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It's very believable. I'll give a couple of techniques here.

Reinforce skeptical behavior while modifying their self-image to that of a truth-seeker: "I love talking to you because you pursue the truth over comforting lies". Be genuine, and by that I mean use the tone you would use to tell someone that their suit looks good.
Give high-status cues. Assume the role of teacher or mentor. Once they want to become more like you, merely expressing your beliefs (not opposing theirs, but expressing yours) will make a significant impact.
Demonstrate that giving up religious belief won't result in isolation. How exactly you do this will vary based on the social context.

There are a couple others, such as generating low-status associations with religion, which is a bit advanced and so not worth covering here, and creating false memories and comittments, which is scarily easy to do but absolutely dark arts and therefore not covered here.

You will note the absence of "rational argument" on this list. That's because rational argument is rather ineffective for changing the mind of the person you are arguing with (though it may change the views of observers).

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David_Gerard13y00

Really horrifyingly scarily easy. (Most of the comments thread.)

3Erebus13y

I have recently had the unpleasant experience of getting subjected to the kind of dishonest emotional manipulation that is recommended here. A (former) friend tried to convert me to his religion by using these tricks, and I can attest that they are effective if the person on the receiving end is trusting enough and doesn't realize that they are being manipulated. In my case the absence and avoidance of rational argument eventually led to the failure of the conversion attempt, but not before I had been inflicted severe emotional distress by a person I used to trust. Needless to say, I find it unpleasant that these kind of techniques are mentioned without also mentioning that they are indeed manipulative, dishonest and very easy to abuse.

2thelittledoctor13y

Does LessWrong have an actual primer on the Dark Arts anywhere? There's a lot of discussion of Defense Against, but I haven't seen any Practice Of... Perhaps that's beyond the scope of what we really intend to teach here?

See in context

26 The ethics of breaking belief

by thelittledoctor

8th May 2012

1 min read

126

26

I'm not sure if this is precisely the correct forum for this, but if there is a better place, I don't know what it would be. At any rate...

I'm a student a Catholic university, and there are (as one might surmise) quite a lot of Catholics here, along with assorted other theists (yes, even some in the biology faculty). For this reason, I find myself acquiring more and more devoutly Catholic friends, and some of them I have grown quite close to. But the God issue keeps coming up for one reason or another, which is a source of tension. And yet as I grow closer to these people, it becomes clearer and clearer that each theist has a certain personal sequence of Dark Arts-ish levers in eir head, the flipping (or un-flipping) of which would snap em out of faith.

So the question is this: in what situations (if any) is it ethical to push such buttons? We often say, here, that that which can be destroyed by the truth should be, but these are people who have built their lives around faith, people for whom the Church is their social support group. If it were possible to disillusion the whole world all at once, that'd be one thing - but in this case my options are limited to changing the minds of only the specific individuals I have spent time getting to know, and the direct result would be their alienation from the entire community in which they've been raised.

And yet it is the truth.

I'm conflicted. LessWrong, what is your opinion?

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26

The ethics of breaking belief

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[-]Shmi13y230

each theist has a certain personal sequence of Dark Arts-ish levers in eir head, the flipping (or un-flipping) of which would snap em out of faith.

This seems like an extremely strong statement and thus hardly believable. Many people would dearly love to discover such powerful secrets. Feel free to share an example or two.

[-]faul_sname13y180

It's very believable. I'll give a couple of techniques here.

Reinforce skeptical behavior while modifying their self-image to that of a truth-seeker: "I love talking to you because you pursue the truth over comforting lies". Be genuine, and by that I mean use the tone you would use to tell someone that their suit looks good.
Give high-status cues. Assume the role of teacher or mentor. Once they want to become more like you, merely expressing your beliefs (not opposing theirs, but expressing yours) will make a significant impact.
Demonstrate that giving up religious belief won't result in isolation. How exactly you do this will vary based on the social context.

5buybuydandavis13y

And what is your success rate using these conversion techniques?

8faul_sname13y

3 successes (that I know of) out of 1 attempted. I don't intentionally deconvert people, generally speaking.

[-]Shmi13y120

hmm, 300% success rate...

3Eugine_Nier13y

Did you succeed with the one you attempted?

3faul_sname13y

Yes. To be honest, I suspect I only hastened the process by a year or two though (also ended up giving a crash course in evolutionary bio and physics, which helped me understand both subjects much better).

3Erebus13y

2thelittledoctor13y

7Eugine_Nier13y

There are several started sequences, none of which got past their fist post.

[-]Normal_Anomaly13y290

So any given Practice of the Dark Arts teacher can only last for one term? :)

8faul_sname13y

The last of those 3 (mine), at least, is in the process of being developed. I'm still mostly focusing on reading the relevant literature. I have the rough draft of 3 posts, but since it looks like there will be 10 to 15 of them plus a large post of miscellaneous techniques of influence, I am not posting yet (I will probably reorganize before I post).

9Logos0113y

I would be interested in knowing what resources you used for this sequence. As an autist there is a huge swath of innate skills 'normal' people possess I can only emulate. Social success for me is indistinguishable from Dark Art skill.

