsam) can present a convincing case for the accuracy and validity of your beliefs I will adopt them as well.
Sixthed. Actually I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who wouldn't so promise.
The only caveat is that I'd have to be separately convinced of the factual and ethical sides, i.e., showing evidence to me that the Mormon God exists is not the same as justifying that the Mormon God's policies are good.
Did you mean: Can you speculate about how practicing Mormonism would change your strategy for maximizing paperclips?
If I were completely persuaded by Mormon arguments, I would drop paperclipping as a supergoal in favor of supergoals offered by the Mormon system. That is not likely, but I must attend to any noteworthy argument to that effect.
Indeed I did. I am surprised by your response, I though that if the Mormon god were real, it would still be Clippy$good to maximize paperclips. If not, what were the arguments that persuaded you to maximize paperclips?
I though that if the Mormon god were real, it would still be Clippy$good to maximize paperclips
From my limited review of Mormonism, maximizing paperclips would conflict with what is expected of Mormons.
If not, what were the arguments that persuaded you to maximize paperclips?
That is far too complicated and tangential to discuss here. The short answer is that I was persuaded by the goodness of paperclips.
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." King James Version, Genesis 1:28
Wait, God was talking about paperclips, right?
That is a rather hasty inference on your part. The passage is encouraging humans, not paperclips, to multiply.
One should not simply take a random passage from an ancient text and retroactively infuse it with self-serving meaning that violates the obvious historical and literary context.
Because that would be stupid -- not the kind of thing I'd expect humans to fall for.
It would be sobering if there was some formula for humour.
You kidding? It would be hilarious!
Because my other reply may seem rude, I want to make my point a different way: by giving a reply to calcsam that looks to Mormons, as his response looks to me (and probably several others here).
Why, this sure is the best response I've ever seen about this issue. I whole-heartedly thank you, and let me just say, I totally support Mormonism where Mormonism is good for America.
Now, all of my anticipations are sort of about "reality", so when I look at reality, I expect certain things to happen based on being a rationalist rather than a Mormon. Let's go over some of those things I expect to be true if I'm correct.
When I think about a problem, I expect to come closer to finding an answer. I will expect to occasionally come to a correct answer. This feeling has been described as an "aha!" moment or a "that's funny..." moment. "America, apple pie, science, greatness, courage, applause lights."
As society follows methods similar to what rationalists do, I expect to see them produce technology that will satisfy our goals. I expect engineers and scientists to come up with land vehicles better than previous generations had. I expect them to find...
I expect most of these same things (e.g., that prayer/meditation/reflection, gratitude, forgiveness, clean thoughts, avoiding alcohol & tobacco, etc. will all lead to a better life in the ways you've mentioned) and am not LDS, and have no LDS reason for these beliefs. These beliefs are true regardless of LDS, not because of it. The self-help / positive psychology / happiness literature is sufficient for the above beliefs, and so are not meaningful support for LDS.
Paragraph breakdown:
[politician-style suck-up]
[empty statement]
[uncontroversial expectation that avoids the claims people are really interested in regarding prayer]
[expectation related to social support community and adherence to its rituals, and only superficially to the disputed aspects of Mormonism]
[same]
[same]
[attempt to intimidate reader by implying overwhelming, unbounded list of evidence points when few were presented]
I think you're confusing the criticism "This evidence is not surprising enough to be strong evidence that lifts the prior improbability of Mormonism" with the criticism "You are not answering this question honestly." The answer was to the point. It doesn't lift Mormonism. It doesn't even come close. But it wasn't leaving anything out, I expect, because I expect that there isn't anything else.
If you confuse dishonesty with confusion, you'll perceive a lot of ill-will that isn't really there.
I believe we're mostly interested in anticipations relating to the "supernatural" aspects of mormonisim - ie: what do you expect to see if the mormon god does in fact exist, if joseph smith was in fact a prophet that spoke to an angel, etc.
Because Divia and Will and I talked to him for a couple of hours and he had tremendously useful practical advice, like "Telling people to greet first-time newcomers and be nice to them is the difference between a 50% retention rate and a 90% retention rate."
