I don't think this post is ready for main. I found the style hard to read, but some more specific objections:
The way you're using "free will" sounds to me more like "freedom of belief".
I'm not aware that LW-style aspiring rationalists have significant overlap with the people called militant atheists, but I don't pay attention to the latter group. If there is overlap, it might be worth giving examples. I haven't noticed any particular religion-is-evil sentiment on LW, and I have noticed counterexamples; see for example this discussion which I've barely even skimmed, but it seems like people were being civil towards CCC, who is religious. See also: one of the CFAR instructors is catholic.
Don't try to say this won't happen, and that Rationalists will always allow other people to believe differently. Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Politics is the Mind Killer, and Eliezar' success in creating the LW and rationalist movement say otherwise.
Could you elaborate? I don't see how any of these things suggest that people identifying with the rationalist movement will eventually become intolerant of religion.
I would suggest rewriting this post. But in the revision make sure you're clear about your terms, especially the terms that are integral to your thesis. What do you mean by "free will"? What do you mean by "rationalist"?
I would further argue that there is very little overlap between the average atheist and a LW-styled rationalist. Indeed, there's a lot of tribalism in "mainstream" atheism and there don't seem to be many mainstream atheist-related memes that try to counteract our natural human tendency for in-group bias, unlike here. I don't really know the causes of most people becoming atheists, and I don't want to psychoanalyze from my chair, but I doubt many of them came to atheism through LW-style rationalism (there are a lot of factors that are correlated with lack of religiosity, and they're all social... not rational per se).
Furthermore, I was already an atheist before I started reading LW, and reading LW actually made me more tolerant towards religious beliefs. So that's at least an anecdote that argues against what you're worried about in your post (assuming that LW-style rationalism becomes integral to mainstream atheism).
I don't think this post is main material.
Why? You fail to define what you mean with free will. The first thing that the term brings up is the debate about whether or not free will exist in the first place.
Do you care about not pushing fat men onto trolley tracks?
Making organ-donation on death a default that people have to opt out of?
In Germany there was recently a court decision that printing: "Men and women are equal" on election ballots is an illegal infringement of voters expression of the political will. Is this the kind of nudging something that goes against your principles?
Less Wrong rationalists are growing, and being recognized by the religious community. As militant Atheists.
Militant atheism is a slogan by Richard Dawkins. I think you are making a mistake when you charge is community with being militant Atheists.
On the mission statement for the center of rationality there isn't a single word about religion, God, atheism. Evolution doesn't appear while "evole" appears once but isn't the main topic of the sentence in which it appears.
The question of God is not discussed in rational fiction like HPMOR and Lumosity/Radiance. In some sense Harry father might be an militant atheist but Harry's father is wrong in HPMOR.
Altruism is very easily perverted into forcing other people because you know what is best for them. It's not enough by itself. It needs something else attached.
This community add something to altruism. Effective altruism. In contrast to Microlending that creates dependency GiveWell recommends GiveDirectly. Not because of some argument about the value of free will but because of an argument about effectiveness.
In the last 100 years you didn't have a war between atheists and theists in Europe. On the other hand you have Irish catholics bombing English protestants.
As others have said, you should probably rewrite this post if you want to engage in constructive discussion; a few suggestions:
Also, I don't identify as a militant atheist and am quite sympathetic to some religious views, and I don't think I'm far outside the norm here.
Spell Eliezer's name correctly
I've often been baffled by how many people persist in the use of alternate spellings of his name when the correct, or at least, given spelling of his name is usually visible for perusal in those very discussions.
It seems like a very weird, petty form of disrespect.
First, you seem to be talking about the freedom of belief, not freedom of will.
Second, you want "a guarantee of free will for others that disagree with you". Who can give you such a guarantee? As you yourself point out future is uncertain and things are likely to look different. What form could a guarantee take so that it still has power in that different future?
I see a future pattern emerging in the United States:
Few atheists among overwhelming Christians -> shrinking Christianity, growing Atheism -> atheism tribalness growing well connected and strong -> Natural tribal impulse to not tolerate different voices -> war between atheists and Christians.
