This makes sense, and isn't the sort of thing I would necessarily think of on my own. We will see if this leads to higher quality of life; I'm eager to try the experiment!

As for the obviousness, for every person who writes this sort of thing off as trivial, someone else may well benefit. We shall see.

As far as CFAR goes read http://rationality.org/hiring/.

For MIRI there's https://intelligence.org/careers/

Not sure if this is the right place for this; if not I will be happy to move this to a more appropriate location. I just graduated college, and plan on working for a year as a math tutor. After that, I don't really have any fixed plans, and lately I have been wondering about possibly trying to work for MIRI/CFAR/similar organizations. What exactly is needed to get involved? And if this appears feasible, what should I be working on during the gap year to be ready?

Hmmm. The fear of hell is a tough one: as I said above, I'd largely dealt with that fear before "leaving the fold." I suppose you somehow need to train your System 1 - to reprogram yourself, to experience that you have nothing to fear. For me, this happened over time as I gradually got more comfortable with increasing degrees of irreligion. Some other suggestions follow.

Hell and other people

For instance, it may help to think about the many non-Christians of superlative moral character. I mean, even the medieval Christians called Socrates a "Christian before Christ" - in other words, they thought so highly of Socrates that they could not really imagine him going to hell. Similarly, the more you think of really excellent, though still flawed, humans, it may become more difficult to picture a just and fair outcome where they suffer forever. It just doesn't make moral sense. And really feeling that moral impossibility as applied to non-Christians might help give you confidence that all non-Christians do not go straight to hell. (of course, much Christian teaching aims to establish precisely such a gap between apparent and "actual" moral deserts)

Fears and Experience

If you have multiple fears, perhaps you could enumerate each of them to yourself. Churches tend to bundle together charity, social events, counseling, and parenting and marriage advice, and so a "relationship with God" is supposed to ensure all of that, and deconversion may seem to threaten all of that. For me, becoming friends with more and more perfectly well-adjusted and strong individuals who had always been secular helped disprove the notion that a good life falls apart without religious belief.

Or, to give another example, some Baptists teach that alcohol is a sure road to ruin (really) - only experience gets rid of this fear. Take a drink, feel that you're fine in the short- and long-term, and you feel better about rejecting that moral teaching.

Conscience is the voice of the community

In the Christian world, what you believe determines who you go to church with, and thus with whom you're friends. Scott Alexander talks about Red and Blue tribes, pointing out that secular political beliefs also determine who you're friends with. (I find this idea similar to Robin Hanson's "beliefs as clothing" idea - change your ideas, change your uniform, change sides) So this isn't a religious phenomenon only, but it was just more obvious growing up. As a result, the social aspects of religious belief change can be even more obvious and pressing than other sorts of belief change. That's all a roundabout way of saying fear of hell may be related to fear of coming out to friends and family, and thinking about how to handle the latter if you were to deconvert may help your fear fear of hell.

Finally, I forget which writer commented that Enlightenment Europe didn't think religion could become a non-issue; it seemed it was one of the "eternal questions." But in fact Europe's over that now, and despite the social prevalence of religion in the States, in any professional circles I've ever been in, religion simply can't be mentioned. For us individuals also, religion can simply fade into our rearview mirror. Except for this comment, I don't think about or miss Christianity anymore. I don't experience tension that "it might be true," as some undecidable and imposing question. It's a rather boring topic. Now I spend my mental energy not on reconciling abstruse and dusty doctrines, but on learning actually useful things (there is so much knowledge left to create!). You only need to deconvert once.

Which fears can you deal with by living through others, and which through direct experience? That might be a path forward. Good luck!

Let's see. First off, let's consider the problem as thoroughly as possible without proposing solutions. Harry is surrounded by Death Eaters with orders to fire should he move, speak in any language other than Parseltongue (and probably if he makes any sound other than a hiss), raise his wand, and presumably if he does anything else suspicious (such as casting a visible spell without raising his wand or speaking an incantation). Lord Voldemort will presumably order his death (and likely shoot at him) if he does not appear to be complying with the instructions to tell the Dark Lord as many secrets as possible.

