The Problem Of Apostasy

We (for some value of "we") could do that. But it wouldn't erase all the past discussions on LW (and OB before that) that have touched on religious topics, and in practice it probably wouldn't stop LWers discussing religious topics, still less casually assuming things that are incompatible with conventional religious beliefs. (Even if explicitly religious discussion were strictly forbidden somehow, LWers would still be looking for natural causes and simple explanations, treating evolution as an important fact rather than an anti-God conspiracy, etc., etc., etc.) So it wouldn't do much to make LW readers in oppressively religious regimes safer or happier.

We probably could distance ourselves from atheism very easily. We just have someone who is high status post about how "religious/anti-religious discussion is the mindkiller" and encourage people not to talk about it.

Not discussing religion would be a lot more difficult than not discussing politics, because religion is much closer to the main topic of discussion. Unless you work in politics, your political views probably have very little impact on your day-to-day life, nor on most major decisions you make (barring extreme views). On the other hand, for most people, religion has a major impact on both their daily lives and on their epistemology.

You pick the people you want to influence, and you make yourself like them in all ways EXCEPT a carefully chosen few that are your most important targets of change. You might seriously consider publicly espousing a moderate version of Islam no matter what you believe if you are committed to the Islamic people of Morocco. You could even do it pretty honestly I think, isn't the essence of Islam submission to the will of Allah (as opposed to a believe in Allah)? If you made this choice couldn't you honestly say "I have deliberately and rationally chosen to submit myself to the will of Allah as do so many others in my country. And I will work tirelessly to advance science and freedom in Morocco as I am told by Allah to do so."

Whether it is admitted or not, This is what successful politicians must be doing. It is implausible that people so well informed as politicians, and some of them are incredibly intelligent, could truly back so many stupid policies as they do. They pick their battles and happily admit defeat on the battles they have not picked.

It could well be that given your values, this is the rational way for you to go.

They probably can't. Living in a seriously oppressive society is, well, seriously oppressive. Sometimes it really does get in your way.

They might be able to chip away a little at the edges here and there. That's probably about it, unless they want to change tack and start a revolution. In which case they'll probably need a cause with more popular appeal than rationalism.

Paul Graham discusses some ideas in this essay, granted he's mostly thinking about the western world, where the worst that's likely to happen to you is being shunned and possibly fired, but some of the advise still applies.

I am a "typical" american grew up in New York. When I was 18 and my sister was 17, my sister and I visited my father for a few weeks who was working in Esfahan. The shah was still in charge, it was the late 1970s.

My sister was a beautiful young woman with blond hair. Despite being warned by other non-Iranians that when we went in to see Esfahan she should dress modestly, she went out in a sleeveless dress because it was warm and sunny. Angry old men spat at her (at least one anyway) and the young men brushed up against her and copped feels.

The idea that you can manage the strong sexual and social urges men feel in the presence of attractive women by keeping the women uneducated, locked away, and covered when they are out is ludicrous, wasteful of more than half of the human resources a society has, plus pretty crappy for the women. Providing even the slightest respect towards this call for "modesty" is a strategic mistake. Well, maybe the slightest respect, an attractive dress wtih a moderate amount of cleavage showing is a better idea than a thong and a push-up bra for our rationality spokesmodel.

Plus I enjoy being oddly specific. It feels livelier to me than stilted generalities.

when in the last couple thousand of years, if Jews had wanted to stone apostates to death, would they have been able to do it?

Unless we're talking about apostates who converted to Christianity (or Islam etc.) and claimed that society's protection, then Jews could probably have stoned apostates at any point until civil rights were granted to Jews. Which happened in different European countries at any point between, offhand, 15th and 20th centuries.

when in the last couple thousand of years, if Jews had wanted to stone apostates to death, would they have been able to do it? The diasporan condition doesn't really allow it.

You sure about this? I don't know much about this topic, but I remember reading somewhere that 200 or more years ago Jews were often allowed to give punishment to their own people within diaspora. They couldn't stone a Christian/Muslim from the majority population, but they could stone (or otherwise kill, or otherwise severely punish) one of their own -- unless the given sinner already converted to Christianity/Islam and left their community. So converting to majority religion could be safe, but converting to atheism or some heresy within Judaism would not.

Internal revolutions, i.e. schisms, are key in my understanding too. I suspect that all the wars of the Reformation had a lot to do with the re-invention of the concept of religious toleration and its eventual spread across Europe. But perhaps even without soaking a continent in blood, schism can do its work. Exposure to a variety of religions seems likely to make people skeptical of enthroning any one of them.

Thus, atheism is only marginally relevant to freedom from religious oppression. The real key is alternate religions. If you would free people, underwrite the books or broadcasts by the next Erasmus or Luther or Rumi.

I fear that finding a way of attacking fundamentalist Islam while not being villified as one form of evil (sellout) or another (apostate) may not be possible.

And if it is not possible, then all your efforts at accomplish it will prove wasted efforts. Efforts that could have been spent working on something that is possible.