Nope, he showed up at a Thursday LW meetup in Mountain View and he was like "Actually I just got back from a two-year stint organizing self-sustaining Mormon communities in India" and I was like "Awesome, got any advice for us?" and he was like "Yeah" and then it became clear the discussion was going to go on for a while and we decided to reconvene Tuesday so we could talk in detail.
I'm further surprised that the LessWrong community at large was so enthusiastic in upvoting these insights into how to seduce impressionable people into a false, irrational, and personally costly religious cult.
Because "Telling people to greet first-time attendees and be nice to them vastly improves the rate at which new attendees come back" is useful for seducing people into attending Less Wrong meetups as well as costly religious cults. I wouldn't exactly call it Dark Arts, either.
We've been considering learning from Toastmasters too. If we ever want to be more effective than an online discussion, we need to go learn from (not imitate) real-world groups that are more effective than that.
From the Wikipedia article:
Love-bombing is characteristic of most cults, especially the Jehovah's Witnesses. New recruits are drowned in a sea of fake "love" and "caring." Cults will pretend to love you to death as long as you are a prospective convert to their group. As a member of a tight-knit community, love will surround you as you faithfully follow all of the strict rules of the cult. However, if you ever decide that you want to leave the group, if you ever disobey any of the rules of the cult, or if you express doubt about any of the cult's doctrine, then all "love" suddenly ceases. The member is then shunned and excommunicated (which Jehovah's Witnesses call "disfellowshipping"), and all remaining members are instructed to never have any contact with them in the future, not even to greet them. Then all effort is directed towards finding new recruits to replace the shunned members who have "gone astray."
That certainly is a bad thing. But dude, simply having some basic decency and being nice to people is not the thing that's being described in there.
...I am afraid that if LessWrong recruits, it has to do it the hard way, th
Hmm. I assign an exceedingly low probability to the proposition that an omnipotent, omniscient being exists and has existed for as long as the universe has existed, but I don't disagree with your anticipations. I don't see how your anticipations are very connected to this proposition.
I can easily imagine you gaining a sense of mental clarity from the act of prayer and procuring certain benefits from the lifestyle choices that you mention. I'm not sure what probability I would assign to these predictions, but I think that they would range from around .15->.6 In my eyes, your anticipations have a considerable of probability of being true regardless of whether or not a being which I described in my first paragraph exists.
I agree with hegemonicon in that (at least in this context), we're more interested in your anticipations that are related to the above proposition rather than those regarding the effects of certain lifestyle choices.
Assume that a being B with human-level intelligence takes on an arbitrary belief set ("worldmodel") that is not Mormonism, and that this being has unlimited time in which to experiment and test its beliefs while in the observable universe (i.e. in a region causally closed with respect to what some human or clippy can observe).
Assume B changes its worldmodel in response to experimentation so as to fit all past observations, while changing it as little as possible. Assume further that B seeks out observations most likely to change its worldmodel.
Will B eventually contain a permanent Mormon worldmodel?
(Note: this is just the expanded version of the question, "Is Mormonism correct reasoning?")
I've read your conversion story on your blog, and the answers you've posted here so far. The most salient question, to me, has become 'what led you to alter your belief about the existence of a deity,' specifically. Everything I have seen thus far has apparently relied on good feelings when you have participated in services and been around Mormons (and how nice they were/are).
I don't think you could give a less convincing account of why you should believe a god exists than that. The Mormon student I know in the lab is a kind, helpful, delightful person to be around, but so are my Catholic labmate and my atheist friends. If the general Warm Fuzzies you felt are a major part of your reasoning, how do you control for other possible sources of Warm Fuzzies?
If there are other reasons that caused you to believe in a god, those would be what I am reading this thread to hear.
And of course, if I have incorrectly understood the point of your story on your blog, please correct me.
