You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

orthonormal comments on How can people be actually converted? - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: yttrium 05 February 2012 10:13PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (94)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: taelor 06 February 2012 03:38:34AM 37 points [-]

In other words, people will only convert for precisely the wrong reasons.

Comment author: orthonormal 06 February 2012 04:22:19PM 6 points [-]

People already have plenty of evidence; they just need a social reason to change their filter.

What I'd say is different between conversions and de-conversions is that the social incentive for religious conversion often takes the form of peer pressure or wanting to belong to a particular group, while de-conversion seems to just require evidence that you won't be completely cut off from good/cool/interesting people if you turn atheist.

I should say that the main evidence I have here is my own history (one data point in each set) as well as a few observed de-conversions in my friends (and one aborted de-conversion from a person who couldn't imagine letting go of his devout family and friends). And I've known people who converted (before I met them) to religion for reasons that sounded more like an innate yearning for deontology.