The Case For Free Will or Why LessWrong must commit to self determination

I don't think this post is ready for main. I found the style hard to read, but some more specific objections:

The way you're using "free will" sounds to me more like "freedom of belief".

I'm not aware that LW-style aspiring rationalists have significant overlap with the people called militant atheists, but I don't pay attention to the latter group. If there is overlap, it might be worth giving examples. I haven't noticed any particular religion-is-evil sentiment on LW, and I have noticed counterexamples; see for example this discussion which I've barely even skimmed, but it seems like people were being civil towards CCC, who is religious. See also: one of the CFAR instructors is catholic.

Don't try to say this won't happen, and that Rationalists will always allow other people to believe differently. Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Politics is the Mind Killer, and Eliezar' success in creating the LW and rationalist movement say otherwise.

Could you elaborate? I don't see how any of these things suggest that people identifying with the rationalist movement will eventually become intolerant of religion.

I would suggest rewriting this post. But in the revision make sure you're clear about your terms, especially the terms that are integral to your thesis. What do you mean by "free will"? What do you mean by "rationalist"?

I would further argue that there is very little overlap between the average atheist and a LW-styled rationalist. Indeed, there's a lot of tribalism in "mainstream" atheism and there don't seem to be many mainstream atheist-related memes that try to counteract our natural human tendency for in-group bias, unlike here. I don't really know the causes of most people becoming atheists, and I don't want to psychoanalyze from my chair, but I doubt many of them came to atheism through LW-style rationalism (there are a lot of factors that are correlated with lack of religiosity, and they're all social... not rational per se).

Furthermore, I was already an atheist before I started reading LW, and reading LW actually made me more tolerant towards religious beliefs. So that's at least an anecdote that argues against what you're worried about in your post (assuming that LW-style rationalism becomes integral to mainstream atheism).

See also: Yvain's In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization

I don't think this post is main material.

Why? You fail to define what you mean with free will. The first thing that the term brings up is the debate about whether or not free will exist in the first place.

Do you care about not pushing fat men onto trolley tracks?

Making organ-donation on death a default that people have to opt out of?

In Germany there was recently a court decision that printing: "Men and women are equal" on election ballots is an illegal infringement of voters expression of the political will. Is this the kind of nudging something that goes against your principles?

Less Wrong rationalists are growing, and being recognized by the religious community. As militant Atheists.

Militant atheism is a slogan by Richard Dawkins. I think you are making a mistake when you charge is community with being militant Atheists.

On the mission statement for the center of rationality there isn't a single word about religion, God, atheism. Evolution doesn't appear while "evole" appears once but isn't the main topic of the sentence in which it appears.

The question of God is not discussed in rational fiction like HPMOR and Lumosity/Radiance. In some sense Harry father might be an militant atheist but Harry's father is wrong in HPMOR.

Altruism is very easily perverted into forcing other people because you know what is best for them. It's not enough by itself. It needs something else attached.

This community add something to altruism. Effective altruism. In contrast to Microlending that creates dependency GiveWell recommends GiveDirectly. Not because of some argument about the value of free will but because of an argument about effectiveness.

In the last 100 years you didn't have a war between atheists and theists in Europe. On the other hand you have Irish catholics bombing English protestants.

As others have said, you should probably rewrite this post if you want to engage in constructive discussion; a few suggestions:

• No point in talking about posting this in main, you'll probably get more views and comments in discussion anyway (non-promoted things in main tend to be ignored...)
• You seem to be using "free will" differently than most people here, that would need work (either find a better term, or give an explanation about how your use is different)
• Spell Eliezer's name correctly
• What's with the big spaces at the end?

Also, I don't identify as a militant atheist and am quite sympathetic to some religious views, and I don't think I'm far outside the norm here.

First, you seem to be talking about the freedom of belief, not freedom of will.

Second, you want "a guarantee of free will for others that disagree with you". Who can give you such a guarantee? As you yourself point out future is uncertain and things are likely to look different. What form could a guarantee take so that it still has power in that different future?

I see a future pattern emerging in the United States:

Few atheists among overwhelming Christians -> shrinking Christianity, growing Atheism -> atheism tribalness growing well connected and strong -> Natural tribal impulse to not tolerate different voices -> war between atheists and Christians.

The last arrow seems like quite a jump. In the US we try to restrain the impulse to intolerance with protections for free speech and such. Do you think these protections are likely to fail? Why are religious divisions going to cause a war when other divisions such as the political left vs. right haven't? Why do you think a religious war is likely in the US when European countries with much higher rates of atheism haven't experienced such wars and don't seem likely to?

Don't try to say this won't happen, and that Rationalists will always allow other people to believe differently. Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Politics is the Mind Killer, and Eliezar' success in creating the LW and rationalist movement say otherwise.

I'm confused; what do these three things you cite have to do with intolerance of religious views?

Generally, it is better to write an article about one topic, instead of starting half dozen topics in the same article. I am not even sure where to start. Seems to me that your motivation for writing all this is to prevent some future military conflict between atheists and religious people. So perhaps we should instead discuss how likely is such a scenario. What is your evidence that something like this is likely to happen?

Perhaps look at what powerful atheists are doing now. Is Bill Gates spending his money trying to cure children in Africa, regardless of their religion, or trying to assassinate the Pope? Has government of Sweden declared an anti-religious war against some of their neighbors, or against a part of their own population? I don't see anything like this happening. -- If you have better examples, please post them here.

A historical example of an officially atheist country attacking their neighbors would be Soviet Union. If you look at Russia today, the Communists seem happy to cooperate with Christians; together they oppress the sexual minorities and generally anyone who gets in the oligarchs' way. And I don't see LW supporting this behavior. It seems unlikely that Russia would attack someone in the name of atheism or rationality; they may use other excuses, though.

A big atheist country these days is China; they don't seem likely to expand soon; and I guess they wouldn't care about what LessWrong or anyone in the West says, anyway.

Here are the horrible things that militant atheists are likely to do to religious people; not necessarily all of them agree about all of the following: Teach their children evolutionary biology. Prevent "honor" killings and genital mutilation. Tax the religious organizations. Separate the church from the state. Make abortions legal (but voluntary, unless we speak about China). -- Feel free to add more examples.

Does this address your concerns?

If you are concerned about atheists outside of LW taking some parts of the LW attitude and ignoring the others... well, if someone is going to only take a half of it, and ignore the other half, they would probably ignore the "commitment to freedom" part, too. There are specific parts in Sequences about tribal politics, mindkilling, and affective spirals. I think it's obvious. And if someone is going to ignore that, they will probably ignore any additional text on the same topic.

I didn't catch why it was relevant to compare religion as an explainer on the hunting thing. I constantly was expecting for things mentioned in the title to be touched upon and they never were. This doesn't seem to be relevant as a sequence opener for the topic it claims to aim for. What you are talking about is possible exclusivity of serving two masters for those that are dually rationalist / religious. The link to the title is tedious at best. Also it might be that the exclusivity is largely read in by you. I tend to disagree. But then again I understand areligiousity a lot better than antireligiousness. Be sure that you are not falling for cargo culting rationalism for all it's awesomeness.

To that aim the danger should be described in more detail, the relevant mechanisms are not that obvious. Also it is very obscure how the positvely labeled thinking saves from this danger. The positive label seems to be something other than is traditonally attached to those particular keywords. You want rationalist always to think for themselfs instead of using their ideology (in social terms) to think for them?

On the difficult question of whether Free Will exists, why would I listen to someone who has answered the much easier question of whether God exists, and got it wrong?