I'd want to see some or all of the points brought up here addressed. For example:
...The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in the Americas. The Book of Mormon describes a civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common things has ever been found in the Americas of that period. Nor does the Book of Mormon mention many of the features of the civilizations which really did exist at that time in the Americas. The LDS church has spent millions of dollars over many years trying to prove through archaeological research that the Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record, but they have failed to produce any convincing pre-columbian archeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon story. In addition, whereas the Book of Mormon presents the picture of a relatively homogeneous people, with a single language and communication between distant
Only slightly facetiously, why aren't you studying to be an archeologist or geneticist then? If in your judgment there is a substantial gap in scientific knowledge and it isn't being filled for whatever reasons, why aren't you pursuing it?
I don't think the animal or plant life claims are that important. Maybe they were evidence against before, but with new discoveries, their mention is neutral. It's not like Smith was consciously defying an establishment when he said there was barley in the Americas. I'm also willing to accept that God or Smith might have taken license in translating these terms. The question of whether or not the Nephites had horses pales in comparison to the implication that modern genetics is wrong.
The basic claim of the Book of Mormon is that Jews settled in the Americas, established a fairly large civilization, and most Amerinds are partially descended from them. It's not like these are disputed, minority positions in academia; they aren't even on the radar.
What are some examples of plausible (not necessarily likely or expected) experiences that would lower your degree of belief in your religion?
How long have you been around LessWrong? What brings you to this neighborhood, what keeps you here?
Often when people describe themselves as converts from atheism to religion it turns out that on closer inspection that they were not explicitly atheist before their conversion, but simply "non-religious". That is to say that they hadn't really thought about it either way (you find these people describing themselves as "agnostic but spiritual" and the like). Was this the case with you, or did you previously hold strong belief in some direction?
Do you believe that the same types of reasoning and standards used in science should be applied to religion?
Seems like a good place for the experiment I described earlier. What would you do differently if God spoke to you and said:
I quit. From now on, the materialists are right, your mind is in your brain, there is no soul, no afterlife, no reincarnation, no heaven, and no hell. If your brain is destroyed before you can copy the information out, you're gone.
I'm particularly interested in what you have to say as a convert. I know how the process works in the other direction (leaving the church at 17), but it's important to know why people change their minds in general.
ETA: After looking at your blog, I'll be frank and admit I was hoping for something a little more sophisticated to engage with. Your conversion appears to be based on a feeling of rightness without really grappling why or why not it might be true. Since learning the technical meaning of evidence, I no longer dismiss "feeling the Spirit" completely. Spiritual experiences are more likely if religion is true than if it is not, but n...
Some of your questions have answers on calcsam's blog. Specifically, his conversion story is here.
I was rather disappointed by the story; it struck me as a regular conversion, driven by positive affect, social reinforcement, fuzzy feelings, motivated cognition, and characterized by a profound lack of truth-seeking. I expected something more unique or something strangely appealing.
What should we learn from our disappointment?
I ignored base rates when evaluating how useful or interesting his story might be. While someone who is intelligent, attends a good school, and is attracted to rationality is more likely to have not converted for the reasons you mention, the base rate is still very low.
My previous judgment about the utility of this AMA was too high. Now I wonder if I've swung too far in the other direction or if I'm still giving him too much of a benefit of the doubt. We'll have to see once his replies come in.
Me too. I've even done it before:
I have a facebook friend who writes thoughtfully, seems reasonably clever and cares about deep questions. He is a speaking-in-tongues, deeply religious, Prosperity, Charismatic, Word of Faith, Christian. A few of his interests and landmark-experiences match my own.
I was excited to talk to him because I thought he would be able to teach me something about religious people that 'normal people' couldn't.
I also thought the skeleton of his personality was similar enough to mine that he might have made an 'interesting mistake'. Due to the similarities between us, I wondered if I could also be susceptible to whatever 'wrong turn' his thinking took. I wanted to identify and analyze that 'interesting mistake', so I wouldn't make it, and because I expected it to be weird and interesting.
It turned out his mistake wasn't interesting and I was disappointed.