3faul_sname13y

To start with, I would recommend (in the following order) Thinking Fast and Slow- Kahneman and Tversky Influence: Science and Practice - Cialdini How We Decide- Lehrer How to Win Friends and Influence People - Carnegie Nudge: Thaler and Sunstein Cialdini and Carnegie have a bad habit of not citing sources, so you may want to take any unsubstantiated claims with a grain of salt. This list is not comprehensive. If anyone else would like to add some recommendations for books or particularly informative studies, I would definitely appreciate it. In addition to reading, experience in dealing with people is very important for things like this. If you are not currently employed, I would recommend getting a job in sales. This will give you a chance to practice and experiment in a relatively safe environment. Additionally, I have heard that unusual behavior is more accepted in bars, so that might be worth looking into (I'm under 21 and live in America, so that is not really an option for me. As such, bear in mind that this is secondhand advice). Finally, if you are particularly skilled in some subject area, you may want to consider tutoring. In addition to bringing in money and helping someone else, this will allow you to experience being in a high-status situation. Once again, the list of recommended experiences is not comprehensive. I would welcome any additional suggestions.

1Logos0113y

* Adding \s\s before your \n will let you do newlines in Markup syntax. Thank you.

2David_Gerard13y

Both require powers, the second involves using them unethically.

1thelittledoctor13y

I look forward very much to seeing your sequence.

2David_Gerard13y

Discussion in the comments of this post, in which I perceived Luke as heartily recommending skinny-dipping in sewers for self-improvement purposes. "And then I swallowed this sample of engineered resistant mycobacterium tuberculosis, and I felt great! Not that you should do that or anything."

1Shmi13y

"each theist" is the part of the claim that is too strong, since it would include, among others, the Pope, Mother Teresa and Osama bin Ladin. I grant that some techniques do work on some theists (and atheists).

9faul_sname13y

True, if you want to be pedantic about it. In fact, they probably wouldn't work on most theists in high-status positions. Think about how often you hear about someone "finding God/Allah/Jesus" at a low point of their life when they feel themselves to be failures. Now consider how often someone high-status changes their beliefs.

2thelittledoctor13y

Didn't see this! You're right, that is quite a bit too strong. Let me reduce the strength of that statement: Among theists to whom I have become close enough to ask deeply personal questions and expect truthful answers, such levers seem prevalent.

0David_Gerard13y

Really horrifyingly scarily easy. (Most of the comments thread.)

[-]jimmy13y130

Here are several.

2Shmi13y

Interesting, the guy must be a very good hypnotist. I'm wondering if he can convert people, as well as deconvert?

6jimmy13y

It's my blog. I think I can for the large fraction of atheists that got there by social pressure alone (at least for a month or so), but people that actually understand why atheism is the right answer would be tougher. I'm curious if I could break them too, but that's way too evil for my tastes. The techniques don't cleave down the lines of good and evil epistemically - they cleave down the lines of good and evil instrumentally. It takes different tools to make someone worse off than it does to help them. If you want to make them better epistemically, then you get to use the fact that having good maps helps you get where you want to be.

3Shmi13y

Worse off by whose definition? Presumably, if you believed that conversion to Christianity makes one better off, you could use the same techniques (with a different set of arguments) to accomplish the goal.

0jimmy13y

Both, but the statement is stronger for their definition. My general approach to helping people is to clear out their fears and then let them reassemble the pieces as they see fit - sometimes suggesting possible solutions. This is more easily used to help people than to hurt them, since they are in full control of their actions and more of the game space is visible to them. I can fool them into thinking they’re helping themselves, but I’d have to include at least selective fear removal (though this can happen accidentally through your own biases!). In contrast, using leading questions and classical conditioning works equally well regardless of which direction you’re pushing.

1Shmi13y

Hmm, have been looking through your blog a bit more... I'm wondering if you can help people complaining about akrasia by making their second-order desires first-order ones?

3jimmy13y

Yep :)

4Shmi13y

Hmm, you would probably be great playing the jailed AI in an AI boxing experiment (can you beat [someone like] EY?), but how successful would you be playing the guard?

2jimmy13y

The AI box game still seems stacked against the AI roleplayer for any similar skill level. As the AI, I don't think I could beat someone like EY or myself on the other end, and as the gate keeper I think I would beat someone like EY or myself. I still wouldn't consider myself secure against even human takeover in general, especially if I'm not prepared for mental assault.

0Shmi13y

Would you know what to look for? Also, can you write an AI bot that would have a decent success rate against humans, by finding and exploiting the standard wetware bugs?

0jimmy13y

For the most part Not for any interesting opponent. I can't even write a 'real' chatbot. The only reason I get the results I do is because I immediately force them into a binary yes/no response and then make sure they keep saying yes .

1CAE_Jones11y

Something here feels off: I'd call the parent a pretty strong claim, effectively "I can cure akrasia (sorta) in the majority of people who ask". I would have expected someone to have tested this, and reported their results; if positive, I would have expected this to be the sort of thing I would have noticed much sooner than a year and two months later. (In fact, around the time this was posted, I had started reading LessWrong and I'd received an email entitled "Jim's hypnotherapy" that I ignored for some months). Basically, my first reaction to this was "Why ain't ya rich?" Having said that, I want to build up the courage to PM you for a test, if you're still doing so; if you're half as powerful as you claim, then of course I want to benefit from that. ;p (I've been reading your blog and wound up finding this because I typed "hypnotism" into the LW search box.)