The last arrow seems like quite a jump. In the US we try to restrain the impulse to intolerance with protections for free speech and such. Do you think these protections are likely to fail? Why are religious divisions going to cause a war when other divisions such as the political left vs. right haven't? Why do you think a religious war is likely in the US when European countries with much higher rates of atheism haven't experienced such wars and don't seem likely to?
Don't try to say this won't happen, and that Rationalists will always allow other people to believe differently. Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Politics is the Mind Killer, and Eliezar' success in creating the LW and rationalist movement say otherwise.
I'm confused; what do these three things you cite have to do with intolerance of religious views?
Generally, it is better to write an article about one topic, instead of starting half dozen topics in the same article. I am not even sure where to start. Seems to me that your motivation for writing all this is to prevent some future military conflict between atheists and religious people. So perhaps we should instead discuss how likely is such a scenario. What is your evidence that something like this is likely to happen?
Perhaps look at what powerful atheists are doing now. Is Bill Gates spending his money trying to cure children in Africa, regardless of their religion, or trying to assassinate the Pope? Has government of Sweden declared an anti-religious war against some of their neighbors, or against a part of their own population? I don't see anything like this happening. -- If you have better examples, please post them here.
A historical example of an officially atheist country attacking their neighbors would be Soviet Union. If you look at Russia today, the Communists seem happy to cooperate with Christians; together they oppress the sexual minorities and generally anyone who gets in the oligarchs' way. And I don't see LW supporting this behavior. It seems unlikely that Russia would attack someone in the name of atheism or rationality; they may use other excuses, though.
A big atheist country these days is China; they don't seem likely to expand soon; and I guess they wouldn't care about what LessWrong or anyone in the West says, anyway.
Here are the horrible things that militant atheists are likely to do to religious people; not necessarily all of them agree about all of the following: Teach their children evolutionary biology. Prevent "honor" killings and genital mutilation. Tax the religious organizations. Separate the church from the state. Make abortions legal (but voluntary, unless we speak about China). -- Feel free to add more examples.
Does this address your concerns?
If you are concerned about atheists outside of LW taking some parts of the LW attitude and ignoring the others... well, if someone is going to only take a half of it, and ignore the other half, they would probably ignore the "commitment to freedom" part, too. There are specific parts in Sequences about tribal politics, mindkilling, and affective spirals. I think it's obvious. And if someone is going to ignore that, they will probably ignore any additional text on the same topic.
I didn't catch why it was relevant to compare religion as an explainer on the hunting thing. I constantly was expecting for things mentioned in the title to be touched upon and they never were. This doesn't seem to be relevant as a sequence opener for the topic it claims to aim for. What you are talking about is possible exclusivity of serving two masters for those that are dually rationalist / religious. The link to the title is tedious at best. Also it might be that the exclusivity is largely read in by you. I tend to disagree. But then again I understand areligiousity a lot better than antireligiousness. Be sure that you are not falling for cargo culting rationalism for all it's awesomeness.
To that aim the danger should be described in more detail, the relevant mechanisms are not that obvious. Also it is very obscure how the positvely labeled thinking saves from this danger. The positive label seems to be something other than is traditonally attached to those particular keywords. You want rationalist always to think for themselfs instead of using their ideology (in social terms) to think for them?
This is intended to eventually be a Main post and part of sequences on free will and religion. It will be part of the Free Will sequence.
Please comment if you do or do not think this post is ready for Main. I intend to move it there eventually. As with any post at LessWrong, I'm completely open to criticism, but I hope it's directed at improving the quality of the thinking here rather than kneejerk opposition to my ideas.
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The main point of this post is that I intend to convince every rationalist here, and every causal reader, to commit to allowing others to have free will.
First a bit of background. I'm a conservative christian. Growing up I considered myself a rationalist. Now that I've known about Less Wrong for several years and have read the sequences, I no longer think I can classify myself that way <grin>. Nowdays I usually consider myself a pragmatist. "Being a rationalist" now carries with it a significant weight in my mind of formal Bayes Theorem and such that I've never had time to fully follow through and practice. I also have a little fear that completely committing to be Bayesian would eventually put a huge conflict between my faith and Bayesian reasoning - just a little fear. I've been reading Less Wrong for years now, they've all been resolve to my satisfaction. I also haven't simply because looking at the math that gets thrown around here in Bayes Theorem discussion seems like it would take too much time for me to understand, and I'm already very busy (and, being an engineer and not a math major, a bit intimidating).
