= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
philh comments on The Value (and Danger) of Ritual - LessWrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (68)
I like the idea of having rituals, if only because they're fun. Primates saying things together is awesome, and primates saying things about things I think are cool together sounds even more awesome.
However, I also agree that it's possible for this to go horribly wrong.
What does it going horribly wrong look like? What failsafes can we put in place? I think it would be helpful to have some "if you're doing this, something went wrong" heuristics so that we can notice ahead of time that something undesirable is happening, and stop it.
For instance, if we're ever sacrificing virgins, I think we messed up somewhere and should probably stop.
A possible danger with this is that we think, "oh, we can't sacrifice virgins, that's on the List Of Bad Things, let's sacrifice grandmothers instead". The fact that there is a list might encourage us to think the list is exhaustive. (Here "think" means "think/reason subconsciously/act like/whatever".)
Perhaps we could help avoid this with ritual-moderators who examine rituals for signs that things have gone horribly wrong, but explicitly without advising the ritual-smiths in the process of constructing them. If you can't avoid the moderator's List Of Bad Things without being told what's on it, you also can't avoid the list of Bad Things That The Moderator Didn't Think Of.
The Rationalist Confessor is not allowed to partake in ritual.... :)
Which sounds like a ritualistic tradition of its own.
I wouldn't call that "ritual", but I would call it deliberate community building along a similar axis.
It is probably a good idea to include space for a "devil's advocate" inside the ritual, rather than having them somehow sit out (without ritualistically turning their back, or NOT turning their back, or ritualistically considering the issue and Making their Own Decision? How is this even possible?) or sing "la la la I can't hear this" the entire time.