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ciphergoth comments on The ideas you're not ready to post - Less Wrong
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I would prefer us not to talk about theism all that much. We should be testing ourselves against harder problems.
Theism is the first, and oldest problem. We have freed ourselves from it, yes, but that does not mean we have solved it. There are still churches.
If we really intend to make more rationalists, theism will be the first hurdle, and there will be an art to clearing that hurdle quickly, cleanly, and with a minimum of pain for the deconverted. I see no reason not to spend time honing that art.
First, the subject is discussed to death. Second, our target audience at this stage is almost entirely atheists; you start on the people who are closest. Insofar as there are theists we could draw in, we will probably deconvert them more effectively by raising the sanity waterline and having them drown religion without our explicit guidance on the subject; this will also do more to improve their rationality skills than explicit deconversion.
sigh You're probably right.
I have a lot of theists in my family and in my social circle, and part of me still wants to view them as potential future rationalists.
We should teach healthy habits of thought, not fight religion explicitly. People should be able to feel horrified by the insanity of supernatural beliefs for themselves, not argued into considering them inferior to the alternatives.
They are potential future rationalists. They're even (something like) potential present rationalists; that is, someone can be a pretty good rationalist in most contexts while remaining a theist. This is precisely because the internal forces discouraging them from changing can be so strong.
When you don't have a science, the first step is to look for patterns. How about assembling an archive of de-conversions that worked?
The problem with current techniques is that nothing works reliably. If you can go so high as to have a document that works to deconvert 10% of educated theists, then you can start examining for regularities in what worked and didn't work. The trouble is reaching that high initial bar.
The first place that springs to mind to look is deconversion-oriented documents that theists warn each other off and which they are given prepared opinions on. The God Delusion is my favourite current example - if you ever hear a theist dissing it, ask if they've read it; it's likely they won't have, and will (hopefully) be embarrassed by having been caught cutting'n'pasting someone else's opinions. What others are there that have produced this effect?
People are more willing than you might think to openly deride books they admit that they have never read. I know this because I write Twilight fanfiction.
Almost as if their are other means than just personal experience by which to collect evidence.
"Standing on the shoulders of giants hurling insults at Stephenie Meyer's."
I am very curious about your take on those who attack Twilight for being anti-feminist, specifically for encouraging young girls to engage in male-dependency fantasies.
I've heard tons of this sort of criticism from men and women alike, and since you appear to be the de facto voice of feminism on Lesswrong, I would very much appreciate any insight you might be able to give. Are these accusations simply overblown nonsense in your view? If you have already addressed this, would you be kind enough to post a link?
I really don't want to be the voice of feminism anywhere. However, I'm willing to be the voice of Twilight apologism, so:
Bella is presented as an accident-prone, self-sacrificing human, frequently putting herself in legitimately dangerous situations for poorly thought out reasons. If you read into the dynamics of vampire pairing-off, which I think is sufficiently obvious that I poured it wholesale into my fic, this is sufficient for Edward to go a little nuts. Gender needn't enter into it. He's a vampire, nigh-indestructible, and he's irrevocably in love with someone extremely fragile who will not stop putting herself in myriad situations that he evaluates as dangerous.
He should just turn her, of course, but he has his own issues with considering that a form of death, which aren't addressed head-on in the canon at all; he only turns her when the alternative is immediate death rather than slow gentle death by aging. So instead of course he resorts to being a moderately controlling "rescuer" - of course he does things like disable her car so she can't go visiting wolves over his warnings. Wolves are dangerous enough to threaten vampires, and Edward lives in a world where violence is a first or at least a second resort to everything. Bella's life is more valuable to him than it is to her, and she shows it. It's a miracle he didn't go spare to the point of locking her in a basement, given that he refused to make her a vampire. (Am I saying Bella should have meekly accepted that he wanted to manage her life? No, I'm saying she should have gotten over her romantic notion that Edward needed to turn her himself and gotten it over with. After she's a vampire in canon, she's no longer dependent - emotionally attached, definitely, and they're keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn't eat anybody, but she's no longer liable to be killed in a car accident or anything and there's no further attempt ever to restrict her movement. She winds up being a pivotal figure in the final battle, which no one even suggests keeping her away from.)
Note that gender has nothing to do with any of this. The same dynamic would play out with any unwilling-to-turn-people vampire who mated to any reckless human. It's fully determined by those personality traits, this vampire tendency, and the relative fragility of humans. So, to hold that this dynamic makes Twilight anti-feminist is to hold one of the following ridiculous positions:
the mate bond as implied in the series is intrinsically anti-feminist (even though there's nothing obviously stopping it from playing out with gay couples, or female vampires with male humans)
it was somehow irresponsible to choose to write a heterosexual human female perspective character (...?)
it was antifeminist to write a vampire love interest who wasn't all for the idea of turning his mate immediately (it is completely unclear how Edward's internal turmoil about whether turning is death has anything to do with feminism in the abstract, so his individual application of this quandary to Bella can't be much more so)
Other feminist accusations fail trivially. Bella doesn't get an abortion. So? She doesn't want one! It's called "pro-choice", not "pro-attacking-a-pregnant-woman-because-your-judgment-overrides-hers". Etcetera.
I have a friend currently researching this precise topic; she adores reading Twilight and simultaneously thinks that it is completely damaging for young women to be reading. The distinction she drew, as far as I understood it, was that (1) Twilight is a very, very alluring fantasy - one day an immortal, beautiful man falls permanently in love with you for the rest of time and (2) canon!Edward is terrifying when considered not through the lens of Bella. Things like him watching her sleep before they'd spoken properly; he's not someone you want to hold up as a good candidate for romance.
(I personally have not read it, though I've read Alicorn's fanfic and been told a reasonable amount of detail by friends.)
Yes, but catching them out can be fun :-)
It seems to me that Derren Brown once did some sort of demonstration in which he mass-converted some atheists to theists, and/or vice versa. Perhaps we should investigate what he did. ;-)
(Updated following Vladimir_Nesov's comment - thanks!)
Even where it's obvious, you should add textual description for the links you give. This is the same courtesy as not saying just "Voted up", but adding at least some new content in the same note.
Fixed, thanks!
You sound real sure of that. Since it's you saying it, you probably have data. Can you link it so I can see?
If something worked that reliably, wouldn't we know about it? Wouldn't it, for example, be seen many times in one of these lists of deconversion stories?
That only rules out the most surface-obvious of patterns. And I doubt anyone has tried deconverting someone in an MRI machine. It's too early to give up.
No-one's giving up, but until we find such a way we have to proceed in its absence.
Indeed. When a community contains more than a critical number of theists, their irrational decision making can harm themselves and the whole community. By deconverting theists, we help them and everyone else.
I'd like to see a discussion on the best ways to deconvert theists.
Capture bonding seems to be an effective method of changing beliefs.