1jimmy11y

I wouldn't quite say that. I meant "yes, akrasia is fixable in this way". Less "I'm a wizard!" and more "Yes, there's a solution, it looks like that, so have fun solving the puzzle" To make a personal claim of competence, I'd have to add some qualifiers. Maybe something like "I expect to be able to cure akrasia (sorta) in the majority of people that commit to solving it with me", which is a much stricter criteria than "asks". I'd also have to add the caveat that "curing" might, after reflectively equilibriating, end up with them realizing they don't want to work as hard as they thought - that's not my call and it wouldn't surprise me if a significant number of people went that way to some degree. I'm not sure if you mean within LW in particular. I haven't yet worked magic on any LWer in this context, but I did offer a couple times. If you're counting outside LW, hypnotherapists get results all the time - even "amazing" results. Some people are convinced, some people write it off in one way or another. It doesn't surprise me all that much given how people get with "skepticism" and not wanting to be made fool about hypnotism. Good question. The first part of the answer is that I have gotten a ton of value out of these skills, and only expect to gain more. The second part is that it's not magic. It's more of a martial art than a cheat code. Even when it appears to be magic, there's usually more going on in the background that made it possible. The toughest part is all the meta-level bullshit that people carry around about their problems which makes getting them into "lets solve this" mode the hard part. Once you get someone to congruently say "Yes, I'm going to be a good hypnotic subject and we're going to fix this", you've done 90% of the work - but everyone focuses on the last 10% which looks like magic and then wonders "why not sprinkle this magic pixie dust on everyone!?!". Also, getting "rich" - assuming you mean at a level more than charging a couple hundr

1Normal_Anomaly13y

Your link to your blog is down, but once its back up and if I find this claim plausible upon reading it, I would be very interested in trying this on myself. EDIT: read the blog, and it looks awesome.

0Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

You're welcome to try and break my atheism, but I'm saying that only because I'm reasonably darned sure you can't do that by any conversational means (so long as we're actually in a universe that doesn't have a God, of course, I'm not stating a blind belief known to me to be blind). Edit: oh, wait, didn't realize you were using actual hypnotism rather than conversation. Permission retracted; I don't know enough about how that works.

6jimmy13y

Agreed. The only way I’d see myself as having a fighting chance would be if you had a strong reason to go into hypnosis and you didn’t know my intentions. If the world really were at stake, I think I could help you with the red panda problem - though I still have fairly wide confidence intervals on how difficult that would be because I haven't tried something like this. I have yet to find a real life example where I’d encourage self deception and a surprisingly large fraction of problems go away when you remove the self deception. I have been having a lot of fun using hypnosis and techniques inspired by hypnosis to improve rationality - and successfully. I was a bit disappointed that you didn’t respond to my email offering to show what hypnosis says about training rationality. And now I’m a bit confused with the retraction because I had figured you had completely written me off as a crackpot. Will Ryan mentioned that you were skeptical of “this stuff”. Can you elaborate on what specifically you’re skeptical about and what kinds of evidence you’d like to see?

2Mitchell_Porter13y

I hope you don't think you are actually "giving amnesia" or doing anything other than roleplaying mind-controller and mind-controllee, in dialogues like these. Those teenagers are just playing along for their own reasons.

6jimmy13y

That hypothesis certainly isn't new to me. There's a lot of research on hypnotic amnesia. Here are a few showing differences between hypnotically suggested amnesia and faked amnesia. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/70/2/123/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2348012 http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/105/3/381/ The relationship between "actually giving amnesia" and "roleplaying amnesia" is fascinating, but not something I'm going to get into here.

7thelittledoctor13y

I certainly don't mean to say that I have any kind of fully-general way to convert theists. I mean rather to say that as you get closer to individual people, you find out what particular levers they have to flip and buttons they have to push, and that with sufficient familiarity the sequence of just-the-right-things-to-say-and-do becomes clear. But if you would like an example of what I'd say to a specific person (currently there are three to whom I know what I would say), I can do that. Let me know.

5Shmi13y

Yes, this sounds very intriguing. So, you have a model of their thinking good enough to predict how such conversation would go? Would you be willing to describe it here and then try it IRL (if you deem it appropriate) and report what happened?

[-]thelittledoctor13y180

I'm going to describe such a conversation (the first of what would, I think, be many) for a girl who I will call Jane, though that is not her name. Some background: Jane is a devout Catholic, an altar girl, a theology major, a performer of the singing-acting-dancing type, and one of the bubbliest people I know. She is also firmly against gay marriage, abortion, premarital sex, and consumption of alcohol or other drugs (though for some reason she has no problem with consumption of shellfish). You may have read the previous two sentences and thought "there's a lot of sexual repression going on there" and you would be quite correct, though she would never admit that. Here is what I would say and do. Don't take the wording too literally; I'm not that good.

tld: (At an appropriate moment) Jane, I have a very personal question for you.

J: Okay, shoot.

tld: It's about God.

J: Oh dear. I'm listening.

tld: So God exists. And he's up there, somewhere, shouting down that he loves us. But if tomorrow morning he suddenly vanished - just ceased to exist, packed up and left town, whatever - would you want to know?

