The problem with too many rational memes

I've seen something like this myself, but I agree with Tordmor about what it is.

In my engineering degree, we had to take some "liberal studies" courses to complement the technical stuff. In one of these we had an irrationalist as a teacher. She would state crazy beliefs like that homeopathy was just as legitimate as "western" medicine, different cultures have different truths, and that science doesn't work in some cultures. Naturally, I challenged some of these ideas, but the response was to just shut down criticism and dodge questions "who's science?", "yes that may be your view, but we are talking about this guy", and so on. I didn't want to just irritate everyone and disrupt the class indefinitely, so the teacher could just ignore criticism until it went away.

At this point we were all strong technical thinkers, so it was very frustrating for everyone, tho everyone else was much more shy about calling out teachers than I. We eventually decided on a model of what was going on: we were being presented with incoherent "facts" that we were forced to memorize and were not allowed to criticize. It was practically a recipe for brainwashing. What it felt like was undermining the precision of thought that we had trained as engineers. It felt like my brain would turn to mush by being forced to integrate these incorrect bits of knowledge.

I don't think that terrible feeling was the result of a clash of memes from opposing belief systems. Engineering is not a belief system; it is a precise art that requires precise thought. It felt like being forced to use your nicely sharpened tools on a task that would destroy them.

So I think that when you notice that feeling, you should stand up for the sanctity of your mind. Even listening to that stuff puts gunk in your gears. You should have called the guy out (politely) for depriving people of the ability to help each other reach a better understanding of things.

Communication must be two-way to be useful. If you disallow criticism, so that only agreement is allowed, the communication ceases to be interactive. You lose the ability to discuss an idea before accepting or rejecting it.

I recently had a frightening first-hand brush with socially induced irrationality. My parents are devout Catholics who are not too pleased with my "aversion" to their religion. They send me to a Jesuit School and naturally it works to my advantage with them to appear as if I'm engaged in deep "reflection" on the question of if a loving, Christian, god of the Bible exists (obviously I am not.) One of the implicit social expectations at my school is to attend a retreat called "Kairos" as a senior. It's a 4 day deal with plenty of prayer and new-age garbage; typically something that'd be no match for my powers of rationality. I signed up to ease my situation at home, expecting no harm to come from the retreat.

At first I thought Kairos would entail your typical retreaty nonsense. It turned the "search for god" into a social activity, not-so-subtly building links from normal friendship to Jesus Christ Lord And Savior Of His Anointed Flock. This wouldn't be a problem for me under normal circumstances; but Kairos was not your typical retreat.

We were deprived of sleep, didn't have a single (waking) moment alone, weren't allowed to know what time it was, and were forced to pray and "reflect" in a circle for hours at a time multiple times per day. This wasn't just indoctrination. This was brainwashing. I wasn't gullible enough to accept one iota of the spiritual garbage, but to understand my failing of mental hygiene it's important to know that Kairos is a very secretive retreat. Its rituals, itinerary, and operations are supposed to be unknown to all but retreat alumni to ensure that future attendees get to experience all the great "surprises" and such.

One of my friends (who didn't attend) has been involved with Lesswrong far longer than I have; and upon my return he asked me what specifically happened on the retreat. He asked with the intent to publish the information, exposing this blatant brainwashing for what it is. Then I did the (to me) unthinkable; I refused to disclose, solely to preserve Kairos' secrets. I was so caught up in the social bonds I formed and the general emotional hokum that I was convinced to actually defend such a terrible institution.

Now, just a week later, I am ashamed. I utterly failed my art. Perhaps if not for the intervention of my friend I'd still be protecting the secrets of Kairos. I was so easily put in a position where I would knowingly allow minds to fall victim to brainwashing, and I gave my tacit sanction to the ritualistic breaking of my peers' psyches for the sake of a retreat whose singular goal is to convert them to Catholicism. All of this because I got lost in the sociality of the retreat. I've since resolved that I must never permit my mental integrity to be compromised. Not for the sake of a group, not for the sake of a better social life, and not for the sake of my emotions. I think it's definitely warranted to be incredibly selective in who you associate with and how; the effects they have on your mind could be devastating under the right conditions.

I remember a cartoon where a lot of different animals were gathered, amongst them a giraffe, a monkey and a goldfish in a bowl. A human opposit of them said "To make it fair everybody gets the same task: climb that tree." Of course, all animals except the monkey were quite unhappy.