Therefore, he needs a countermeasure that can be used without giving any sign until it's too late, or a way to convince the Dark Lord of his cooperation, either to the point of making his continued survival valuable to Riddle Sr., or to the point of buying enough time to use a countermeasure.

Cooperating, or at least plausibly faking cooperation should be fairly simple. He can explain his understanding of Dementors, telling Voldemort that his desire to keep it secret was to prevent an infohazard to conventional Patronus casters; as Voldemort is not one such he will not be harmed by the information. He can explain partial transfiguration-it's not likely a difficult concept for the Dark Lord to grasp, but it seems to be one he hasn't thought of. Buying time is not a problem.

More difficult is what to do while/after buying time. He either needs that countermeasure, or else a way to convince Lord Voldemort that he is worth more alive than dead. As Voldemort fears existential risk greatly, the main way to convince him would be to point out that Harry is not the only source of x-risk, and that he very well may now be a means of reducing it. Prophecies are spoken to those with the power to fulfill or avert them, the "tear apart the very stars in the heavens" prophecy was spoken to Voldemort, suggesting that he might be able to alter the future, and may well have already done so (resurrecting Hermione, binding Harry with the Vow). As such, Harry is no longer necessarily a universal threat. Furthermore, he's not THAT special. He's highly intelligent and a wizard; that's about the sum total of his unusual powers, and it's hardly that rare of a combination (rare enough that we've only heard of one/two Riddle-level intelligent wizards in the story, but if Voldemort plans to live forever, another one will surely arise in the absence of dire action taken to prevent it and/or a catastrophe).

As such, if Harry could have destroyed the stars, another wizard will likely emerge as a threat to do exactly that. For that matter, depending on the method of stellar annihilation, it might be possible for a Muggle to accomplish this as well, or for Muggle actions to end the world as we know it (nuclear weapons, anyone?). Therefore, Lord Voldemort must either drastically repress Mankind to reduce x-risk (and this seems likely to be deadly dull for him, consider his horrified reaction to the possibility of spending his eternity in a dead world-he may not care about humanity the way a normal person does, but he finds us amusing enough to be worth preserving to some extent; also consider that he valued having an equal/near equal enough to make a copy of himself and dragged out his war with Dumbledore far beyond the point he could have easily beaten him, so suppressing intelligence and creativity for fear of their misuse is likely to be repugnant to Voldemort), be destroyed/spend eternity in a dead world, or find an intelligent solution to avert x-risk without taking drastic actions that make the world boring. The last of these options is the only one that Lord Voldemort seems likely to consider acceptable, and Harry might be a useful asset in finding a solution.

Alternatively, he could point out that the prophecy might refer to some form of apotheosis, rather than calamity. Tearing apart the stars for energy/to prevent the loss of negentropy, which seems like a reasonable post-singularity plan. Voldemort is unlikely to want to take the risk, but both of these arguments together might sway him, or at least buy more time. Of course, this may well require hearing the prophecy to learn enough details to craft a convincing argument, but the incident with Firenze might give Harry enough information to start without learning any more from Voldemort.

This might at least avert Harry's immediate death, and thus is one potential solution to Eliezer's challenge. The other option is to find a countermeasure.

The Boy-Who-Lived is naked save for his wand and glasses. Preempting/evading/deterring the Death Eater's curses seems impossible without magic, with suggests that a countermeasure would involve the wand and/or glasses. By the time he speaks an incantation, he will be cursed, suggesting that we need wordless, invisible magic (at least invisible until it's too late!)