J: I - uh - gosh. That would go against everything God's said, about how he wou... (read more)

[-][anonymous]13y220

This.. reads to me like a Chick tract more than anything else. I just don't believe J will be that easy to manipulate.

3thelittledoctor13y

What's unreasonable about Chick tracts, I think, is that strangers can't really walk up and manipulate you like that unless you're already in an extremely emotionally vulnerable state. It's easier if there's an established relationship.

[-]randallsquared13y200

Unless J is much, much less intelligent than you, or you've spent a lot of time planning different scenarios, it seems like any one of J's answers might well require too much thought for a quick response. For example,

tld: Well, God was there, and now he's left that world behind. So it's a world without God - what changes, what would be different about the world if God weren't in it?

J: I can't imagine a world without God in it.

Lots of theists might answer this in a much more specific fashion. "Well, I suppose the world would cease to exist, wouldn't it?", "Anything could happen, since God wouldn't be holding it together anymore!", or "People would all turn evil immediately, since God is the source of conscience." all seem like plausible responses. "I can't imagine a world without God in it" might literally be true, but even if it is, J's response might be something entirely different, or even something that isn't really even a response to the question (try writing down a real-life conversation some time, without cleaning it up into what was really meant. People you know probably very often say things that are both surprising and utterly pointless).

[-]moridinamael13y190

I didn't even go to Catholic school, but in the process of Confirmation I learned enough apologetics to deflect or reject or just willfully not understand most of these.

A Good Catholic will tell you that the universe could not exist without God, and/or that nothing good can exist without God, so if there were no God, there would either be no universe, or the universe would be hell.

It would sort of be like me trying to convince you quantum physics is wrong and starting out by saying, "Imagine a world without quantum physics." You have nothing with which to substitute quantum physics. Your mind returns a divide by zero error.

Additionally, religious folks in general tend to claim to believe that morality comes from God. And when they say this, they really truly mean that if there were no God, there would be no morality. That the fact that morality exists is a kind of proof that God exists. I am not making this up. I have been told by a religious person that, if they were to learn that God did not exist, they would immediately embark upon an orgy of murder and theft, because, "There would be no reason not to." They believe this about themselves despite the fact that we know it to be a misunderstanding of psychology. I am not saying all religious people have exactly this glitch, but I am trying to emphasize that your friend(s) probably don't have the cognitive algorithms in place to even comprehend these questions the way you mean them.

6prase13y

With respect to the fact that for most of its history humanity didn't know about quantum physics, as well as for larger part of my life I didn't know anything substantial about quantum physics without suffering any serious injury to my imagination, this would be quite easy. Just a nitpick, I mostly agree with the rest of your comment.

5Viliam_Bur13y

To avoid a typical mind fallacy, let's say that some people really have no non-supernatural reason to avoid murder and theft. But they are in a minority, so there is a high prior probability that the given religious person does not belong there. However, I would love to know that for the given nonzero subset of humanity that has no non-supernatural reason to avoid murder and theft, how effective religion really is at stopping them.

0AlexSchell13y

No, this is a perfect example of belief in belief without actual belief.

[-]Nisan13y130

Wow. You're, like, literally the Devil.

I mean that in a nonjudgmental way.

0David_Gerard13y

When I first read this, I thought "I could do that, that's easy! ... if I had no ethics whatsoever and didn't care about true from false."

[-]Eugine_Nier13y120

Just out of curiosity, do you have the obvious ulterior motive here?

[-]thelittledoctor13y140

Yes. Which is a very good reason for me not to trust my inclinations.

2Shmi13y

I certainly wouldn't be nearly as ethical in your place

0thelittledoctor13y

Just call me le Chevalier mal Fet.

2[anonymous]13y

Do you get his Noble Phantasm? "Knight of Honor" is potentially one of the most powerful hougu in Fate/Zero.

2thelittledoctor13y

I... Was not even aware that such a game existed; I was referring to The Once And Future King. But clicking through the wiki a little bit has me fascinated by the tangle of mythological references.

[-]RobertLumley13y100

I have two words for this: planning fallacy.

1thelittledoctor13y

This is a very valid point, but I'm less interested in whether such a plan is practical than in whether, assuming feasibility, it is ethical.

8Shmi13y

That's pretty good. Of course, there are a few places in this conversation where Jane might deviate from the script, but you know her and I don't. Were I devout enough, I'd say "It's a sin to even imagine the world without God" or "There is only one world, so no point imagining anything else", or "The Bible teaches us that ..." But maybe your gentle hand squeezes redirected the blood flow from her brain to other areas. Anyway, if you decide to go for it, I'm dying to know how it works out!

[-]Richard_Kennaway13y200

So am I. I predict a train wreck.