That is the situation of the "no critizism" rule. While it might sound fair and reasonable, the truth is, that this rule favours the cultists. And that is what Charlie seems to be, a cultist who wishes to recrute the weakly minded. So your emotions might have been quite a rational response.

I guess, the important question is, what do you do about your emotions? Will you continue to be angry whenever you think about him, or do you only feel that anger when someone close to you is threatened to fall for him like your boyfriend seemed to? If it is the former, then you're might be right, your emotions seem to be social signaling, but if it's the latter then it's probably a good rational immune reaction and it might be better to cultivate it.

My model of this situation is less sanguine than others here, though Yvain and Tetronian hinted at it: it's identity politics. Humans very naturally associate themselves with many different groups, some of them arbitrarily defined, and often without any conscious thought. Religion, favorite sports teams, the street/neighborhood/city/state/country you live in, and many other things can be the focal point of these groups. The more you associate with one of these groups, the more its part of your identity - i.e. how you see yourself. If you associate with one of these groups particularly strongly, any action which appears to make a rival group look better will personally offend you and elicit a response.

I'm from the St. Louis area in Missouri (US), and our baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, has a longstanding rivalry with the Chicago Cubs, a nearby team. In the past (when the Cubs were fairly good and actually a threat), I've seen Cardinals and Cubs fans get into fights for no other reason than one of them insulted the other's favorite team. I've heard similar stories about fans of St. Louis and Chicago's hockey teams (another rivalry). I had a philosophy professor in undergrad who would get visibly upset at times in class when arguing against reductionism (he's Christian), and I think we've all seen both religious and political debates get heated.

My model of all these situations is the same as my model of your situation. Before joining LessWrong, you spent a certain amount of identity points on "being rational," but probably didn't have much of a group to identify with, so when someone who's religious or superstitious got in a jab against their hated rival, the rationalists, you didn't feel anything or think much of it. Now that you've been a member of LW for some time and absorbed its memes, you're spending many more identity points on "being rational" primarily because, I conjecture, you now can point to a large, dedicated group of like-minded people. As such, you're much more likely to react with offense when someone brings up religion or homeopathy in a positive light, since that's implicitly an attack on your group.

Identity actually terrifies me because of how it seems able to control my actions and even my beliefs. I remember writing a political philosophy paper in undergrad and actually thinking "but if I use this argument, then I can't argue for Anarcho-Capitalism anymore." If that wasn't a red flag, I don't know what is - though naturally I didn't notice it as one at the time. One way to deal with this is to keep your identity small so that you minimize how often you're swayed in one direction or another for reasons purely of identity politics. Also, crafting a particular identity for yourself can work. I try to think of myself as curious and tolerant of beliefs that I know to be crazy.

My own experience has been similar to badger's - I've grown more tolerant of crazy beliefs (and beliefs that simply contradict my own) since discovering OB/LW. I can't really be sure about why, but I'd like to think it's because I've implemented the two strategies above. Learning that politics is the mind killer and realizing that this applied more broadly than groups based on political affiliation actually scared me to some extent. My immediate reaction was to reject all group affiliations (that I could anyway), but since then I've let some of the more innocuous ones back in because I'd rather consciously spend my identity points than let my brain subconsciously do it.

‘if people’s souls go to other dimensions when they die, Grandma could be communicating with you right now from another dimension by tapping spoons.’

I would reply along the lines of "Wow, what a tantalizing possibility, I wonder how a scientist would go about testing it", and try to move the conversation toward the scientific method. I doubt that would have counted as a criticism.

I have the same experience, although it started long before I started reading Less Wrong. And it's not limited to skepticism; it also strikes when people are expressing what I consider very wrong political or sometimes even artistic views

It has never stricken me as disliking people before; there are people with views I find ridiculous whose company I can enjoy so long as they are not expressing those views at the moment. And it would not bother me if they were just to assert "I'm a fundamentalist / a fascist / whatever". They would have to be making arguments for their position.

I do not have a good explanation either, but perhaps I view it as a sort of attack. If fundamentalism is true, then atheism is not true, and I am stupid or at least a very bad truth-seeker for being an atheist. Letting yourself be attacked, even indirectly, without defending yourself is hard.