Transfiguration is wordless, and Harry can even reverse transfiguration without a wand. Do we see any other spells he's capable of casting without words? If not, we're probably looking at untransfiguring his glasses-air can't be transfigured, and his wand isn't touching anything else. Unless there's a range on transfiguration? He's only done it before on things his wand has been touching, but that doesn't make any sense-the effect isn't limited to a one molecule layer that's "actually touching" the wand, and when you look at the quantum structure of objects there isn't a hard line between "contact" and "not in contact" anyway! That would allow him to transfigure the ground his wand is pointing at. He'd need a weapon or device that was too small to be noticed-possibly nanites or nano-scale line? That could allow him to strike back at the Death Eaters and/or threaten to do so, and explaining secrets/arguing for his continued existence as an x-risk mitigator should give him enough time to do so.

Nanites might provide x-risk in their own right, which means that the Vow might not allow it, but if he could limit them enough (cannot replicate, or can't replicate beyond a few generations?) he might have a shot. Or transfigure the ground into a gas-Harry'd be affected too, but he only needs to avoid immediate death, and if he can get the Stone, otherwise-fatal transfiguration poisoning could be cured.

On the bright side, touching Voldemort with anything magical (and transfigured material should count!) will trigger the resonance, and the Death Eaters are nowhere nearly as formidable as their master. We don't know the exact rules on the resonance, but if the "stronger magic means stronger backlash" theory is correct Harry might be able to incapacitate Voldemort while remaining upright himself.

The main difficulty with this approach is that even though Harry might be able to trigger the resonance with a fairly innocuous gas (heck, just make a little more air!), the Death Eaters would presumably fire the moment their master was affected. Poisonous/soporific gas would work on the Eaters as well, but it would impact Harry too-is there a substance so fast-acting that he could simply hold his breath/keep exhaling while talking to Voldemort, and then everyone inhaling would be dropped? I don't know of any gas that fast-acting, but if one exists it might provide another solution.

To sum up:

Potential solutions that I can think of-

1. Convince Voldemort to keep Harry on as an x-risk mitigator.
2. Convince Voldemort that the prophecy refers to an apotheosis, rather than an apocalypse (seems unlike to work by itself, but might be useful in conjunction with 1.
3. Buy time with secrets/attempts to use 1 or 2; transfigure the ground into a weapon (gas, monofiliment line, nanites?) If the line is used, some form of guiding nanites may be required; alternatively, transfigure the line extending into Voldemort/the Death Eaters.
4. Untransfigure glasses. Do we know what was transfigured to make the glasses to begin with? Could it be a useful countermeasure?

Non-HPMOR related note-I found organizing my thoughts far easier while typing this than while trying to figure solutions out before. Has anyone else noticed a writing makes thinking easier effect, and could this be a useful technique?

Hey, it's been a while since I've looked over this thread. A lot of the answers have been very helpful; thanks! Another question-if I decide that I want to let go of my faith, do you have any advice for overcoming indoctrination and not being constantly afraid that I'm headed straight to hell? A few times I've decided that it made sense to let go, but while my beliefs are starting to tend more towards naturalism, my aliefs are still firmly Christian, and the fear keeps pushing me back. As a number of people have pointed out, religious memes are very resistant to purely reason-based attack. Thoughts?

I've seen people pray in tongues

I have seen people speaking nonsense syllables in altered mental states. (I am using the "rationalist taboo" technique here.) Was your observation any different from this?

Jewish miracles aren't evidence against Christianity-the same God is hypothesized to be behind both religions. The others are very interesting though, especially the stupa.

I'm far from being an expert on modern miracle claims, but here are a few examples. Hindu statues drinking milk. Sundry miracles at a Buddhist stupa. Kinda-sorta-semi-miracles from a Jewish rabbi. Kinda-sorta-semi-miracles from a Muslim.

This skeptic's webpage about miraculous healings mentions a few books that give a decent idea of the sort of evaporation I mean. I think I read one of them (the one by William Nolen) years ago; the author looked into a number of cases of alleged miraculous healings, and found that in every case there was no good reason to think anything miraculous had occurred.

And yes, I think your priors for honesty and reliability may be too high. Sorry about that.

With Pascal's Wager on the table

One major problem with Pascal's Wager (among others) is that it doesn't specify which god. It applies equally to worshiping Yahweh, Kali, and Huitzilopochtli -- and offers no guidance on how to choose between them.