A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."
You need a good story. That's all. A good story.
2 things come to my mind as examples:
The first one is about the past and comes from a novel called "Quo Vadis" which is about early christianity. There is a scene there where a roman guy searching a girl he wanted stumbles on a christians meeting and there was Peter retelling the story of Jesus. The power of his words as a living witness made the guy forget what he was looking for. Personal testimony is one huge attention grabber if is done right.
The second one is from Dune. Pardot Kynes, the planetologist, tells to the fremen the story of Arrakis could become and tells it so well that Uliet, the guy in charge of killing him chose to take his own life and with this self-sacrifice started the terraforming process.
So, what would a rational story be about? Health and Happiness sound like good bets. It should incorporate elements described by religious mysticism, stuff like Love, Joy, Strength, Peace, Trust, etc. It should position itself to the current effort to find common ground... like the Charter for Compassion. It should be about a long journey of discovering the power of love.
"What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
So, what would a rational story be about?
HPMOR is a good rational story.
Health and Happiness sound like good bets.
I think a rational story in which the protagonist uses CBT from The Feeling Good Handbook to become happy and end his depression, would be a good project.
I don't think it's an easy project but there a possibility for high impact. In case anybody feels the call for writing that story and wants help with getting the narrative right, I would be happy to do it as a joint project or just advice.
...It should incorporate elements described by
Not "rationality evangelism", which CFAR is doing already if I understand their mission. "Rational evangelism", which is what CFAR would do if they were Catholic missionaries.
If you believe in Hell, as many people very truly do, it is hard for Hell not to seem like the world's most important problem.
To some extent, proselytizing religions treat Hell with respect--they spend billions of dollars trying to save sinners, and the most devout often spend their lives preaching the Gospel (insert non-Christian variant).
But is Hell given enough respect? Every group meets with mixed success in solving its problems, but the problem of eternal suffering leaves little room for "mixed success". Even the most powerful religions are stuck in patterns that make the work of salvation very difficult indeed. And some seem willing to reduce their evangelism* for reasons that aren't especially convincing in the face of "nonbelievers are quite possibly going to burn, or at least be outside the presence of God, forever".
What if you were a rationalist who viewed Hell like certain Less Wrongers view the Singularity? (This belief would be hard to reconcile with rationalism generally, but for the sake of argument...) How would you tackle the problem of eternal suffering with the same passion we spend on probability theory and friendly AI?
I wrote a long thought experiment to better define the problem, involving a religion called "Normomism", but it was awkward. There are plenty of real religions whose members believe in Hell, or at least in a Heaven that many people aren't going to (also a terrible loss). Some have a stated mission of saving as many people as possible from a bad afterlife.
So where are they falling short?
If you were the Pope, or the Caliph, or the supreme dictator of some smaller religion, what tactics would you use to convince more people to do and believe exactly the things that would save them--whether that's faith or good works? Why haven't these tactics been tried already? Is there really much room for improvement?
Spreading the Word
This post isn't a dig at believers, though it does seem like many people don't act on their sincere belief in an eternal afterlife. (I don't mind when people try to convert me--at least they care!)
My main point: It's worth considering that people who believe in Very Bad Future Outcomes have been working to prevent those outcomes for thousands of years, and have stumbled upon formidable techniques for doing so.
I've thought for a while about rational evangelism, and it's surprisingly hard to come up with ways that people like Rick Warren and Jerry Lovett could improve their methodology. (Read Lovett's "contact me" paragraph for the part that really impressed me.)
We speak often of borrowing from religion, but these conversations mostly touch on social bonding, rather than what it means to spread ideas so important that the fate of the human race depends on them. ("Raising the Sanity Waterline" is a great start, but those ideas haven't been the focus of many recent posts.)
I'm not saying this is a perfect comparison. The rationalist war for the future won't be fought one soul at a time, and we won't save anyone with a deathbed confession.
But cryogenic freezing does exist. And on a more collective level, convincing the right people that the far future matters could be a coup on the level of Constantine's conversion.
CFAR is doing good things in the direction of rationality evangelism. How can the rest of us do more?
Living Like We Mean It
This movement is going places. But I fear we may spend too much time (at least proportionally) arguing amongst ourselves, when bringing others into the fold is a key piece of the puzzle. And if we’d like to expand the flock (or, more appropriately, the herd of cats), what can we learn from history’s most persuasive organizations?
I often pass up my chance to talk to people about something as simple as Givewell, let alone existential risk, and it's been a long time since I last name-dropped a Less Wrong technique. I don't think I'm alone in this.**
I've met plenty of Christians who exude the same optimism and conviviality as a Rick Warren or a Ned Flanders. These kinds of people are a major boon for the Christian religion. Even if most of us are introverts, what's stopping us from teaching ourselves to live the same way?
Still, I'm new here, and I could be wrong. What do you think?
* Text editor's giving me some trouble, but the link is here: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/evangelism-interfaith-world
** Peter Boghossian's Manual for Creating Atheists has lots to say about using rationality techniques in the course of daily life, and is well worth reading, though the author can be an asshole sometimes.