Well, I've definitely noticed that I have less patience for correcting basic flaws of reasoning that are covered in the Sequences than I was before I started participating here, but I wouldn't say I've become less tolerant. I did become less tolerant of my own accord when I was a teenager and started questioning the beliefs I'd been brought up with about freedom of religion, tolerance, etc. and concluded that on factual matters, being right or wrong makes a difference, and it's better to make an effort not to be wrong.

Humans tend to internalize norms. We're not built to fluently switch between the norms of one culture and another as convenient. The trouble isn't with the rational memes, the trouble is that adopting any social norms which are at odds with the ones prevailing in your culture will create friction. If you'd become a Born Again Christian, for instance, you'd probably be facing similar problems.

Because culture is not completely stable, adopting new norms can sometimes be advantageous. If everyone knew nobody else would become a feminist, it would never have been in anyone's interests to be a feminist. Or an abolitionist, etc. But when the new norms are attractive enough, communities can develop around them. If rationalist memes in particular have a problem, it's not that they cause friction in communities with different norms, it's that they aren't sufficiently attractive.

Excellent post! Glad to see someone talking about this.

Anyone else have the same experience?

About 6 months ago I started reading r/atheism, and a few weeks later I noticed a kind of subverbal irritation whenever I saw someone wearing religious imagery or talking about their religious beliefs. At the time, I attributed this to r/atheism conditioning me to feel anger when prompted with anything that reminded me of religion. I was very scared that my mind was doing this, so I stopped reading r/atheism and reddit altogether. Since then, the effect has greatly decreased in frequency and intensity. I still notice the irritation every once and a while, possibly because I still read LessWrong, but (if my memories are accurate) it used to be much worse. Looking back, the emotions I felt seem almost identical to the ones you described.

it’s preventing me from doing something that might otherwise be a goal for me: joining and volunteering and becoming active in a group that does good things for the Ottawa community

In addition to this, I'm worried that this kind of instinctive irritation could inhibit updating. If you react negatively to a particular belief, you will probably be less inclined to update in its favor regardless of what the evidence shows.

I have a similar experience whenever I find myself in a church nowadays (happens sometimes for social reasons), and I can say confidently that it's steadily intensified as I've delved into rationality. As best as I can tell, what really makes me furious isn't the speaking end, but the receiving.

It's some combination of the social setting, the groupthink, and (what I imagine to be) the mentality of the individuals nodding along. When I sort of "put myself in their shoes", it's as though I can feel the biases and motivated cognition and self-deceptive signaling behavior and strawmen arguments and rehearsed evidence by which these people convince themselves of their beliefs (in both the "belief" and "belief in belief" sense), and that is what makes me furious. If I could, even in principle, stand up and cry out in frustration at what nonsense the minister is preaching, and reasonably expect people to notice it was nonsense once it was pointed out, I'd be fine. What I find intolerable is the self-crippling psychological defenses in the audience: you can't help them, because they don't want to be helped, and have gone far, far out of their way to remain beyond the reach of reality.

Unless I'm modeling them very incorrectly. But what little conversation on the subject I've had/heard with them doesn't suggest this is the case.

Anyway, this just resonated with me because of the culture of non-criticism you mentioned Charlie cultivating. It has the same memetic defense structure: we should stand up and cry out against it, but in doing so we only guarantee that we will be shut out or dismissed. It's a very frustrating situation, and perhaps that was a part of what you experienced as well.

encouraging everyone to share his or her opinion. Criticizing or shutting out other people’s views was explicitly forbidden.

These two things are, if not in direct contradiction, certainly working at cross-purposes. Any opinions I'd be likely to attend in that setting would largely be criticisms of the views being shared.