-1sevenlier13y

Obvious solution: Give her all the comments from here (or point her to your post here), saying it's you (I checked that your past posting offers no other reason for avoiding this). If your influence/friendship/etc with her is not destroyed by the truth, you may carry on. Dumbest line in your post: "though for some reason she has no problem with consumption of shellfish" ---------------------------------------- Go back and read Gwen in his experiment. Older posts suggest bias (http://lesswrong.com/lw/bs0/knowledge_value_knowledge_quality_domain/6db0), even ignoring complete stupidity of actual result. Gwern's been here a while. Gwern expresses potential martyrdom for LessWrongian principles (http://lesswrong.com/lw/c5f/case_study_testing_confirmation_bias/6hw2) to approbation, but then is shocked by even the mildest of pushback (http://lesswrong.com/lw/c5f/case_study_testing_confirmation_bias/6i9i), and reasons like an idiot. The legalistic parsing of "quoting" also moderately disgusting. Serious question: If Gwern had access to personal info on you in a professional capacity (e.g., private e-mails as Sys Admin or some such), would you trust him not to misuse it? (as you would define "misuse", and he might not) TLD, here is my conclusion to your story. J, after reading this exchange: How could he think that about me? I would never think that way about him. This really hurts (tearing up). Is this really what people think about me? All truthful, moreso than you. Your interaction with J should be humble, perhaps with a bit of self discovery: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/what-use-far-truth.html In any event, as appropriate punishments, I call your behavior Gwernian.

3thelittledoctor13y

Explicitly declaring "I am going to try to convert you" to any of these people would definitely eliminate or minimize all potential avenues of influence, and I do not think I am nearly subtle enough to work around that. Still, if I understand what you're saying correctly, it's more an issue of informed consent of study participants than of letting people decide whether they want their buttons pushed. Is that an accurate understanding of your perspective?

1eightlier13y

Not really, although it's a more careful reading than I expected. I think that would be a distinction without a difference. No, as with Gwern, I think the main issue here is you. What sort of person is Gwern training himself to be? Like Gwern, you act like you're conducting a study on someone, but it's really just two people talking. Pretend, for a moment, the other person is actually much smarter than you and conducting a test of the exact same principle you are testing. In Gwern's case, that leads to a much more interesting interpretation of the incident, since he's clearly horribly biased (the test really does have a result). In your case, you're not at all truth-seeking. I would advise you seek to truth in your relationship with J first (either by self-modification or greater honesty of the unmodified) Here's my frivolous question: How old are you and how old is J? (you can make it approximate if you think it would reveal personal info).

0thelittledoctor13y

Both twenty-one. But that is a less useful statistic than emotional maturity, which I think is what you're getting at, so I should note that there is a definite discrepancy in terms of how well we handle feelings - I have a great deal more emotional control than does she. So despite being the same age, there is a power imbalance in a sense similar to the one you're asking about. Of the two undescribed parties, one is older than me (22) and one is younger (19). Actually, I don't quite have to pretend that the other parties are attempting manipulation in the other direction; they've all been fairly transparent in their attempts (albeit with varying degrees of persistence; of the three, J sits in the middle in terms of time spent attempting to convert me).

-1eightlier13y

No, the pretense is not that they're trying to manipulate you in the other direction, but that they're manipulating your manipulation. That is, Gwern was being tested on his fairness as a experimenter of fairness. You are being tested on your truth-seeking as an experimenter in truth-seeking. Of course, you are, just not by J. I had two reasons for asking about age (you're right on one). Your narrative sounded pretty juvenile even in its self-description. I was hoping that was true (for both your sakes). Here's another game for you to play: Your brain learns whereof you know not. What general rules is it learning as you interact with J? Someday, if you're luck enough, you can plan on being quite slow. The virtues you currently rely on (roughly: quick-witted) will have left you. You should be investing as quickly as you can in cultivating other personal virtues. Don't plan on the world changing enough that that can be avoided. I can't seem to avoid a patronizing attitude (bad sign for me, similarly: I'm out).

7[anonymous]13y

Is there a reason you're spawning a horde of sockpuppets?

-2ninelier13y

Not really. I listed some reasons elsewhere, but they're pretty arbitrary (which was more or less the point). Also, not sockpuppets in the conventional sense since clearly not disguised and I will never count backwards.

8Emile13y

Then please stop; this gives you the power to vote ten times on the same post, and whether or not you use that power, it damages trust in the karma system.

-8tenlier13y

1thelittledoctor13y

You make an interesting point. To be sure I've understood: Behave in a more truth-seeking manner in general, because if I do so I will be a more truth-seeking person in the future from force of habit, and if I do not do so then I will be less of one? If the force of habit is really so potent in cases like this then it's a very convincing argument; I wouldn't want to give up the ability to be rational just to be a tiny bit better at manipulation.

6ninelier13y

Yup. I think "force of habit" undersells it, except to the extent you are a collection of habits. Plus trying to encourage truth-seeking as opposed to truth-labeling as a goal. That is, the phrase you like is "We often say, here, that that which can be destroyed by the truth should be" But you're not destroying her belief by the truth, you're destroying a belief and replacing it with the truth (ish). At least, as you describe yourself. Other stuff (that is, I think this is one of dozens of arguments for why this way of thinking is foolish: more interesting to me is the degree to which the sensible upvoted comments on this page - be nicer and more respectful - lack explication or mechanism).

0thelittledoctor13y

Okay. Thank you very much for your insight; I do appreciate it.

1thelittledoctor13y

Absolutely, contingent on being able to convince myself it's ethical to do so. Give me a moment to do some typing and I'll outline how I think one such conversation sequence would go.

