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Will_Newsome comments on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers - Less Wrong
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Hm? I'm talking about already-existent benefits. Mormons are like the happiest, most fulfilled, most transhumanist-friendly people on the planet, and they're rapidly spreading those memes throughout the world. Maybe you have a deontological soft-spot for gays, or you have an egoistic preference for the wellbeing of gays. But from a right and proper utilitarian standpoint, Mormonism is a huge win.
/trolololol
I am an ex-Mormon who attended BYU. Your description of Mormons is completely foreign to me.
Your mutually contradictory anecdotes cancel each other out, but even a casual glance at the statistics seems to confirm Will's view that Mormon's are particularly functional members of society. Compared to non-Mormons, Mormon's are more likely to graduate from college, less likely to be diagnosed with alchoholism, less likely to commit a felony, less likely to get divorced, less likely to smoke, less likely to suffer from depression, etc...
Well, you would know. Personally I've met maybe a hundred Mormons and noticed a distinct tendency towards apparent overall happiness, social wellbeing, et cetera. FWIW most of the Mormons I know are from Tucson, and some of them look on the Utahans as being a somewhat separate tribe.
It's probably like zero information, but the only Mormon who I know went to BYU, also happened to be the surliest one.
(And obviously this is all modulo huge selection effects on who I've met. I don't exactly live a normal life.)
Yeah, I'm most familiar with Utah/Idaho Mormons who tend to be on the more extreme spectrum. The problem is that these are the guys who hold the power in the Church.
Something that hasn't been mentioned is that Mormons give 10% of their income to the church. AFAIK, the vast majority goes into building and maintaining churches and large, extravagant temples, and a very small portion actually goes to real charitable work. If you could convince a Mormon to leave the church but still donate 10% of his income to a more effective charity, I think you'd end up doing a lot more good from a utilitarian perspective.
It's also pretty well-known that the state of Utah has an abnormally high rate of mental illness, and a lot of people suggest that Mormons often claim that they're a lot happier than they really are. I tend to agree: as a Mormon, you're taught all the time about how the Church is so great and how it's the best path to happiness, so you're naturally going to want to appear happy to other people.
My hunch is that Mormonism tends to make certain people a lot happier and other people more depressed. I definitely fell into the latter group--when I was Mormon I was constantly wracked with guilt because I--gasp--masturbated. At the same time, because I held the Mormon priesthood, I was essentially told that I had magical powers, and that I had more authority to act in God's name than the Pope. So I think for some people Mormonism is a big guilt trip, and for others it's a big power trip. Both are unhealthy.
From a relatively outside view (my upbringing was semi-secular Jewish), belief in heaven and hell is really strong stuff for some proportion of people-- I'm not sure how high the proportion is, but people can make themselves acutely miserable from fear of hell and/or fear of not getting into heaven.
To be fair to Mormons, they don't have the concept of an eternal hell like most Christian fundamentalists. There is something called "outer darkness", but you'd have to work really, really hard to get there--like, harder than Hitler.
To be fair, some people can also make themselves acutely miserable from fear of not being asked to the prom. It's hard to overestimate people's ability to make ourselves acutely miserable; it's not entirely clear to me that the causes we attribute that misery to are at all causal to it.
Not for gays specifically, of course, just for all minorities who share the "born that way but can be broken into a different mold by torture+brainwashing" pattern. If Mormons tried those "shaming" tactics, etc on, say, opponents of transhumanism or borderline-autistic geeks, I'd speak out for those. Because I feel that, socially, manipulating people like that is a line that should not be crossed.
Well, of course I take it personally being bisexual myself, but still - I spoke out for gay rights even before I realized my own sexuality, just because it always looked like a glaring injustice to me.
That description would cover psychopaths, alcoholics, people with anger management problems, etc. - and in their case, the brainwashing seems much more justified if it works. It might even justify the occasional "fixing" of someone that doesn't need to be fixed (though I don't know if that's the case for Mormonism).
Aren't you currently shaming Mormonism? Not tolerating intolerance isn't exactly self-defeating, but if you look at the antifa guys, you really start to wonder whether that's a path you want to go down.
Could you taboo what you mean by "torture+brainwashing".
See my other reply; it's aggressive influence by people in a position of emotional power - influence that has no justifiable social goal.
So, by "torture+brainwashing", you mean persuasion? Your terminology is slightly confusing, to say the least.