The main reason I come here is because this community thinks about thinking, which so few people around me do. I crave that introspection that happens here, and so I'm drawn back to it. Not always often, but enough to generally stay abreast of what's going on. (I also have to admit to myself that I come back because you people are very smart, and I want you to think of me as smart too, and have your approval, but I try to keep that in check <grin>)
Now that I've been here (online only - no meetups yet) and learned with you over the years, another reason I stay here is because of the clear success of Evolutionary Psychology in predicting human behavior. The clearest example I've ever had is this:
My children and I love to chase each other around the house. It drives my wife crazy, especially when it happens right at bedtime. At some point after I read about evolutionary psychology, this chain of logic dawned on me: The natural genetic behavior that's successful gets reinforced over generations -> Things you love to do naturally are joyful to you -> You pass those things on to your children through play the way lions play hunt with cubs -> Human parents and children get true joy from chasing each other because their ancestors loved the hunt and were successful at it!
Now THAT was an eye opener! It was the answer to a question I'd never known I had, which was this. Why do children love to chase, and why do I love to chase them? Because their ancestors survived that way and it was passed to them genetically. I even like to playfully almost-catch-them-and-let-them-escape. I even playfully let them catch me, too. And we love it.
Religion has no answer to this question. Religion doesn't even know how to ask this question. But it flowed naturally out of Evolutionary Psychology just by my knowing that the concept existed! Powerful! Now, this post isn't really about religion so I won't go into why that doesn't break my faith. I'll handle that it other posts. The reason why I'm talking about it now is to get you to recognize that you are a tribal hunter by ancestry, even more fundamentally than you are the descendant of conquerors. And knowing that Politics Is The Mind Killer, you'll listen to this next part, and take it seriously.
Less Wrong rationalists are growing, and being recognized by the religious community. As militant Atheists. It's reported that this is a new thing among atheists, this new desire to spread atheist philosophies as strongly as any religion spreads it's beliefs. I've seen it in a couple places now, in about the last year.
I have a huge, scary concern for the future of our world. It's not atheism. And it's not religion. I fear future wars. As a military history enthusiast and a veteran I've learned a lot about war. A lot. And the principle is true that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Knowing that we are tribal animals I see aetheists as one tribe and religionists as another. Now that I see the of growth and success of LW I see a future pattern emerging in the United States:
Few atheists among overwhelming Christians -> shrinking Christianity, growing Atheism -> atheism tribalness growing well connected and strong -> Natural tribal impulse to not tolerate different voices -> war between atheists and Christians.
Don't try to say this won't happen, and that Rationalists will always allow other people to believe differently. Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Politics is the Mind Killer, and Eliezar' success in creating the LW and rationalist movement say otherwise. Now, today, the commitment to altruism seems like a solution, but it isn't. You all here are so very intelligent and you seriously look down on those of faith. I see it all over the place. It's a real blind spot that you can't see because it's inside your mental algorithms. Altruism is very easily perverted into forcing other people because you know what is best for them. It's not enough by itself. It needs something else attached.
Someday there will come a time when new leaders will come up trough the rationalist movement who don't have Eliezar's commitment to freedom. And power corrupts even good, compassionate people. So now I come to my request.
This principle needs to the rationalist movement. A guarantee of free will for others that disagree with you, EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG.
I know religions have not always had this either. Be better than the religions you despise. Recognize that they also are tribal animals trying to become civilized tribal animals.
I ask you personally to commit to making free will for all a part of your personal philosophy. And I ask you to formalize that as part of Less Wrong, the Rationalist community, and your evangelical aetheism. Plant the seed now so that is has time to grow. It is my fear that if you don't your children's children, and my childrens' children, will know a brutal war of philosophies unlike any we have ever seen.
In a future post I'll cover how religions are the empirically determined solution to problems that prevented civilization from arising, and how rationalism is the modern, more specifically planned version. And why religion is not evil like you think it is.
Sincerely,
Troshen