6MinibearRex13y

I just caught myself rationalizing ways to prove that deconverting them would be the right thing, so that I could see the results of this experiment.

4thelittledoctor13y

I caught myself doing more or less the same thing (but for substantially eviller reasons), which is why I asked LW in the first place.

0Nisan13y

thelittledoctor is making no small claim here, but such sequences of levers do exist and have dispelled several people's faith.

3Shmi13y

Does your link to the Sequences imply that you consider them all Dark Arts?

5MinibearRex13y

I don't personally think the Sequences count as Dark Arts, since I don't think EY was trying to employ them. At the same time, they were written by someone who very definitely assumed the social role of the wise and informed guru, who used humor, and all sorts of excellent rhetorical principles to make his points as persuasive as possible. If someone were to deliberately use those techniques in order to persuade someone of something because rational reasons wouldn't work, then I would call it Dark Arts.

[-]Bart11913y210

I think you (and most commenters) are treating this hypothetical believer in a rather disrespectful and patronizing fashion. I would think the ethical thing to do is to engage in a meta-discussion with such a person and see whether there are certain subjects that are off limits, how they feel about your differing views on God, how they would feel about losing their faith, etc. They might ask you similar questions about what might make you become a believer. You might find yourself incorrect about what might make them lose their belief.

It's certainly possible to remain in a religious community without one's faith intact -- I think it happens to a large percentage of people in any religious group. Consider all the European Catholics who are essentially atheists.

[-]thelittledoctor13y100

In fact I have attempted such meta-discussion. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get a straight answer to questions like that; people will almost always CLAIM to care about the truth, but that's also what they would claim if they merely thought they cared and didn't reflect enough on it to know otherwise.

The possibility that I am incorrect about what would make them lose their belief is a very real one; I used to think that merely repeating the things that broke MY faith in God would work on everyone, and that was clearly wrong. Still, I'd give p>.33 for success, and thus expect it to work on at least one of the three people I'm writing about.

-1othercriteria13y

The following point is of interest primarily to the OP and is orthogonal to the OP's question. You should maybe spend some time looking at the foundation of your rationality, as this statement rings some alarm bells. Probability estimates should be numbers, not ranges, unless you're doing something nonstandard. I can understand saying something like "I don't want to commit to saying anything about the probability of event A beyond 0.25 < P(A) < 0.3 because I don't trust my brain's probability-assigning hardware/software". But your range is really wide, and includes probability 1! I don't think you believe that you are certain that you can convert people, so it looks like you are not clearly reporting your probability judgment. I'm addressing this in your comment, which I've ignored in a lot of other comments, because it looks like you're doing this towards a self-serving end. The conclusion you're reaching for is that you'll convert someone, so you claim a lower bound for your probability estimate that let's you assert this. (Incidentally, a conversion probability of 33% gives you a (1 - 0.33)^3 = 30% probability of converting none of the three people.)

3prase13y

What does "essentially" mean here? Out of all European Catholics I know none I would call an essential atheist. On the other hand, I know at least one essentially atheistic European Protestant.

6Bart11913y

58% of French people consider themselves Catholic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France 34% of French people assent to: "I believe there is a God". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe Of course, there are methodological issues and this doesn't prove the matter definitively, but it certain suggests that a lot of French people are "cultural Catholics" the way we have "cultural Jews" in the US.

-1prase13y

Well, originally you have written "all European Catholics". I don't dispute the existence of cultural Catholics.

7CuSithBell13y

I think that "Consider all the European Catholics who are essentially atheists" should be read as "Consider all the {European Catholics who are essentially atheists}", not "Consider {all the European Catholics}, (who are essentially atheists)".

2Bart11913y

Like CuSithBell, I'll plead the restrictive relative clause interpretation, bolstered by the absence of a comma. I'll also plead common sense as an ambiguity resolution tool. And not only do we have the existence of cultural Catholics, we've got as our first estimate a minimum (if every God-believing French person were a Catholic) of 41% of Catholics who don't subscribe to a vital church teaching.

4prase13y

I apologise for misinterpretation, then. The intended reading didn't occur to me.

2Shmi13y

I venture to guess that it is nearly impossible for a devout person to even imagine how they would feel if they no longer needed God to guide them in everything, so there is only so much you can achieve from this meta-discussion. It is probably worse than learning that you live in the matrix. I mean, they think they can imagine it, but the actual experience once it happens will be nothing like what they would have imagined before deconversion.

5Bart11913y

I think atheists sometimes have a one-dimensional extreme view of believers. I never was a believer really (though I tried to be a Quaker for a while). I am a Unitarian-Universalist for social reasons (one joking definition of UUs is "atheists with children" -- and I'd encourage atheists to consider if it might meet their needs). Believers know very well that there have been no unambiguous miracles lately, that really horrible things happen in the world despite a presumably benevolent God, and that the evidence for God is indirect. I think very few lie on their deathbeds with unalloyed peace and calm with the absolute conviction that they're going to heaven. They are also well aware that different factions even within Christianity reach different conclusions about what God wants them to do. There's a reason that religious communities are always dealing with doubters and speak of the need for having faith (despite a dearth of evidence), and understand that faith gets weaker and stronger. I think most have thought about losing their faith and what it would mean. I don't have any statistics to quote, but I bet the majority of believers have views that are nuanced at least to this degree.