There are PLENTY of people who work against fundamentalist islam, some from within moderate islam, some from a position that abandoning islam is the only reasonable choice. I think you would do better finding good information about your choices for resisting by studying these people and what they do and how they do it and what they say. As a non-believer, I still find I have great respect for BOTH believers and non-believers who work against fundamentalist stupidity, violent oppression of non-believers, non-education of women, crappy education of men. I have worked with many believers who I respect greatly as good people and good scientists, enough to know that the moderate believer is not an an enemy of rationality the way a fundamentalist is. And I reach this conclusion as a non-believer.

Many countries have laws which are widely broken and selectively enforced, or which are easy to frame people for. In those cases, whether you are targeted and punished is a judgment call made by certain people in power, which in practice means that it depends mainly on not pissing off or threatening the wrong people, and on how effectively you would be expected to defend yourself (ie wealth and connections).

I'm not saying that rationalists will deliberately martyr themselves. I believe that some atheists will get caught because of bad luck or insufficiently careful precautions.

For example, it can be hard to be sure whether government policies will change, so that being publicly atheist might only have social costs one year, but be a deadly risk the year after.

Do you see that as a good thing?

Yes, if I'm in an environment where being associated with LW is potentially costly, I ought to avoid having my real identity linked to LW. The same goes for pretty much every other website and organization in the world.

How would one go about being a rationalist "with the serial numbers filed off".

My first suggestion would be to drop the whole formulation of "being a rationalist," which is more about identity than practice. I find that when I think about X as an identity rather than a practice, it starts to feel important that I express my affiliation with X, that I associate with other X-identifiers, that I talk about myself as an X, and so forth. In an environment like you describe, that's counterproductive. (Personally, I find it counterproductive in general, but YMMV.) Relatedly, our hypothetical hotheaded youth should take care not to indulge in the impulse to declare their superiority to the people around them by virtue of their greater rationality.

My second suggestion is basically the one I gave before: when I infer opportunities to achieve my goals, and the expected cost of taking those opportunities is one I am willing to pay, and the expected value of those opportunities is positive, I should take them.

Keep in mind the idea that Rationalists Win. Rationalism is a collection of methods for knowing more and using that knowledge to get more of what you want. If you learn that greeting the local police with "Allahu Akhbar" will lower your chance of being arrested, then all other things being equal, it is quite rational to greet them that way.

Extending that, unless you have a particular plan in mind, you should not put yourself in danger merely to avoid "lying" about your connection to or sympathy with or hatred of certain ideas.

Personally, I am a big fan of getting out of there. Every country whos intelligent youth leaves in noticable numbers is being sent a message that is received at some level by both the populace and the government of that country. Either that society fixes itself and its intelligent people stay, or it whithers and has smaller and smaller impact on the world as a whole, but at least the steady flux of intelligent people out of it provides an "infrastructure" that future intelligent youth can use to get out more efficiently.

Over the last 40 years, the west has made tremendous inroads against the communist oppression. Soviet Union is GONE. Communist China is a capitalist success story. Defectors and then later students leaving to study were a tremendously valuable part of that process.

If you need to stay in an evnironment where wearing a vertically striped shirt might get you killed, by all means wear a horizontally striped shirt. That is the rational choice.

How would one go about being a rationalist "with the serial numbers filed off".

There is plenty of support for rationality science and math in Arab history. There is probably plenty of support for rationality in the koran. While in Morocco, there is no reason to flaunt your atheism or disdain for much of what religion concludes: this is the shiny tip of the iceberg to a rationality you are developing whose real benefits are from the much more massive rational workings under the surface. So you could learn the support for rationality in the koran and the islamic traditions, and in any discussions cite these as support for a more rational position.

Just an idea that occurred to me.

And the most popular contenders, were the regime to change, are the Islamists...

Wow. Even more reason to want to get out now and enjoy your life among people who think in a way you consider valuable.

Consider it from the democratic point of view. Morocco DOESN'T WANT to be what you want to live in. It is not because of the evil king, it is not because of the evil Islamists. (Well at least not entirely). The people are not looking for the kind of rationality you are looking for.

It might be a nice democratic move to "live and let live." To let Moroccans (or at least the bulk of them) do what they want to do and to go someplace where people do what you want to do.

To me "live and let live" may be a statement of the most basic rational precept ever. It lets you win and it lets them win.

And speaking in long-term terms, secularism tends to correlate with an increase in the perception by the individual that they have the ability to alter their circumstances. There are exceptions (the US is really weird in being something like a functioning democracy but still having a ridiculously rabid level of religiosity) but in general democracy and social mobility seem to lead to higher levels of secularism, though they're not a panacea.

Oh, the propaganda definitely doesn't work. I said semi-democratic for a reason -- the forms of democracy are there, but they're not doing much of anything. They are a very, very, very weak form of pressure -- but that's not the same as no form of pressure at all. Tiny incremental changes (like the constitutional change last year which didn't change anything on the ground level but did remove the king's supposed divine status) can eventually add up. It's just that those add up on ridiculously slow timescales.

I don't know of any charity that does that. I suspect it's not cost-effective. You don't have to donate to a charity that helps with your problem. Donate to the one that does the most good for the least money.

It seems like the sort of thing a general human rights organization (Amnesty International? though I think they support prisoners more than trying to change laws) might take on.