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ruelian comments on Four things every community should do - Less Wrong
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Not a good analogy. Something that works and reliably gives its users comparative advantage (such as science) shouldn't need a mechanism to keep alive an "essential message". Institutions to teach it, and to keep it clean, yes: but those are universities, not religions.
And universities, once established, also tend to be extremely durable. They just haven't been around for thousands of years yet. But while they have, many more newly-founded religions than universities have died.
Universities are not a good example of the institutions he was talking about. Durability isn't the only important factor. One of the main strengths of religious institutions is their sheer pervasiveness; by inserting itself into every facet of life, religion ensures that its disciples can't stray too far from the path without being reminded of it. Universities, sadly, are not capable of this level of involvement in the lives of communities or individuals.
In this case, rationality should seek to emulate religion by creating institutions and thus a lifestyle that makes its ideas pervasive. For example, if you could attend weekly lectures at your local "rationality church" or have those better at the art of rationality available to guide you the way priests guide Christians, becoming and staying a rationalist would be much easier and thus more accessible to the populace. This already sort of happens through the internet and meetups, but what religion has is a proven formula that builds communities around ideas, and we can definitely learn from it.
That's called totalitarianism, by the way. Not many people consider it to be a good thing.
Not necessarily. It's totalitarianism if said institutions do the ensuring through force, and without the consent of the disciples. However, by choosing to belong to a religious community, people choose to have institutions and members of the community remind them of the religious values.
The mark of totalitarianism is not force, but rather complete control over all aspects of life.
"He loved Big Brother".
I made no mention of control. Simply being present in all aspects of life is not the same as having control over all aspects of life. For example, if you live in a western society it's extremely probable that marketing and advertising are present in many aspects of your life, but I don't think either of us would say that the simple fact of their presence gives the marketers control over those aspects of your life.
Well, yes, but I think that in practice living within a religious community imposes a lot of pressure to conform to the religious norms. Some of that pressure is social (from not being invited to the right cocktail parties to outright shunning) and some can be direct and violent. I recall that the haredim are not above throwing stones at cars on a Saturday...
I agree that this is the case in some religious communities, and that this is not necessarily the direction a rationalist community should go. (On the other hand, I have a hard time agreeing with the proposition that social pressure in favor of rationality is a bad thing, but I have yet to reach a definite conclusion on the subject.) However, I happen to be familiar with several religious communities where direct and violent pressure to conform is not the case, and it is those communities I wish to emulate.
I feel that the cohesiveness of a community and its effectiveness at maintaining its norms is directly and strongly correlated to the disincentives that it provides for deviating from these norms. Just presence of symbols is not enough.
Of course things like self-selection and evaporative cooling are major factors as well.
Based on admittedly anecdotal evidence I'm inclined believe this correlation, but I think we're interpreting its existence differently. In my view, by becoming more "religious" and providing more disincentives for deviating from norms, we can increase our cohesiveness and effectiveness, but this should only be done up to a point, that point being, as far as I can tell, where we as a community can no longer tolerate the disincentives. This view is based on my value judgment that not all disincentives for deviating from norms I find acceptable or admirable are unacceptable, but rather too many disincentives or those that are too extreme are unacceptable.