[-]prase13y200

Be honest (i.e. don't pretend to believe what you don't believe), don't be rude, don't be obnoxious and apart from that don't think too much about it. There will be both positive and negative consequences of whatever you tell the believers, the extent thereof you could hardly predict. If they want to discuss religion with a skeptic, let them take the responsibility to do so. If they don't, respect their choice.

[-]Nisan13y130

Some ethically relevant questions you could ask yourself:

If you deconvert your friend, do you predict they'll thank you for it afterward or express regret at losing their faith?
Would you approve of your more adept friends pushing analogous levers in your own head? (For example, I welcome people to cause me to doubt my preconceptions, but I don't want people to use my fears to manipulate me.)

6Alejandro113y

I don't see the first question as particularly relevant. Suppose the prediction is that after deconverting they will be grateful, what would that prove? (Cf. the Gandhi murder pill example: Killer!Gandhi is happy that he took the pill.) The second question is a better one, and I like the distinction you make for your case. Generalizing, I'd say it is ok for thelittledoctor to give rational arguments against their friends' beliefs (as long as he or she does not do it in a pushy, obnoxious way, but when the topic arises naturally) but not to use "Dark Artish-levers".

0thelittledoctor13y

The first question is a difficult one to answer - more specifically, a very difficult one to get a theist to answer genuinely rather than just as signalling. I would approve of more-adept friends pushing analogous levers in my own head (emphasis 'friends' - I want them to be well-intentioned), but I am weird enough to make me wary of generalizing based on my own preferences.

[-]TCB13y110

It really depends on your own personal moral system (assuming ethical relativism). In order to answer your question, I would need to know what you consider moral. I'll attempt to infer your morals from your post, and then I'll try to answer your question accordingly.

It sounds from your post like you're torn between two alternatives, both of which you consider moral, but which are mutually exclusive. On one hand, it seems that you're morally devoted to the causes of atheism and truth-seeking; thus, you desire to convert others to this cause. But on the other hand, you're morally devoted to your friends' happiness, and you realize that if they do become atheists, then they will lose their social grounding (not to mention the emotional benefits they receive from being religious).

It sounds like you're very devoted to truth-seeking, and that you believe atheism to be the truth. (Side-note: as a Bayesian, I distrust anyone who claims to know "the truth". The point of Bayesianism is that we don't know the truth; all we have are probabilities, and thus we can approach the truth but never attain it.) Anyway, given your devotion to truth-seeking, I would expect you to want t... (read more)

[-]Viliam_Bur13y120

If you deconvert your friends using Dark Arts-ish methods, but you don't teach them the virtues of truth-seeking, then atheism will become just another religion to them, handed down by new authority figures.

Exactly this. Let's do something better than just authority figures walking around, each one trying to convert people by Dark Arts. Try to find something that is above "my faith vs. your faith".

What I usually do is express that although I consider all religions elaborate fairy tales, in my opinion there is no big harm in believing anything, as far as the religion does not make one do crazy things, such as murdering people who disagree with them. Therefore I don't even try to convert people. (I just make it obvious that their attempts to convert me are futile. If necessary, I listen to their arguments, and they just say that they don't seem very impressive to me.)

For an average person, being religious is really not a big cost; there are probably other things in their life which harm them more. For example, the greatest cost in my opinion, wasting one's Sundays in church, is comparable by wasting time procrastinating online. Limitations in sexual life because of faith... (read more)

3thelittledoctor13y

You're absolutely right that my primary motivation is simply that I WANT to do it. But ethical reasoning is about what is right in spite of my preferences, is it not? So the question of truth-versus-negative-consequences remains an important one. Your point about truth-seeking versus atheism as a religion is a very good one. I do generally think that converting atheists to truth-seekers is easier than converting Catholics to truth-seekers, but I had not considered the possibility that I might, rather than failing entirely (which is not unlikely), fail at the halfway point and end up with atheist zealots for friends, which would DEFINITELY create more problems than it would solve. That was a very thoughtful piece of advice. Thank you.

2TCB13y

Aha! I think I was misreading your post, then; I assumed you were presenting truth-seeking as a reason why you wanted your friends to be atheists, as well as a reason why converting them would be moral. Sorry for assuming you didn't know your own motivations!

[-]thelittledoctor13y100

Heavens, no. I want my friends to be atheists for purely selfish reasons. It so happens that some of those selfish reasons involve things like "I want my friends to know what's true", but most of them are reasons like "I want this awkward piece of the relationship gone" and "It's a shame none of you believe in casual premarital sex, because I could really go for an orgy right now" and "If I have to hear you talk about how wrong gay marriage is ONE MORE TIME I do declare I shall explode."

In other words, I really do not trust my personal desires as an ethical system, because in a vacuum I'm a pretty unmitigated asshole.

1Alicorn13y

I am stealing this clause.

1thelittledoctor13y

If it shows up in Elcenia, I do declare I shall explode from pure joy.

0[anonymous]13y

VOLTORB used Selfdestruct!

