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?
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).
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 ... (read more)