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SaidAchmiz comments on Ritual Report 2012: Life, Death, Light, Darkness, and Love. - Less Wrong
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Thanks for sharing this, Quiet; I'm sad to say I agree with you. I think rationality as a movement can't afford to be associated with ritual. It's just too hard to believe that it's not a failure mode. I personally find Raemon's perspective inspiring and convincing. Raemon, it seems to me that you have a very sane perspective on the role of ritual in people's lives. And I'm all about trying to acknowledge and work with our own emotional needs, e.g. in this post. But I personally think openly associating with Ritual with a Capital R is just too sketchy looking for the community. It saddens me to have to worry about such alarm bells going off, but I think it's the reality.
Of course there are other easier-to-worry-about negative effects of ritual than simply appearances; what I'm saying is that, Raemon, even if you are able to avoid those failure modes --- and I have to say, to me, you seem very trustworthy in this regard --- I think strong ritual associations are worth avoiding for signaling alone.
I just want to say — lest Raemon, other ritual-type-event-organizers, or people who share their values and views on this subject, get the wrong idea — that we should distinguish between these two positions:
I, personally, am not concerned about LW's image, or my image if I associate with LW, and I make no comment about the strategic implications (for e.g. CFAR) of LW communities engaging in rituals; I just want to head off any conclusion or assertion that the only reason anyone would object to rituals is a concern about appearances, reputation, or the like.
(This, I think, is a special case of "well, people don't like X because they don't understand X" — "no, I understand X just fine and I still don't like it". Relatedly: "We shouldn't do X because people might draw the wrong conclusions about us" — "Well, let's do X and just not tell anyone" — "Actually, I think we shouldn't do X for reasons that have nothing to do with other people's opinions of us for doing X!")
I second this. I think it's kind of bad for LW's image to be associated with cult-like stuff, but I don't think it matters that much. But it would be really bad for ME if LW became really about ritual.
It really does; already there were some unfortunate occurrences when I tried to initiate new acolytes, ahem, I mean when prodding some friends across the inferential chasm.
(edit: Answered Raemon per PM)
BTW, there's inferential distances, and there's fuzzy-inferential distances, the latter being rationalization distances past some length.
I'm saying I don't think it matters much if it scares away random people.
I would like to hear more about that.