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private_messaging comments on Ritual Report 2012: Life, Death, Light, Darkness, and Love. - Less Wrong
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You're saying that enabling an extremely common feature of human brains through words, music, aesthetically pleasing stimuli and social interaction is making people less sane? To formalize the argument beyond your horrified shriek and my incredulous stare, what's the problem with religion?
It's a superstimulus, and all superstimuli are dangerous? It might be fair to say it's one - religion existed in the ancestral environment, but modern forms are likely optimized beyond that. But superstimuli are everywhere - chocolate and Photoshopped models and FarmVille. Are you generally this panicked about them, and if so why aren't you a Ludddite?
It strongly reinforces ingroup cohesion. Humans need social bonding, but maybe you're complaining that religion does that too quickly and with too little trust testing? Are you this freaked out about sports, politics, or fandoms? Also note that these are yearly rituals, not regular congregations.
It puts people in a more suggestible state. Like... just about everything, according to priming research. At least not more than belonging to a group which will downvote you and call you stupid on the Internet for unpopular beliefs.
No, it seriously puts people in a more suggestible state - it's better modeled as a drug that as a behavior. Yes, and there's another bonding behavior that delivers a lot of oxytocin and endorphins, namely sex. This is a good reason to avoid sex if you're a secret agent man who might let the wrong word slip, but usually dwarfed by the benefits. As mind-altering behaviors go, meditation is freakier - and it turns out to be healthy.
It has a tradition of being used as a vehicle for stupid ideas and violence. We could just, y'know, not do that, but there are also solutions, like Discordianism, which is designed to be impossible to coherently take seriously enough to be a fanatic.
Name three? Note that aesthetic appreciation is only a subcomponent of religious wonder, and that "holy mackerel this is awesome" is a different type.
I'm not seeing it; none of the above appears to be saying "Some people think religion-inspired rituals are da bomb, other people think they are horrible, so the truth must be somewhere in between".
Your use of "you guys", now, that strikes me as... below the belt.
No, I'm not saying "Politics and religion both make you very loyal to untrustworthy groups, so they're exactly as bad as each other", I'm saying that politics is at least as bad as religion in this area, so that can't be the reason you dislike the latter. It would help a lot if you stated your reasons, since apparently all of my guesses are wrong.
Citation needed. All groups built around an ideology make people think less straight, and some parts of religion make that worse, especially the cultural norm against criticizing religious ideas. Is there anything about making groups feel sacredness that makes it worse? Does solitary religious practice make people think less straight at all?
Also, are you Algernon-lawing the effects on religion on people who think exceptionally straight in the first place, or are you claiming that they always outweigh the benefits of religion against anxiety, unhappiness, discouragement, etc.?
I'm worried about turning into a cult, but not about looking more like a cult at constant actual cultishness. People not interested in investigating how conformist and closed-off we are can use the characteristics that are easy to eyeball, sure. Making the community less fun in order to making it grow faster in against the selfish interests of most members.
Something like that may qualify (I've never comprehended numbers greater than about twelve, let alone ten to the power thereof, so I wouldn't know). Does it make you feel connected to something greater (I think stargazing in general does that) and serene and loving (of everything) and loved (by nothing in particular)?
Some works of art also qualify, some of which aren't meant to be religious. But they seem to need additional religiousish behaviors to make you the right kind of rapt.
I am curious, are you suggesting (or do you think) that feeling this way, and experiences that make you feel this way, are a good thing?
That was just describing the emotion, but yes, I advocate it.
Pros: It feels several kinds of good. It improves mood afterwards, both directly (serenity, happiness) and indirectly (feeling loved improves self-esteem, feeling loving improves patience). It improves courage, motivation, and focus. It's a short-term fix for anxiety (which works even on partial success). It increases aesthetic appreciation. It's interesting, though most of the fun bits (like hallucinations) aren't universal.
Cons: If you attribute it to an external source, it can give you wrong beliefs. If you practice it in a group, it'll bind the group more than you might want. You might acquire some weird compulsions (I can't write "G-d", I occasionally have to stare at things). Some of the props might be expensive, depending on what works for you.
No I'm not. I'm saying that the religious groups you've observed go wonky because they're ideological groups, and that adding religion (without a taboo against criticizing it) won't increase the wonkiness. I admit it's hard to find examples because nearly all surviving religions have such taboos, but you could propose a mechanism, or any sort of attempt to answer "What's wrong with religion?" seriously I've been asking this for three comments spit it out already.
Okay, so... you don't think religion actually moves people who already think straight away from the optimum, you think that it suggests bad ideas to overconfident people, who are insufficiently skeptical of them because of said overconfidence? Is that right? So, in this example, it'll make people who think they're good skeptics but aren't more confident that existential risks and AGI are likely and other popular LW beliefs, more than any series of speeches at a big LW meetup?
Wait, what? Sure there's a whole lot of people here who are rather funny in the head, but people who are sensitive to ideas explained passionlessly in blog posts aren't examples of people more affected by religion...