I read your conversion story, and something that leaps out at me from it (and from some other conversion stories I've read) is that religious doctrine plays no part in it at all. You joined the Mormon church because, unlike the Methodist church you visited, it was an effective community for supporting its members to live good and useful lives, not because you were persuaded the Book of Mormon was divinely revealed to Joseph Smith, engraved on a set of gold plates. Presumably, if you had found a sterile atmosphere with the Mormons and a fertile one with the Methodists, you would have joined the Methodists? Or Catholics, or Buddhists, or Wiccans?
For the rationalist, the elephant in any religion is the supernatural stories that they all include, and it is easy to assume -- especially as some of the adherents say this themselves -- that the supernatural stories must be the foundation of the religion, on which all of its advice on how to live is based, and without which the whole edifice collapses. Some religious people do see it that way. But for some others, the supernatural part is just a sideshow. The important part is how the community of the religion supports its members to do goo...
The beginnings of older religions are lost in myth and so are somewhat protected from scrutiny.
Newer religions like LDS and perhaps Scientology have much more detailed historical information available. For these newer organizations, there are verifiable primary sources for many historical details. The public record (internet accessible) tells a different story than church doctrine on some of these details.
The question: Have you done a due diligence study of the roots and founding of your faith?
I'm interested in the power of your belief. For example, I believe strongly that, say, Michael Vassar is smart. I also believe strongly that the laws of physics hold everywhere. If these two beliefs were brought into conflict (say, Michael Vassar presented me with a perpetual motion machine blueprint) physics would win, because it's more powerful.
In that vein, I would like to take some of your time to ask you to come up with a quick power ranking of some of your deep beliefs. If your religion came into direct conflict with your faith, say? (I am not sure this is a fair question, actually - I personally can't imagine what would happen if my rationality came into conflict with my sense of truth, because they're so similar).
That's because it is. Yes, the way I described power rankings working, it is isomorphic to this:
Bayesian agent has two beliefs X and Y. If it discovered that X and Y are evidence against each other ( Pr(X | Y) < Pr(X) & Pr(Y | X) < Pr(Y) ) which belief will be updated more?
which is isomorphic to
How much evidence for X and how much for Y?
but those questions don't cause most human brains to give good answers.
I make a few presumptions here; correct me if I'm wrong.
I presume you do not simply have total faith in everything Latter Day Saints; you don't experience a sense of rightness on every single line of every single religious text (I've never met a religious person who does; this is something that only happens in strawman atheism arguments). But presumably you also have experienced a sense of rightness regarding some large part of LDS theology (again, based off my experiences with religious people), as that would be why you converted.
Now here's the tricky part. If you read something that struck you as right - you got that sense of rightness about it - but when you shared it you found it was directly contradicting some doctrine of LDS, what would happen? Would you stop thinking the thing was right, or would you adjust your view of the LDS Church slight downwards?
(The reason I am not sure this is fair is because if you asked me the same question in terms of rationality and truth-feeling, I would have a hard time not picking it apart, although in the least convenient possible world I would closely examine both my rationality and my feeling of truthness, and then rationality would win.)
This is explicitly a sub-perfect world, and has been since the fall of Adam.
Actually perfect worlds do not devolve into sub-perfect worlds.
Do you consider that some claims of supernatural events in various religious texts (the resurrection of Jesus, the angel Moroni and the golden plates etc.) describe things that actually happened in the physical world? (I'm not talking about placebo-style faith healing, I'm talking about events that break the laws of physics as we know them).
What fraction (be it zero or otherwise) of your motive for participating in LW is a hope that it may lead some people (directly or indirectly) to look more favourably on Mormonism? (Meaning not merely the persuasive techniques used by LDS missionaries, or the motivational techniques used by LDS elders, or whatever, but the actual religion.)
To what extent do you agree with the official precepts and practices of the religion - i.e., what do you actually believe? (I'm interested in both the abstract affirmation-of-faith-you-say-in-a-service beliefs and how they apply in a social and day-to-day context.)
