= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Tetronian comments on The problem with too many rational memes - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (339)
Excellent post! Glad to see someone talking about this.
About 6 months ago I started reading r/atheism, and a few weeks later I noticed a kind of subverbal irritation whenever I saw someone wearing religious imagery or talking about their religious beliefs. At the time, I attributed this to r/atheism conditioning me to feel anger when prompted with anything that reminded me of religion. I was very scared that my mind was doing this, so I stopped reading r/atheism and reddit altogether. Since then, the effect has greatly decreased in frequency and intensity. I still notice the irritation every once and a while, possibly because I still read LessWrong, but (if my memories are accurate) it used to be much worse. Looking back, the emotions I felt seem almost identical to the ones you described.
In addition to this, I'm worried that this kind of instinctive irritation could inhibit updating. If you react negatively to a particular belief, you will probably be less inclined to update in its favor regardless of what the evidence shows.
Even though excessive amounts of irritation are definitely unpleasant and counterproductive, irritation in itself can be a useful alarm bell. I've noticed that, through some kind of fast heuristic, my brains turns irritation on very fast when I'm hearing or reading something that contradicts my beliefs. This often happens before I've consciously fully evaluated the statement, and triggers further analysis. It's actually a very precious instrument, and I'm more worried when it doesn't trigger at all.
That's the key phrase. It works that way for you...but I suspect that for a lot of people, and maybe for me, it would act to turn off further analysis, because the idea is so irritating to even think about.
Exactly! Kind of a scary thought, that.
You seem to be better at tolerance of religious believers than I am. Religious conclusions happen to not bother me much.
A brief tangent: the "level up" model found in video games is, to a significant extent, a product of people's intuitive falling for the halo effect fallacy. Cartoons, movies, and video games frequently feature leaders who are superior in most every way to their henchmen. In many RPGs, to achieve a high level of mastery at a skill such as crafting, one needs to be at a high character level. Yet remarkably, if one goes to a jewelry store and attempts to verify the skill of the jewelers there by asking them how many orcs they've slain, one gets thrown out by security! In real life, skills aren't actually as related to each other as we intuit. The skill tree model found in some games better represents reality.
There is one sub-skill I think I am probably better at than you at (this doesn't have too many implications for other skills; I hope the above paragraph is a good enough disclaimer to enable me to speak plainly and be heard without triggering a status-based conversation). My identity is apparently largely planted at a higher level of abstraction as one who values certain modes of though, such that r/atheism triggers cringes and my internal alarm of discomfort. The conclusions aren't as important as how they are arrived at. Possibly you should try to recallibrate your alarms such that the poor thinking on r/atheism triggers them more than wrong religious conclusions do.
I see that your comment is largely about yourself from months ago. Perhaps when you read r/atheism now, you feel the same sort of turmoil?