0Shmi13y

Magically animated arhgeba obzo? (rot13)

[-]thomblake13y30

The "Dark Arts-ish levers" are what make this situation interesting. If it were merely a matter of telling the truth, virtually every ethical theory would come out in favor of telling the truth. But having access to such levers is "Here, let me make this choice for you" and that puts you in murky ethical territory.

Some conditional answers from various points of view:

If pulling the lever makes the world rank higher according to your preferences, then pull it.

If both you and they would be better off if you pulled the lever, then pull it... (read more)

2Shmi13y

Please describe a situation where one definitely and unambiguously should not "pull the lever".

[-]thomblake13y110

If the lever, aside from being a metaphorical lever, is also attached to a very large nuclear explosive.

2asr13y

If afterwards, the person will feel manipulated and violated, and become angry, and break off the friendship, (even if they stay atheist), pulling the lever would be a bad choice.

1Shmi13y

I would not call it unambiguous. They might come around after awhile and thank you.

0thelittledoctor13y

Even if it were just a matter of telling the truth, I don't think it would be ethically unambiguous. The more general question is whether the value of increasing some person's net-true-beliefs stat outweighs the corresponding decrease in that person's ability-to-fit-comfortably-in-theist-society stat. In other words I am questioning WHETHER they would be better off, not which conditional I should thereafter follow.

1thomblake13y

Yes, if all you care about is whether they would be better off, then it's merely an empirical question. Normally that's the end of the conversation for a philosopher, but I shall go on. Based on nothing, I'd say they'd be better off. They should just find a new atheist society. With blackjack and hookers.

0thelittledoctor13y

Not quite the advice I was hoping for, but thank you for your honesty.

[-]quentin13y20

This is something I think about a lot. We all know pure rhetoric is never going to deconvert someone, but a combination of "dark arts", emotional vulnerability, and personal connection seems a likely recipe.

A quick summation of how I feel about religiosity: I hate the belief, but love the believer. I went through a long and painful deconversion process, so I can empathize with them. I know that religious people struggle with doubt and are probably terrified by the prospect of losing their faith. I've had the chance to go for the throat (so to sp... (read more)

[-]Desrtopa13y20

And yet as I grow closer to these people, it becomes clearer and clearer that each theist has a certain personal sequence of Dark Arts-ish levers in eir head, the flipping (or un-flipping) of which would snap em out of faith.

Have you tried this? I've talked a number of people out of theism before, but even after observing and following deconversion extensively, I could never manage, nor would I expect, to be able to change the beliefs of most theists, using any of the persuasive techniques available to me.

[-][anonymous]13y20

You can't change everyone's minds. You won't, in all probability, manage to do so, even if you try. You will, of course, alienate yourself to everyone you try and fail with. If someone wants to discuss faith in a genuine way, it seems reasonable to argue with them. But I don't see the benefit in evangelising at people.

[-]RolfAndreassen13y20

I am perhaps less optimistic than you on the probability that you can really deconvert theists by "unflipping DA levers in their heads"; but I'm positively absolutist on the desirability of doing so. The Dark Side is called 'Dark' for a reason. Where you see it operating, you have a positive moral duty to fight it if you can.

4Alejandro113y

I think you misunderstood: as I interpreted thelittledoctor, the DA levers are subtly manipulative techniques that he or she could use to deconvert people, like the examples faul gives here.

[-]nastav13y10

I can think of one situation where pulling the levers would be more 'good' than 'bad'.

Estimate each of their future influence on others - both span and depth. If you consider it 'high', then pull the lever. If you consider it 'low' (which might further correlate with lower IQ), then (tentatively) hold off.

[-]fubarobfusco13y10

One concern is whether the newly-minted atheist will subsequently prove to emself that black is white, and be killed in the next zebra crossing, as Douglas Adams put it.

For instance, if Alice is so taken with her newfound freedom from faith that she boasts loudly about it and gets herself disowned, expelled, and otherwise disadvantaged, that would kind of suck.

0albeola13y

You wouldn't be killed, you'd just fail to cross the street.

0RolfAndreassen13y

I really don't see why. A zebra crossing is a sequence of black and white stripes. Exchanging the colours just means you start with white instead of black, or vice-versa. It's the stripiness that's important, not the ordering.

3albeola13y

I was assuming you'd see both colors as the same. Then a zebra crossing would just look like an ordinary stretch of road. That wouldn't kill you. What would kill you is to see an ordinary stretch of road as a zebra crossing. If that were to happen, though, it definitely wouldn't be at the next zebra crossing.

[-]SlyClaw13y00

(I'm writing this before reading the comments) I to have a similar situation ,with my peers(public school though).

It sounds like you're going for a snap sort of break if it really seems the way to you I'd recommended finding which peers have been through social trauma first and 'break' them.

I'm attempting to 'break' my younger sister (who is the only one in her house who regularly attends church) and I'm succeeding. But, I'm going slowly and i intend to let her finally decided after being brought to the edge.

0SlyClaw13y

After snapping(in junior high when i realized that i wasn't suppose to believe in evolution) i spiraled in to a depression/i don't care sort of phase before learn a bout A.I and cryogenics. i snapped by overhearing a girl say she didn't want to learn this(we were in earth sci.) because she didn't believe it. At that point i had no close friends whom i knew to be atheist and felt outside.

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