Building rationalist communities: lessons from the Latter-day Saints

In some ways, my 'Insufficiently Awesome' project is a fork. I'm going to be concentrating on community-building, helping people to become effective physically and socially, and most importantly having fun. I'm not ever going to be one of the 'first-tier' rationalists, and I view a contribution on the supporting side to be my most effective plan of action.

I'm not going to try to pull people away from LW. Instead, I'm going to try to form a group that is fun enough that people not already in LW join it, and possibly get interested in joining the main community.

Edit - please disregard this post

Here's one take on the experience of being a Mormon missionary:

The true meaning and essence of the mission is to make a young man go through two years of complete and living hell. The worse the experience is, the more the child believes he has sacrificed, therefore solidifying the investment value of a completed mission. When the elder finally returns to the flock what else is there to do but protect the investment? After all, he paid for it with two years of blood, sweat and tears. He purchased the investment with the currency of youth. You're only 20 once. The idea that the best part of your golden youth was squandered knocking on doors hassling people with religious propaganda is unbearable. Return missionaries are all too willing to adopt the company line, close ranks with other returned missionaries and protect the precious investment. At least this was my experience.

Your mileage may vary.

Why would it?

It would matter if the doctrine -- reward and punishment in the afterlife, for example -- is tied with the practice of the members. I would suggest that the Mormon church, like a lot of churches, motivates its members at least partly with false threats and false rewards based on a fictitious afterlife. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy. Rationalists cannot use these methods and remain rationalists.

If people went door to door in business shirts and ties and tried to convince people that they should join an evolution appreciation society, I expect they might do as well or better than the Mormons.

1. What's the point of having an evolution appreciation society?

2. What if someone disproves evolution, but your society keeps going anyway?

That may be a valid point. Sometimes the medium and the message are quite separate.

With that said, the "LDS organizational model" as broadly described in the original post was a bit short on details. It's described that everybody works, nobody is paid. I'm sure that's convenient for the Mormon church as an organization, but why are the rank and file members of the organization so willing to pay this price? Conspicuous by its absence in the original post is any mention of how members are required to abstain from alcohol and caffeine, store up supplies in the event of a tribulation, and tithe ten percent of their income to the church. It costs a lot to stay a member of the Mormon church in good standing. Saying it's "the culture" doesn't really go a long way as an explanation as to why the members are willing to pay this price.

I would suggest that at least one of the reasons that Mormons submit to these costs is the promise of heavenly reward. A rationalist community cannot adopt this method.

Neither could a rationalist community adopt the specific practices of the Mormon missionaries, even if they wanted to. Mormon missionaries don't try to attract converts by means of rational argument -- they are specifically forbidden to debate or argue. The same page says missionaries can only read "books, magazines, and other material authorized by the Church."

A rationalist community could only adopt the methods and practices of the Mormon church by abandoning rationality.

Probably not; looking through that thread, I haven't previously up or downvoted any of them, interesting though some of them are.

Does the church openly acknowledge this?

My bet would be that they do, but don't phrase it the way gwern did - maybe something like "missionary work puts your faith through the test of fire" or "talking with unbelievers will give you a deeper understanding of your own faith".

...if you spent two years exclusive trying to explain to people about rationality, you'd probably get a far better understanding of what rationality is. As a result, you would become more rational.

But isn't the "experience" of a Mormon missionary rather different than trying to argue with people rationally? Aren't missionaries forbidden to debate or argue ? Aren't they required instead to attempt to lead potential converts along the so-called stairway to heaven ? What would happen to a missionary who said to his superiors, "If Joseph Smith was a prophet, I desire to believe he was a prophet. If he was not a prophet, I desire to believe he was not a prophet"? Is Mormonism trying to win converts by rational means?

But if you spent a couple years trying to convert people to Islam, or Buddhism, or Baha'i, you'd probably come away with stronger faith in those. The increase in faith is independent of the truth of the religions one proselytizes, given that they can't all be true, and the idea of gaining a better understanding of something that's divorced from reality, without realizing that it's divorced from reality, isn't even coherent. So if there's more to it than cognitive dissonance, how would you demonstrate that?

Yet Mormon missionaries act on the official behalf of an organization that cares very much about being perceived as beneficent and wholesome; if they didn't have a dress code someone in their employ would offend someone and there would be kerfluffle about it. Albeit perhaps this portion of the purpose could be served by a less narrow dress code.

That would make sense if the Mormon missionary dress code constituted a generic vaguely respectable look, but it's a lot stricter than that: more like a uniform, and distinguished from mainstream respectable in several subtle ways. (The thin black ties are what comes first to mind; I've never seen one off of a Mormon missionary or, in one case, a classmate playing Orson Scott Card.) People pick up on that; it fairly screams "outgroup", and in fact it's why we're having this conversation in the first place.

In light of this, I think I'm more inclined to buy the theory mentioned elsethread, that the missionary tradition is meant to produce loyalty in existing members rather than new recruits. If that's what you're going for, you want distinctive identifying features for your ingroup.

but evolutions are stupid, and there's little reason to suspect that any religion is truly optimal for propagation

I think that religious memes are probably more optimal than organisms because successful ones can spread much faster, rely less on pre-existing machinery, can change faster, and because so many of them have been tried.

However, its also possible that we've simply reached a local maxima, and that our current memes are too strong for most upstarts but many upstarts would, with further development, be much more effective.

Overall, I'm inclined to agree with you that rationalist memes would need to be designed.

Rationalist memes probably simply wouldn't be selected for and would have to be designed, because of the fact that you're specifically trying to get someone to weaken the biases that make it easier for religions to stay together.

If there's a reason to come back other than feeling personally involved in the group on that level, then why pull wool over people's eyes to maintain attendance when you can actually just be worth coming back to?

Enjoying and wanting are different- I might genuinely enjoy services more than sleeping in, but only choose to go to services instead of sleep in if I've committed to going.

It also seems likely that personal involvement magnifies other things (that is, you can't separate them in the hunt for efficiency without losses), but I'm not as sure of that one.