Okay, brainstorming how you might handle that sort of situation! (comments, made after brainstorming, in parentheses)

Leave the room. (no fun at all, but a good last resort, especially if you can bring boyfriend with)
Start a conversation with a different group of people.
Directly and politely state that you think he should stick to claims we don't have overwhelming evidence against, and if told that criticism is not allowed, say "okay, sorry," and leave it at that. (this is probably what I'd do first)
Start a conversation about tests of the supernatural and the boundaries of knowledge, framed positively. (if there was enough interest)
Go "GRaAAh" every time the supernatural is brought up. Perhaps use a spray bottle for negative reinforcement. (if only)
Be super sarcastic. (yeah, that'll work)
Be very honest. (a reasonable option - could just say that you feel frustrated when supernaturalism is brought up, because you don't want to seem critical but he just won't stop talking about it)

Throwing my experiences into the pool of anecdotes: I've become more tolerant of people with crazy beliefs since being involved with LW. Recognizing how off-base nearly all of our beliefs are made me more sympathetic. Just because many of my crazy beliefs fell in the genre of 'science' rather than 'spirituality' or 'the paranormal' doesn't mean the thought processes weren't similar.

As usual, my viewpoint on this changed multiple times as I read through the posting, and then the comments. That, for me, makes for a good posting - lots to think about.

My guess is that this Charlie character and others like him are not using a "no criticism" rule to maliciously promulgate their crazy memes, knowing that they are false and wouldn't stand up to criticism. The social motivation of keeping a discussion between newly-met strangers non-threatening is more plausible. Partly because these people probably don't give much thought to whether their beliefs are true or not - i.e. they are bullshitters rather than liars.

There are a bunch of reasons why you might want to temporarily suspend criticism. For example, brainstorming ideas to solve a scientific or engineering problem. But when it comes time to make a decision about what to do, then critical thought has to come into play. Often when confronted with all kinds of irrationality (religious, political, pseudo-scientific, inter-personal), I have to ask "am I expected to do anything about this?". If the answer is no, I can shrug and get back to my reading.

The fact that society gives religion a special exemption from having to be supported by evidence is probably one of the best reasons to keep religion out of politics. We have a word for governments that wield the "no criticism" rule!

I found it helpful to think of it this way: "Do I want to be the person who lectures children on the unhealthiness of cake at a birthday party?".

also this: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/01/unspeakable-arrogance.html

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The problem with too many rational memes

I don't think the title is correct. Based on your anecdote and those in the comments thus far, the kind of irritation you're talking about probably isn't a result of being exposed to too many rational memes, it's more likely a result of some kind of social signalling effect or repeated exposure to particular rational memes. I don't have a particularly good title in mind, but something like "Irritation at Irrational Beliefs" removes the inaccuracy.

A possibility that ought to be aired (though I don't in any way endorse it's truth):

Less Wrong is just a community that is on the whole, and despite it's best efforts and intentions, toxic to rationality. The reasons for this are perhaps the belief that members of this community possess a special kind of ethically-significant knowledge or skill, a special ethically-significant mission, and that members of this community routinely express contempt for the beliefs of outsiders.

Now, again, I don't think this is true, and if I did I would be unjustified in thinking so, newcomer that I am. In my conversations here with particular people, I've found members of this community to be very reasonable and resistant to clubishness.

I mostly ask myself the following question whenever I meet somebody with crazy beliefs: Is he/she going to act on those beliefs with any kind of significant consequences?

If the answer is No, then I usually completely ignore the subject and try to keep it out of all future conversations.

If the answer is Yes, then it's more complicated. I then try to estimate the following:
a) How much I care? This includes estimates of what is the magnitude of the consequences of their action, how close the person is to me,etc.
b) How likely is it that anything I say would have an affect on their behavior?
c) Is it likely to backfire? For example, they might take offense at their beliefs being challenged.

Usually, the result of estimating these variables is that I keep my mouth shut. I usually try much harder if the person is someone very close to me or if it affects me directly. It's probably not the best strategy for propagating rationality, but it kind of works out for me. After being around very religious people for a long time, I've kinda become pretty good at it.

I've certainly had the experience at various times in my life of developing habits I reject because they are pervasive in a group I socialize with, sure.

If you previously considered yourself immune to this sort of thing, and now you realize that your habits and expectations can be modified by social setting without you being aware of it: yay! That's a useful piece of knowledge, and I'm happy for you.

Now you need to decide whether and how to change your behavior based on that knowledge.

Robin has a new post on some evidence that such "no-criticism" rules inhibit rather than enhance creativity.

