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wedrifid comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion
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"People not in my tribe are sexy and cool. I want to be like and/or mate with those people. I believe I have a sufficient chance of successfully joining and gaining status within the tribe with sexy and cool people in it. I will now change my signalling beliefs."
I'm pretty sure that at least some theists are sincere, rather than using belief-as-attire.
Most people are usually sincere and it remains the case that the most significant influence on most people's core ideological beliefs are social factors. That's how people work, for better or worse.
We can carry belief-as-attire slightly further and suggest that the totally sincere and unfaked embarrassment someone might feel about being caught pantsless in public is still governed by social factors. Your belief can functionally be attire without you recognizing it, much in the same way that someone in a suit just seems "well-dressed" even though they're not better dressed in an objective sense than say, someone in a traditional robe or animal skins.
This doesn't raise the sanity waterline at all. Unless the person is part of a very dangerous Jim Jones style of religion, what's the point?
Yes it does. I think you need to read it again a couple of times and maybe a few OvercomingBias posts.
It makes no difference to the point whether the religion is dangerous, admirable or even the literally correct and the path to eternal bliss. Thoughts about tribal affiliations typically matter more than abstract reasoning when it comes to this kind of belief.
Maybe I misunderstood. It sounded like you were suggesting that theists be baited with a honeypot (mate or group) that they'd like to be attractive to. The pressure to be liked would cause them to abandon their beliefs. I'm not saying this can't work, but it's a transformational pressure that works equally well in both directions. The person isn't better informed at the end of it, they're just trying to fit in with a group that happens to be more accurate.
(If atheism highly correlated with sexiness, maybe this would pull more people out of religion than in, but, in fact, religions are better at being organized into tribes with status anyway)
But, I think, given your response, that I've misread you. Can you correct me?
It'd work, sure. Doesn't sound like a good use of my time.
Your statements have the implied premise that having true beliefs raises the sanity line even if the process of reaching those beliefs is not correlated with the correctness of the beliefs.
I prefer "raising the sanity line" to refer to increased usage of processes correlated with creating correct beliefs. Your hostile reaction to this understanding doesn't exactly advance the ball on figuring out how to actually achieve either goal.
I didn't use that premise. But I suppose it could be true anyway.
Given the context, I understood you to be saying that way to persuade theists was to demonstrate that atheists have higher social status. Regardless of the sociological truth of that assertion, we both know that "high-status" is not correlated with "correct beliefs."
Did I misunderstand you?
I said something kind of similar to that so I'll accept it for the sake of the argument without implying any endorsement of the claim.
I actually doubt this is true, that is there probably is such a correlation---the world is unfair like that. But putting that aside even if I assume the claims you make in the parent are true it still doesn't mean I had any particular premise (or conclusion) about the sanity line.
I think you resolved the ambiguous 'this' in palladias's comment in a different direction.
Yeah, but probably it's a very weak one.