Four things every community should do

The idea that religion is primarily about belief is very popular among atheists.

Exactly. Belief itself is merely an opinion. I may believe the universe was created by a Great Lizard in the sky, but per se that doesn't mean anything; it only means I have a weird belief.

Some beliefs push people to action. If I believe the Great Lizard will punish me unless I eat a potato every day, I will pay attention to eating potatoes, and perhaps I will even vote for subsidies for potato producers. But that still is not a religion.

Religion is the social behavior connected with the belief system. They are mutually dependent. A part of the behavior is that you should study the belief, debate it with other believers, and maybe even try to convince non-believers. A part of the belief is that you should do the behavior, and make other people in your group do it. This is the central loop; and then there are additional behaviors and beliefs growing from it.

So, back to the original question -- even rationality in practice has this loop at its core. To believe rationally, there are some things you need to do, e.g. study, avoid mindkilling, et cetera. And to behave rationally, you have to know what is rational.

Sometimes you are in this loop without being aware of it; without reflecting on it. You were taught rational behavior; you were taught rational beliefs. But there is a risk that something will throw you out of the loop, either by a sudden change, or slowly step by step.

I think that LW rationality is about being in this loop and being aware of it. Not only we happen to be not chronically mindkilled; we also actively try to avoid mindkilling; and we know that we are doing that to keep ourselves in the rationality loop. Not only do we happen to have relatively correct beliefs about physical universe and humans; we also actively try to understand it better; and we know that we are doing that to keep ourselves in the rationality loop. Shortly, it's not just that we happen to be rational at this moment, but we are also trying to remain rational, and preferebly become even more rational.

Similarly to religions, reflective rationality is a self-preserving set of behaviors and beliefs. If you believe that X is good, you probably also believe that preserving X is good, therefore yes, I support attempts to make rationality self-preserving.

And now we are exploring what exactly does it take for a system of behaviors and beliefs to be self-preserving. Both on individual and social levels; not only because we have the goal of "raising the sanity waterline", but also because these levels interact. We are a social species; the more of us will be rational, the easier it will be for each of us. Because we can discuss our beliefs, help each other with our behaviors, solve common problems, learn from others' failures, find a company for projects that require cooperation of multiple people.

Not necessarily. It's totalitarianism if said institutions do the ensuring through force, and without the consent of the disciples. However, by choosing to belong to a religious community, people choose to have institutions and members of the community remind them of the religious values.

Free-riding can happen among societies too. It is quite possible that a society doing little R&D itself but applying R&D results from other societies outcompetes those. I hear this is happening in the form that some asian countries learn from the west without investing as much.

R> countries <- data.frame(PPP=c(      10,    10,   13,   24,   16,   17,    22,   26,    27,   28,    30,    89),
                         Innovator=c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE))
R> wilcox.test(PPP ~ Innovator, data=countries)

    Wilcoxon rank sum test with continuity correction

data:  PPP by Innovator
W = 24.5, p-value = 0.2903