Robin Hanson recently wrote about this on Overcoming Bias. I don't see what's wrong with it. The no-criticism rule can be a useful instrument in some scenarios, but I generally feel innate frustration with entire institutions that are predicated on the no-criticism rule. It speaks to the larger problem of being unwilling to critically examine evidence. In some cases, a church is basically predicated on the idea that (implicitly within a wide range of cultural norms, but this is never explicitly stated) any uncontroversial opinion is equally valid. In my worldview, that's often a contemptible idea all on its own merits. It has very negative consequences even if it can sometimes allow for coalition productivity in achieving subgoals. Those subgoals would have to be mighty highly valued by me before their benefit would offset the cost of perpetuating the idea that the social discomfort of critical examination makes it bad and in need of avoidance.

Perhaps this is one of the stages of mastery: a feeling for quality of your art.

You could consciously work on developing the skill of accepting others for who they are and not letting your built in, evolved morality let you get angry, frustrated, or judgmental. (That's not to say that you don't try to change people, just that when you do, you use effective techniques like reinforcing behaviors you want to encourage and disagreeing with people in a calm, friendly, collegial way that might actually get them to change their mind.)

Skeptics tend to react like that, so it's not very surprising that LW teaches it. What seems insufferable about it to me is that it's unfair. (I disagree with explanations like "it's an attack on your identity".) I'm fine with people who refuse to talk about a topic. I'm fine with people who say "I believe this, and I don't want to argue about it now", and don't start arguing when you state disagreement. But what these people are doing is making assertions, and sometimes arguments, then dodging. If you're not willing to discuss something, don't start discussing it. In part it's a status grab ("I'm allowed to assert things, you aren't") but mostly it's the sheer stupidity of "first expressed idea wins".

If you're having this experience, it might be helpful to find ways to actively combat this tendency. Probably more exposure to those sorts of groups would help.

If church advances my goals, I want to believe that church advances my goals, and the Way opposes my anger.

I can't speak to your own mental processes, but I recently had a conversation with a professor about this. We both agreed that the phrase "agreeing to disagree" was the most condescending notion we had ever heard. That any person with a legitimate disagreement who actually respects and values the other person should want to hear their argument and be open to criticism.

I think that LW may be the sort of environment where you are exposed to people who take this seriously. Where we value Bringing about the crisis of faith. The command to not criticize goes against maybe half of the Rationalist Virtues. Being in an environment where that is encouraged and not dismissed would then make the opposite seem intolerable.

It seems like there are times when the optimal behavior pattern for yourself is to disregard the need for argument and evidence for some practical purpose, but it is a consolation. It is giving something up. And that choice should be painful. I don't think I should want to be good at agreeing not to criticize. I think it should be a fight. If it is easy, then it is easy to compromise when you shouldn't.

I think that might be the source of the somebody's wrong on the internet thing.

I think this is at least partly why I dropped off LessWrong for a few months.

I've found my thinking started changing within a couple weeks of leaving, and I'm now looking at the content on LessWrong with what feels like a much clearer insight in to why I had objections to it previously. Given that I'm just now dipping my toes back in, I can't say whether I'll conclude that the memes are ones I dislike, or realize my true rejection is silly, but I am realizing that stepping away from a group, from a set of ideas, is very useful for getting a much clearer perspective on it. I wish I'd done that sooner :)

He sounds like an asshole to me. You're worrying too much.

I don't think it's worth worrying about. You're getting more than rationality techniques (and such) from LessWrong, you're also learning more about your own preferences, namely that you find that being around rational people more fun, and that, in contrast, the company of the kind of people who believe in homeopathy isn't fun at all. I've had something similar happen to myself - I grew up an atheist surrounded almost exclusively by Christians, many of them fundamentalists. I much preferred the company of non-fundamentalist Christians, some of whom became my friends. But now that I have the option of being surrounded by rationalists, I find non-fundamentalist Christians as irritating as I found fundamentalist Christians before (aside from my Christian friends), and actual fundamentalists are beyond the pale. I assign a high probability to many of my future friends belonging to the rationalist cluster. I don't think there's anything wrong with this development - it's like, I'd rather eat gruel than dirt, but I'd rather eat pie than gruel if both are available.

Spending time in a rationalist community (or even with a few rationalists) makes you realize that things can be much better than they currently are, and that the status quo is not as good as it seemed before. Irritation is a natural reaction, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

A comment about form: Starting with a personal anecdote is a good idea. You don't need to defend it. It is actually recommended writing practice. See On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Have you since taken the time to explain your own worldview, within said no-criticism zone? It would, after all, be just as protected.