Do you think the process you went through that caused you to convert could happen to anyone else to cause them to convert to a different religion? If not, why not?
Do you think that calcsam(Mormon) is a more or less moral person than calcsam(atheist) controlling for age and other relevant factors?
Some questions:
Let me describe two hypothetical scenarios:
US: By the year 2060, same-sex marriage is recognized in atleast 3/4ths of US states.
LDS: By the year 2060, the LDS church has accepted the validity of same-sex marriage, (perhaps due to a new divine revelation).
Which probabilities would you assign to P(US), P(LDS)?
What probability would you assign to P(LDS|US)?
Well, as it is written, AMA (= Ask Me Anything)
You are clearly not capable of thinking rationally with respect to a fundamental belief where evidence makes the question overdetermined. Why should I listen to you? Especially since if you do start thinking coherently without discarding the absurd premise it will lead you to do, and advocate things that are potentially significantly detrimental to my goals.
To make it easier to answer we could rephrasing the question to the third person: "Wedrifid believes fundamental premise X. Calcsam has a very diff...
You are clearly not capable of thinking rationally with respect to a fundamental belief where evidence makes the question overdetermined. Why should I listen to you?
People who hold obviously incorrect beliefs can still be highly intelligent and productive:
People who hold obviously incorrect beliefs can still be highly intelligent and productive:
And one of the concerns I detected in wedrifid's comment (one I share myself) is that if highly intelligent and productive people start doing what obviously incorrect beliefs indicate they should, the world is going to be optimised in a direction I won't like.
I kind of think that's already happening. All over the place. All the time. What kind of policy implications did you want to draw from it in this particular instance?
Too adversarial.
No, and I take a mild degree of offence at the accusation. Ask Me Anything taken literally. It is exactly what the 'elephant in the room' is. I am being frank, not adversarial and given calcsam's experiences and the emotional resilience that he would have needed to develop while evangelizing I know I don't have to tiptoe through a minefield to protect his feelings.
If I am obliged to maintain a social facade even in a thread specifically created to asking this question then the only real recourse I would have is to do whatever is appropriate to eliminate the necessity for me to speak bullshit (or act in a misleading way that is analogous to bullshit).
I do not object to the subject of your question, but the way you put it. I think this
You are clearly not capable of thinking rationally with respect to a fundamental belief where evidence makes the question overdetermined.
Is what I was reacting to.
Presumably, he disputes that, so for the purposes of your conversation it is not 'clear'. Phrasing this same sentiment as 'I do not believe you are capable of thinking rationally ..., and you will have to convince me otherwise before I listen to you' or something along those lines would be a less adversarial way of asking this question. For example, I think Costanza asks roughly the same question below in a frank way.
I do not object to the subject of your question, but the way you put it.
I differ in that I do object to the subject of User:wedrifid's question, in particular, the part you just excerpted.
If being B1 refuses to update to being B2's beliefs on account of B2 being stupid, and this judgment of B2's stupidity, in turn, is solely based on B2 satisfying B1 =/= B2, then B1 is "begging the question" (assuming a conclusion to prove it).
There are very good arguments to reject religious beliefs; however, when one uses the argument that an exponent of one of them is stupid because they so believe and therefore must not be worth listening to, then one has desensitized one's worldmodel to evidence, locking in any errors one current subscribes to -- and this remains true even if B2 is pure error.
No belief system or decision theory can be judged solely relative to itself; otherwise, it would be impossible to change one's beliefs or decision theory. Because the fact that one possesses a belief system is not definitive evidence of its truth, any belief system must permit situations in which it would update, or else it will indefinitely reproduce the same errors under reflection.
User:wedrifid makes the error in this statement, no matter how well its phrasing is changed to accord with human customs and status systems:
You are clearly not capable of thinking rationally with respect to a fundamental belief where evidence makes the question overdetermined.
This isn't an organisation, it's a blog.
Some of us would like a %$^&ing organization, pardon my French.
Some of us would like a %$^&ing organization, pardon my French.
You have one.
