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All of Visible_Ignorance's Comments + Replies

Seeking models of LW’s aversion to religion
Visible_Ignorance
90

you assert "LW has an aversion against truth"

Wait, where do I do that?

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-2ChristianKl
Right in the start, you say "I want to understand LW’s aversion to religion". That sentence presumes that LW has an aversion to religion.
Seeking models of LW’s aversion to religion
Visible_Ignorance
10

I have not really encountered the word "scientistic" a lot. To me there is a big difference between "scientific" and "scientism" and we are dealing here at a level where such kind of distinctions are crucial.

Agreed. I am using “scientistic” to mean “attempting to fit into science as literary genre.”

Religions might come with a clear tradition lines but it can be quite nebolous to map what the corresponding things are for areligious people.

My model is that areligious people indeed vary, but that there is a specific “science as literary genre” thing that lead... (read more)

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4ChristianKl
We do have a sequence on the values of the Sabbath https://www.lesswrong.com/s/HXkpm9b8o964jbQ89 . I know a rationalist on our local dojo that did adopt a version of the sabbath for himself based on the writing.  With the Winter Solstice and Petrov day, we also have two yearly rhythmic events in the rationality community.  By in large, LessWrong is not a community of New Atheists who react with aversion to either of those things.
Seeking models of LW’s aversion to religion
Visible_Ignorance
40

This component makes sense, but I'm trying to find out whether there is also some other objection that I should take more warning from. I expect some conformity / accidental status dynamics on LW like everywhere else (though less here than most places). But I think there is more than this in LW's responses to religion. The observations I'm trying to make sense of include not just the absence of much religious discussion, but also e.g.:

  • This comment of Vladimir_Nesov's
  • The heatedness of the discussion in Valentine’s old post about Kensho
  • My post here having re
... (read more)
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-8ChristianKl
2Dagon
I think "active, endorsed, intelligent opposition" is the wrong framing.  LW is very lightly moderated, and it's unlikely that anyone is organizing any downvote-brigades.  (note: it does happen sometimes, but I don't know your history so I can't tell if all your posts and comments simultaneously got bombed, or if you just tried a few times and got small numbers of downvotes).   Instead, think of religion, like current politics, as "hard mode" for discussion on LW.  https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer is the standard warning, and "people go funny in the head when discussing " can end in religion just as easily as politics.  In order to have a fruitful discussion about LW-relevant topics (rationality, empiricism, and even social organization), it requires a fair bit of preparation and specificity to make specific claims and points of discussion that can easily be evaluated without bringing in a large amount of vague and controversial connotations. There is definitely reason to have some trepidation in bringing up religion among people who don't share your underlying framework.  True among family, at work, and on message boards like LW.  I suspect that trying to "bridge to LW-ers" is a doomed idea.  If you have aspects of rationality which include religion that you'd like to explore together, that's probably achievable, but not guaranteed to succeed.  And especially so if you mean "a religion" rather than "religion".   edit: I went and looked at the posts linked in the grandparent comment.  I hadn't paid much attention to them when posted, but now I bothered to read them, and downvoted the one about god, leaving un-voted the one about LW's reaction to it.  I note the similarity to this post, and would like to point out "talking about religion's role in human behavior" is fine, talking about "god" as if that were a real thing separate from the religion who defines the god is likely to get downvoted.
Seeking models of LW’s aversion to religion
Visible_Ignorance
40

I have a prior that people who are attracted to religion tend to be either willfully blind to or supportive of such evils, which perhaps looks like Objection 2 from the outside. 

Thank you. I need to think more about what causes this. (Hypotheses appreciated, if anyone has some to share.)

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Seeking models of LW’s aversion to religion
Visible_Ignorance
50

Speaking from my own personal history with religion, the thing I objected to was not actually religion in general, but Protestant Christianity and specifically its attempt to control beliefs and thoughts.

Thank you. This makes sense and I had not thought of it. 

I, too, find social pressure around what to believe abhorrent, while social pressure around how to act seems basically fine.

Do you (or anyone else who wants to answer this) think religion is basically un-alarming when it avoids social pressure around what to believe?

How do you feel about social ... (read more)

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6Timothy Underwood
A further comment about the religious history of people involved with Less Wrong, it also was heavily seeded by the 2000s decade internet atheist movement, which was itself largely a reaction to evangelical Christianity attempting to gain power politically in the US, and the reaction of young Christians of rationalist dispositions to realizing that we were confidently being ordered to believe stupid things, while at the same time also being told that noticing it was stupid was failing your religious duty. I'd also emphasize what another comment said, that there has been a lot of interest in the community in creating secular rituals that replace the community rituals of religion without committing anyone to believing false facts (or really any facts at all). It definitely is the case that there has been discussion of ways that parts of religion can be good for people, despite the underlying truth claims being false.