You yourself just said that you've updated on your beliefs due to things you've heard here. Ergo, the person that went back to church wouldn't be the same person that was there before you quit. Now that you have additional information about HOW to not be so stupid, it will be harder to accept the fact that SO MANY people seem like they are intentionally clinging to obviously false beliefs.

They're still the same, you're the one who's different now. You should only "blame" LessWrong's memes if you would, given the chance, undo that learning. Do you really wish that you hadn't learned what you've learned here?

I don't think this kind of reaction is troubling. If you start to feel the same way about professional colleagues with supernatural beliefs then it's an issue but this seems to be just the normal human anger.dissapointment at not being able to find an appropriate social community.

Atheists, and rationalists more generally, find it very hard to feel at home in most churchs and even things like book clubs. This isn't prejudice, it's just the fact that psychologically you won't feel comfortable if you have to always hide your true feelings about the main focus of the event. Watch the way people behave at a party. No one is comfortable talking about subjects they feel they need to hide their opinions to avoid giving offense. The natural (and appropriate) response is to change the subject and talk about something else. But it just isn't possible to change the topic of church away from the supernatural or change the topic of book clubs away from giving arguments (often rationalists give arguments or voice standards that others don't relate to).

So yah, this guy's supernatural inclinations took over the meeting and effectively denied you the chance to feel comfortable and a member of the community. It would be surprising if this didn't annoy you.

If you start feeling the same way in situations where there is no real community (many workplaces) or where the topic can be easily avoided then it's an issue.

I have this problem too. I had it before LessWrong, but reading the Sequences and acquiring more knowledge about reasoning mistakes made me see more mistakes, and theferefore to be annoyed more easily. My solution is fairly simple, though:
1) don't talk about politics or religion with someone, if you don't know whether they are able and willing to reason properly;
2) if, in a specific subject, someone is at Mount Stupid, don't talk about that subject, too.
3) If you are caught by surprise and can't avoid starting the conversation, you can always end it by answering a stupid statement with something along the line of "Well, I don't know, that sounds a little weird, maybe I'm not getting what you mean. I think we can't discuss it in depth right now, so maybe we should talk about something else?", smiling and nodding.
4) If 3 doesn't work, just tell them you need to go to the bathroom.

That has worked pretty well for me. In my university there are maybe 2 or 3 people who I can talk about politics even though they don't agree with me, and the policy at 1 has been effective at avoiding conflict with everyone else. 2 is an extrapolation. I've used 3 to deal with an annoying friend who likes to talk about philosophy, and is convinced that Aquinas got it all right, as well as some of the "Color Politics" people when 1 fails.

Lately I've felt the urge to change my info on Facebook from blank to "Atheism. I've been an outspoken atheist for some time now, but haven't really identified with it before. But the possibility of scaring off people who might have a different emotional attachment to Atheism has made me reconsider.

I've definitely felt like that, and I don't think I've been aware of this community for less than a week. Yet, I feel a sense of belonging, and I argue more against people that don't share my views. At least when someone explicitly says something along the lines of "God bless you". I've been the same for a while, but it's gotten worse. I AM kind of a party-pooper when it comes to a lot of things. I guess I just want things to be better without considering if people want to be helped. Maybe I should stop and go with the flow more, and only point it out when it's a major thing. Now that I think about it I've done the same concerning alcohol: I think it's wrong, and try to make others share my views. I don't specifically have anything against the people who do it, so... I think I need to be more tolerant. Also, it's not my right to tell anyone how to live their lives. Usually, if someone wants to believe life on earth started as fungus between an alien's toes, it doesn't harm anyone. Alas, it's never easy.

My true rejection is that them being wrong is too annoying for me to want to cooperate.

Yeah, that's a big problem. Stupid ideas annoy me. Even when they don't matter. Even when I would be better served in the immediate situation by being unconcerned about the foolishness in the other person's head. The annoyance is not instrumentally rational. But there it is regardless. A bit of insanity of my own. I think I, and a lot of others here, really just have OCD of ideas. Surprisingly, it seems to be contagious, and you've caught it.

I find your whole post interesting. You used to have a wonderful instrumental rationality with respect to the ideas of other people - you could ignore epistemically irrational ideas in others when it served your interests. But after spending time here, you've ended up annoyed and unhappy, and worry that you'll start thwarting your own interests because of this annoyance.