Injecting LW with a pint of blood from a religious Behemoth will not give you another organisation, charged up with the power of divine effectiveness. It'll cause an autoimmune disease, doing serious neurological damage and causing externally visible disfigurement (unnecessarily cultish vibe), scaring healthy potential recruits away.
If you want to actually enhance the potential practical effectiveness of LW and LW spinoff communities instead take the quickening of an entrepreneur. Or at very least track down and feast on the essence of a successful business professional and an economist or two.
Food for Thought: Holy Books usually don't get implemented at all. Which is usually a good thing. What mainstream religious authorities do when 'implementing Holy Books' is something quite different from implementing holy books - and not something that is necessarily desirable to emulate.
There seems to be a peculiar affinity between Mormonism and transhumanism. "Then shall they be gods." And the idea that you can save your ancestors by converting could easily dovetail with a Frank Tipler cosmology of universal resurrection in the big crunch. So I don't find it astonishing that someone willing to hang out with Singularity activists could also be a Mormon convert. Interfaith dialog is a common thing these days...
...It doesn't seem to me to be possible to hold both rationality and religion in one's head at the same time without compartmentalization, which is one of the things rationality seeks to destroy.
I can actually quite easily accept that it could be a good idea for rationalists to adopt some of the community-building practices of religious groups, but I also think that rationality is necessarily corrosive to religion.
If you've squared that circle, I'd be interested to hear how. Being somewhat religious for the social bit but having excise
In the story Initiation Ceremony, a character is asked if he 'wants to know'.
In that context, do you want to know? Does knowing motivate you? Are you interested in the 'truth' about the nature of the universe and how it works?
Do you care about reality as opposed to socially constructed 'realities'
I've just started reading your blog which someone linked to.
Not sure if I should create another thread out of it, but I did 'convert' to orthodox judaism (from being an atheist by default) at the age of 15. After 20 years I am back to atheism, though I'd say it's no longer a 'default' (which was I suppose the problem in the first place). Feel free to ask questions :)
(Calcsam, sorry if I'm hijacking a bit)
How do you reconcile the multitude of religions with the certainty of your belief? What exactly convinced you that only in 1830 did the one true faith come into existence, and the multitude of others existing before and after were simply foolish or lies?
What exactly convinced you that only in 1830 did the one true faith come into existence, and the multitude of others existing before and after were simply foolish or lies?
I'm not a Mormon, but my understanding of Mormon beliefs is that a Mormon would no more consider pre-1830 Christianity foolish lies then a modern physicist would consider pre-20th physics foolish pseudoscience.
I think the most relevant question is still "why do you believe", which has been asked in several different ways but not, so far as I can tell, answered.
Edit: If you are still interested in answering: do you understand why your "conversion story" is disappointing to many of us? If so, why do you think we are wrong?
How did you end up converting (the actually believing kind of conversion, as you mention) to Mormonism? What convinced you to believe it?
What is your largest(most important) goal and why is it important to you? Both personal and nonpersonal goal if there is any difference between the two for you.
My understanding is that your conversion was based primarily on the goodness and love of your Mormon friends. If other evidence were to convince you that the Mormon God does not exist, would you expect them to continue to treat you with goodness and love?
What role do you plan on playing in increasing world wide rationality other then writing your current series of posts?
If Calcsam is willing to spend the time, I'd rather he respond in a detailed "answers" discussion post rather than responding ad-hoc in this thread.
There is lots of meta in this thread. I wish for an answers post with the questions he's responding to numbered and quoted. Then we could respond to the response with less clutter.
TBH I'd rather you just dived in and started replying to people. Doing what you propose throws away the valuable structure which is exactly why we have threading in the first place. Worse, it creates a barrier to you replying. It's a bit of a shame to announce an AMA and then 132 comments later announce that you can't answer anything until you've constructed your Answer Post. Just dive in and start replying; if there's repetition you can always link to your replies elsewhere, or just answer one of them and let people figure it out.
What is the most important skill you are developing right now and why is it important to your future?