In a world of social conceptual communicating beings, it should not be surprising that instrumental rationality sometimes means assent, or at least lack of criticism, of the opinions of others even when they are wrong. But tune the preference for epistemic rationality too high, and it starts thwarting other interests.

What I value about a rationalist crowd is that I don't have to choose between epistemic rationality and instrumental social rationality. In most places, I have to make the trade off, and having OCD of ideas, I find that very uncomfortable.

Not critizing anybody and accepting what other people tell you is the core rule of improv comedy. Instead of disagreeing with someone who talks about talking to his grandmother you could start talking about demonic possession and see how far the person is willing to go.

Leaving your own beliefs at the door and using another mindset for an evening can be a lot of fun. It also a good exercise to argue positions in which are very far of from the ones in which you believe in in a coherent manner.

This is a wonderful post, and it is a personal problem I strongly sympathize with. Here are my thoughts; I hope they are of some use.

But it’s not my true rejection. My true rejection is that them being wrong is too annoying for me to want to cooperate. Why? I haven’t changed my mind, really, about how much damage versus good I think churches do for the world.

You see physics and rationalism as right, but at the same time you value community (which is also right seeing as humans are social creatures who demand healthy relationships). This is an ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas are situations where it is not about right vs. wrong, but right vs. right. In this case Truth vs. Loyalty. You cannot argue that Truth should always be prioritized over Loyalty, or that Loyalty should always be prioritized over Truth. What is needed is moderation. How to moderate is something I too am currently struggling with. Since graduating from College my Truth has become immersed in academic theory. I love reading, writing, and talking about theory. My family and hometown friends do not. In fact many of them hate it. It does not feel like an exciting game to them, rather it is a threat to their intelligence, personal image, and just stressful. I guess I could just cut these people from my life, but it would be an amputation of my self. It would be a painful process, and I find it rarely justified. On the other hand, what I find to be Truth is also perhaps the strongest statement I can make about my identity. To live a secure, healthy life, I need my Truth as much as I need a community. But it is also important to realize that neither is absolute. My community, as well as the symbolic body that I support, are both subjectively created.

interesting post. The good swimmer admits to swimming.

Disclaimer. I do NOT belong to the lesswrong community, and do not intend to.

Why? 1st: Too many atheists here. One cannot disprove the existence of 'god'. At least nobody ever did. only a) be indifferent, i.e. Agnostic, b) pondering the attributes of 'god', which are indeed rather inconsistent.

2nd: To 'believe' something, means to have an axiomatic base of sorts. Eg 'believing' that the world is perfect, guided along mathematical rules (which ones exactly?) This is, to my knowledge, never questioned in the community.

3rd: The acceptance that there -is/should- be something rather than nothing. (Books >800p have been written about that, but not recognized in the US. Buddhist/continental European.

The lesswrong base-belief seems to be: i) there is no god ii) the world is structured by mathematics and is causally closed iii) it is better that there is something rather than nothing. (change the priorites at Your pleasure)

As it seems: Anglo-American rationalists are very much in a defensive against the >80% lunatics, who believe in a god-entity, or aliens, or ghosts. Where they tend to adopt their specific anti-craziness craziness. (cf Dawkins)

Actually none of these premises (axioms) can be proved or disproved. It -is/shoud be- even in the very conception of the LW belief-system, that it cannot.

But, no, it is denied. It is predominatly considered a 'fact', whereas it is a 'belief'. It CANNOT be a fact, because every Axiom is always a constituent of belief. The most You can do is bet Your life on it.

As an exercise You can identify eg Schopenhauer's 'belief' along (i-iii). It is different.

As to Homeopathy and such, I must say that the rational mind easyly dismisses the empirical fact that H. often is more effective than 'rational medicine'. Why? Because of 'belief'. So the bitter finding is, that 'belief' actually can trump evidence at times.

To be clear: Most beliefs are terribly misguided, but there is a vector of unknown strength, where belief is a component. And 'belief' is a multidimensional issue.

I have just recently denounced the LW community as a deeply disturbed community of american nerds, fighting the windmills of life. Somehow I understand this, because the homeland of insanity nowadays seems to be the US of A.