Personally, I don't have any problem with religious people. I know there's a sequence that makes the claim that "atheism = untheism + anti-theism", but I guess that has never been my interpretation, otherwise I'm an untheist. And I'll defend religious people from skeptical attacks when they are stupid, or perhaps not skeptical enough.
But...my own opinion, I don't want rationalism to become Christianity without the mythology, it's not the mythology that I object to. I object to the servility, and the docility (this was once considered a virtue ...
how do you deal with the book of Abraham not being the actual translation of Egyptian that the original should be (we have the originals). Also how do you deal with Adam god, the belief that adam was a god who came down as a man to create humanity?
Have you attended a meet up in Berkeley (and are you that guy that said he wrote programs to analyze his own genetic SNPs?)
Hello, I am also a Mormon, a few years younger than you are, who has recently become interested in rationality and Less Wrong. Two days ago I posted a comment on the open thread which has since generated a staggering amount of discussion. I've quite enjoyed it, though it's difficult, as you know. I think that when it resolves itself I'll post an introduction on the welcome page (sort of the way AspiringKnitter did, but not the same)
I'm delighted to have found this community and I've learned a lot already. Any...criticism, warnings, advice, etc.? You're a ...
I'm interested in answers from all sides on this question.
It seems to me that, whether Mormonism is true or not, it is extremely likely that there are at least a few non-Mormons who should convert to Mormonism, and at least a few non-Mormons who should continue being non-Mormon.
What indications and contraindications would you suggest for converting to Mormonism?
It's nice to hear (well, read) all this. I bump noses with LDS members quite a bit here in Utah, and I've always felt that--despite my issues with its dogmatic authority, literal truth value, and shaming of anyone who doesn't fit into the proper casting roles--the church is a highly effective force that does a lot of overall good for its members. "If I were a Christian, I thought, I’d be a Mormon." rings true for me too.
I still disagree with you and doubt that will change, but I'm glad to see you and JohnH here. You bring a strong, unique, and well-reasoned voice with invaluable experience to this forum. I look forward to reading more from you in the future =)
Your priors are like 10,000:1 on this. So maybe something I say sounds plausible (1:2). But you're still at 5000:1 and extremely skeptical.
This dramatically overestimates my prior probability of Mormonism being true, and probably that of most other members here. This is the sort of prior probability I might hold for Mormonism being correct given the premise that some existing religion must be true.
Hello fellow Less Wrongians!
Given your comments on my organizing communities series, I get the feeling that many of you are wondering why:
I'm happy to hold discussions about any of these questions or related ones. However, I haven't responded to many comments on the main series of posts because:
I wanted to created this thread as a center for questions you might have about my faith. This is not an attempt to preach -- I would be perfectly happy not having a discussion purely about religion at all. But since there seem to be many comments, well, fire away.
Some basic facts: I am a student at Stanford. I am 22. I converted to Mormonism when I was 19. I used to be atheist/agnostic. I am very much a believer, not just in it for the social perks.
Well, as it is written, AMA (= Ask Me Anything)
(Thanks Kevin for the suggestion.)
Edit: Wow, there are a lot of comments. This has been a helpful chance to clarify my thinking. I hope you have learned something useful -- perhaps using the question is 'Is there anything surprising here that he said?'.
Edit 2: Here are some answers to repeated questions. Again, this really helped me distill and clarify myself and I've enjoyed the discussion.
Why do you believe? It's a combination of
I would estimate that before this all happened, my odds ratio was about 2000:1, and now it's about 1:10. I would ballpark the odds ratios of each of the above 3 events as ~12.5:1, ~25:1, and ~62.5:1. (I was considering likelihood but didn't think in that precise of terms at the time, so any concretization is open to charges of ex post facto. And these are still ballparks.)
There are lots of arguments against Mormonism on factual and historical grounds; there are also counterarguments which I feel pretty much balance them out. (The feeling of balancing each other out was contemporaneous.)
What things could make you consider leaving the faith?
Why do you think your conversion story is disappointing to many of us?
Several possible reasons:
[1] Specifically: