Having been raised Unitarian Universalist, I always find it very odd that “religion” is conflated with “unquestionable dogma”. I don’t think Unitarians have that any more than LessWrong does.
That said, if “religion” is being used as a shorthand for “unquestionable dogma”, then the comments about religion make significantly more sense :)
Having been raised Unitarian Universalist, I always find it very odd that “religion” is conflated with “unquestionable dogma”. I don’t think Unitarians have that any more than LessWrong does.
I highly doubt that. For one, a glance at a typical Unitarian web page will show a comprehensive and consistent list of left-wing ideological positions. Are you really claiming that if one were to express deep disagreement with those among the Unitarians, the reactions would be equally dispassionate, upfront, and open to argument as they usually are when the prevailing opinion is challenged on LW? (Not that LW is perfect in this regard either, but compared to nearly any other place, credit must be given where it’s due.)
Of course, some would claim that old-fashioned religious dogma is somehow incomparably worse and more irrational than modern ideological dogma, so much that the UU stuff doesn’t even deserve that designation. However, I don’t think this position is defensible, unless we insist on a rather tortured definition of “dogma.”
Are you really claiming that if one were to express deep disagreement with those among the Unitarians, the reactions would be equally dispassionate, upfront, and open to argument as they usually are when the prevailing opinion is challenged on LW?
The more I think about it, the more I find it difficult to answer this question. The main obstacle I’m running up against is that the two have very different communication styles, so the answer varies heavily depending on which communication style you’re seeking.
In my experiences, LessWrong is a very blunt, geeky approach to communication. It is also post-based, and thus neither real-time nor face-to-face. It’s very good at problem solving and science. People are likely to try and refute my stance, or treat it as a factual matter to be empirically tested.
Unitarian Universalist churches, by contrast, have been very polite and mainstream in their approach to communication. It’s also in-person, and real-time interaction. They’re very good at making people feel welcome and accepted. People are likely to simply accept that I happen to believe differently than them. People are likely to treat strong assertions as an article of faith, and therefore not particularly worth challenging.
I can’t really find a way to translate between these two, so I can’t really compare them.
Viewed through a mainstream, polite filter, I see LessWrong as a place that is actively hateful of religion, and extremely intolerant towards it, to the point of being willing to reject perfectly useful ideas simply because they happen to come from a religious organization.
Viewed through the blunt, geeky filter, I see UUs as blindly accepting and unwilling to actually challenge and dig in to an idea; I feel like I can have a very interesting discussion, but in many respects I’m a lot less likely to change someone’s mind (although, in other respects, I’d have a lot more luck using Dark Arts to manipulate a church-goer)
*justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
*world peace, liberty and justice for all; and
*respect for the interdependent web of all existence.
*Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
*a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; and
*the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregation and in society at large.
I would consider the first four to be values that are roughly shared with LessWrong, although there are definitely some differences in perspective. The fifth one, UUs focus on spiritual growth, LW focuses on growing rationality. The sixth principle is again shared. The seventh seems implemented in the LessWrong karma system, and I’d actually say LW does better here than the UUs.
It’s also worth noting that these are explicitly “shared values”, and not a creed. The general attitude I have seen is that one should show respect and tolerance even to people who don’t share these values.
LessWrong is a place for rationalists to meet and discuss rationality. UU Churches are a place for UUs to meet and discuss their shared values. It doesn’t serve LessWrong to have it dominated by “religion vs rationality” posts, nor posts trying to sell Christianity or de-convert rationalists. It doesn’t serve the UUs to have church dominated by challenges to those values.
This is a list of applause lights, not a statement of concrete values, beliefs, and goals. To find out the real UU values, beliefs, and goals, one must ask what exact arrangements constitute “liberty,” “justice,” etc., and what exact practical actions will, according to them, further these goals in practice. On these questions, there is nothing like consensus on LW, whereas judging by the uniformity of ideological positions espoused on the Unitarian/UU websites, there does seem to be a strong and apparently unchallenged consensus among them.
(To be precise, the applause lights list does include a few not completely vague goals, like e.g. “world peace,” but again, this says next to nothing without a clear position on what is likely to advance peace in practice and what to do when trade-offs are involved. There also seems to be one concrete political position on the list, namely democratism. However, judging by the responses seen when democracy is questioned on LW, there doesn’t seem to be a LW consensus on that either, and at any rate, even the notion of “democracy” is rather vague and weasely. I’m sure that the UU folks would be horrified by many things that have, or have historically had, firm democratic support in various places.)
judging by the uniformity of ideological positions espoused on the Unitarian/UU websites, there does seem to be a strong and apparently unchallenged consensus among them.
The core theme I’ve seen repeated across congregations is the “seven core principles” that I posted above. I’ve seen some degree of ideological consistency across those, but I’ve attended seen quite a few sermons discussing various perspectives on the seven core principles. It seems like a fairly common tradition to even invite speakers from other religions or affiliations to come and share their own thoughts.
Certainly a bias towards those who are “compatible” with the group consensus, and there is some degree of “group think”. LessWrong has this going for it as well, though: there’s a strong thread of anti-religion bias, and I’d say there’s a moderate pro-cryonics/singularity bias. I don’t see a lot of posts about how SIAI is a waste of time and money, or how Christianity is really misunderstood and we should come to embrace our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Can you can point to something specific in the UU literature that makes you feel that they’re less tolerant to dissent than LessWrong?
Can you can point to something specific in the UU literature that makes you feel that they’re less tolerant to dissent than LessWrong?
Before I even click at a link to a Unitarian Universalist website, I know with very high probability that there is going to be a “social justice” section espousing ideological positions on a number of issues. And for any such section, I can predict with almost full certainty what precisely these positions will be before I even read any of it.
Now, the UU folks would probably claim that such agreement exists simply because these positions are correct. However, even if I agreed that all these positions are correct, given the public controversy over many of these issues, it would still seem highly implausible that such ideological uniformity could be maintained in practice in a group highly tolerant of dissent. In contrast, I see nothing comparable on LW.
You say:
LessWrong has this going for it as well, though: there’s a strong thread of anti-religion bias, and I’d say there’s a moderate pro-cryonics/singularity bias. I don’t see a lot of posts about how SIAI is a waste of time and money, or how Christianity is really misunderstood and we should come to embrace our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Actually, in my opinion, LW does have its collective quirks and blind spots, but you’re nowhere close to pinpointing them.
Regarding SIAI being a waste of time and money, I’ve seen such opinions raised in several threads without getting downvoted or otherwise creating any drama. (I can dig up some links if you insist.) As long as you make a polite and coherent argument, you won’t elicit any hostility by criticizing SIAI.
Regarding religious proselytism, that is generally considered impolite anywhere. On the other hand, I actually do believe that there is a lot of misunderstanding of religion on LW, in the sense of many people having a “reversed stupidity” attitude towards various religious teachings and beliefs, developing “applause lights” reactions to various loudmouth atheists who bash traditional religion but believe far crazier stuff instead, etc., etc. I have made arguments along these lines on occasions, and I’ve never encountered any hostility in response, just reasonable counterarguments.
Regarding cryonics, it may well be that the average opinion on LW is heavily biased in favor of it. But again, if you want to argue that cryonics is bunk, you’ll be welcome to do so as long as you have something new, intelligent, and well-informed to say about it. (In fact, I remember posts from people who solicited for anti-cryonics arguments.)
In contrast to these topics, one that usually destroys the quality of discourse on LW are gender issues. This really is a recurring problem, but then, I seriously doubt that a diversity of views on these issues is welcome among UUs. Another problem are certain topics whose understanding requires familiarity with some peculiar theories that are discussed on LW occasionally, where certain (seemingly) very theoretical and far-fetched speculations are apparently taken seriously enough by some of the prominent people here that discussing them can lead to bizarre drama. None of this however comes anywhere close to the ideological uniformity that I observe among the Unitarian Universalists, at least judging from their internet presence.
Before I even click at a link to a Unitarian Universalist website, I know with very high probability that there is going to be a “social justice” section espousing ideological positions on a number of issues.
I suppose I should reiterate this, as it seems to be unclear: My point was not that UUs don’t have a degree of “group consensus.” My point was that they do not treat it as an unquestionable dogma.
That they generally have a “social values” page does not seem at all contradictory to this—the issue is whether they’re willing to entertain discussion from opposing views.
In my (anecdotal) experience as someone who has actually attended UU churches, the answer has been very strongly yes. If you have actual experiences to the contrary, or have seen websites from them that seem to make it vividly clear that dissent is not tolerated, I’d be genuinely curious to see this. It’s entirely possible that my experiences aren’t typical, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support that theory.
Tangentially: The discussion of actual issues and biases on LessWrong is appreciated. I’ve only been here briefly, so I haven’t really gotten to know the community that well yet.
This was sadly not clear in my original post, but my goal was to compare “looking at a public website” to “reading top-level posts”. I’ve never seen a top-level post supporting Christianity or condemning the SIAI here. On an individual level, I’m sure there are people that hold those stances, just as there are individual UU members who don’t agree with the values you’re seeing on the UU websites.
My point was simply “when you look at the ‘public face’ of an organisation, you’re going to see some degree of consensus, because that’s just how human organisations work”
The worldwide rationalist community has, for more than a century now, come to the conclusion that there is almost certainly no God. We consider the non-existence of God as usually defined (i.e. a sentient being who created the universe with intent, is still active in the universe, is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, and hears and sometimes answers prayers), to be so conclusively proven that there is usually no further need to discuss it.
...
We have a general community policy of not pretending to be open-minded on long-settled issues for the sake of not offending people. If we spent our time debating the basics, we would never get to the advanced stuff at all.
You don’t see a lot of posts about how gravity doesn’t really exist and it’s just the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down with his tentacles, either.
Note the previous part of the sentence by Vladimir_M that you quoted: (emphasis added)
On these questions, there is nothing like consensus on LW
There’s a difference between consensus on empirical questions where the evidence falls overwhelmingly on one side, and consensus on higher-level ideological questions with a much less clear distribution of both evidence and arguments.
“You don’t see a lot of posts about how gravity doesn’t really exist and it’s just the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down with his tentacles, either.”
And my original post:
I always find it very odd that “religion” is conflated with “unquestionable dogma”. I don’t think Unitarians have that any more than LessWrong does.
I’m not sure how pointing out that LessWrong explicitly has unquestionable dogma disproves my point.… That LessWrong’s dogma is primarily about scientific/empirical/factual matters is simply a function of it’s focus: LessWrong is about that sort of thing, whereas Unitarian Universalism is about social justice, community, and spirituality.
So, when you put it that way, I’d actually say the UUs have vastly less questionable dogma.
I’m not sure how pointing out that LessWrong explicitly has unquestionable dogma disproves my point....
Nope. There’s a big difference between “settled issues where questioning is a waste of time and effort” and “arbitrary positions where questioning is declared heretical by some authority (either a person or social mores).”
LessWrong is about that sort of thing, whereas Unitarian Universalism is about social justice, community, and spirituality.
Well, yes. You’re defining this yourself: LessWrong is about “settled issues” of science, and therefore it’s okay to dismiss debate as a “waste of time and effort”. Unitarian Universalists are about significantly more arbitrary positions, and therefore there’s a lot more room for discussion, because people have different starting assumptions and/or goals.
Nope. There’s a big difference between “settled issues where questioning is a waste of time and effort” and “arbitrary positions where questioning is declared heretical by some authority (either a person or social mores).”
Science does have the advantage that, more or less, everyone is willing to accept the same starting assumptions. Social justice and morality do not run in to that.
If you take the starting assumptions of the UUs as a given, then most of their stances are settled issues where questioning is a waste of time and effort. You can still have some really interesting discussions on corner cases and implementations, since the world is very chaotic and no one has yet managed to arrange a control group for controlled study :)
Of course, the UU stated stances are still fairly vague, so even within those, there’s the question of whether violence is ever okay, etc.
All this really boils down to the question:
“arbitrary positions where questioning is declared heretical by some authority (either a person or social mores).”
What evidence, exactly, do you have that Unitarian Universalists declare things ‘heretical’ significantly more often than LessWrong does?
Well, yes. You’re defining this yourself: LessWrong is about “settled issues” of science, and therefore it’s okay to dismiss debate as a “waste of time and effort”. Unitarian Universalists are about significantly more arbitrary positions, and therefore there’s a lot more room for discussion, because people have different starting assumptions and/or goals.
No, Less Wrong isn’t about settled issues, but they do come up fairly often in the course of relevant discussions. Separate magisteria arguments fail because they imply that consensus can be found based on different standards of evidence for different areas of discussion. Every area needs to be held to the same standard.
If you take the starting assumptions of the UUs as a given, then most of their stances are settled issues where questioning is a waste of time and effort. You can still have some really interesting discussions on corner cases and implementations, since the world is very chaotic and no one has yet managed to arrange a control group for controlled study :)
I’m not sure what the UU starting assumptions are. However, it seems unlikely that they are only terminal values, so standards of evidence should apply.
What evidence, exactly, do you have that Unitarian Universalists declare things ‘heretical’ significantly more often than LessWrong does?
The point of the first post that I made in this chain is that coming to a consensus based on overwhelming evidence is not the same as declaring something heretical.
You seem to be pursuing two lines of argument. In some places you’re just asserting that UU does not have dogmatic elements, in contradiction to Vladimir_M’s observations. That’s a separate conversation, and not really my concern.
In other places, though, you’re asserting that LW does have dogmatic elements. I have two problems with this. First, it’s not accurate, as I’ve explained. Second, taking the two lines of argument together, it sounds like you’re saying “UU doesn’t have dogma… and anyway, LW does too!” The two clearly aren’t consistent, so which is it?
Just to be clear, my main point is that LW doesn’t have dogma or declare things heretical, not that UU does (although I think it might approach those things in some areas). For that point, I’m providing examples and descriptions of the difference between consensus based on overwhelming evidence and arbitrary dogma. Dogma is arbitrarily absolute; it’s something to be questioned under no circumstances. Consensus based on evidence is a matter of Bayesian updating.
The two clearly aren’t consistent, so which is it?
Different definitions of dogma. The easiest translation would be “based on this usage of the word dogma, neither the UUs nor LW have it. Based on this other usage of the word dogma, both the UUs and LW seem to have it about equally. I can’t see any evidence that either definition results in the UUs having more dogma, and I can’t think of a third definition that makes sense, so I’m not sure why you’re insisting that the UUs are more dogmatic”.
English sucks for handling different definitions of the same word, and my brain does a wonderful job of not noticing when I’ve done this ^^;
Just to be clear, my main point is that LW doesn’t have dogma or declare things heretical, not that UU does
Ahh, okay. Then I think we’re actually on the same page. I was reading your “arbitrary absolutes” as being a reference to the UUs specifically. This makes much more sense now :)
An unchallenged consensus on positions of social policy, which are complicated and generally do not have conclusive evidence on one side of an argument, indicates the existence of some reinforcing social mores.
Edit: the comment at which this reply was directed was significantly altered after I typed this reply. Please hold on while I attempt to catch up.
I think we might have ended up off-track, so let me try to sum up my stance:
1) Unitarian Universalists, by default, must have “arbitrary positions” because they are not discussing settled matters. Therefore, the fact that they have arbitrary positions in and of itself is simply a function of their focus; all social justice groups will run in to this issue, whether they are religious or not.
2) Unitarian Universalists do not demonstrate any particular tendency towards an environment where “questioning is declared heretical by some authority”. Unitarians are “dispassionate, upfront, and open to argument” on roughly the same level as LessWrong.
What I would be interested in hearing is actual evidence that I could use to update either of these.
To the previous evidence offered: I do not understand how having a consistent stance on an organisational level is evidence that they are close-minded or otherwise less open to discussing and debating opposing viewpoints.
If your thought process consists entirely of “having a consistent organisational stance means you have unquestionable dogma” then I think we are either running in to a definitions issue, or will have to agree to disagree. Otherwise I’d be curious if you can elaborate on the missing pieces.
I think we might have ended up off-track, so let me try to sum up my stance:
I did the same in my new reply to your previous post. Let me just address one side point:
Unitarian Universalists, by default, must have “arbitrary positions” because they are not discussing settled matters. Therefore, the fact that they have arbitrary positions in and of itself is simply a function of their focus; all social justice groups will run in to this issue, whether they are religious or not.
The best method of operation for a social justice group which wishes to find optimal conclusions may be to hold off on proposing solutions. Getting stuck in a position that’s incorrect or not useful seems like a serious concern. There shouldn’t necessarily be a consensus position on a given issue, regardless of the goal of the group.
The best method of operation for a social justice group which wishes to find optimal conclusions may be to hold off on proposing solutions.
Mmm, my gut response is thinking that there are not a lot of solved social issues so this wouldn’t be very useful for a social justice group that actually wanted to get things done? The UUs have been fairly politically active in spreading their values for a while, and I haven’t seen any evidence that their politics is particularly ineffective for their values.
For clarity: How do you think the members of your local UU congregation would react if one of their members turned up one day and said something along the lines of “you know, I’ve been thinking about it and doing the math, and it looks to me like war is actually pretty useful, instrumentally—it seems like it saves more lives than it takes, and at least in places with recruitment methods like ours, people who choose to be soldiers seem to get a fairly good deal out of it on average”?
Or did you mean the kind of lpoliicies that count as “left wing” in the US, and liberal/moderate/centre-left everywhere else.
“Everywhere else”? I hate to break the news, but there are other places under the Sun besides the Anglosphere and Western Europe! In most of the world, both by population and surface area, and including some quite prosperous and civilized places, many UU positions would be seen as unimaginably extremist. (Try arguing their favored immigration policies to the Japanese, for example.)
You are however correct that in other Western/Anglospheric countries, the level of ideological uniformity in the political mainstream is far higher than in the U.S., and their mainstream is roughly similar to the UU doctrine on many issues, though not all. (Among their intellectual elites, on the other hand, Unitarian Universalism might as well be the established religion.)
In any case, I didn’t say that the UUs had the most extreme left-wing positions on everything. On the contrary, what they espouse is roughly somewhere on the left fringe of the mainstream, and more radical leftist positions are certainly conceivable (and held by some small numbers of people). What is significant for the purposes of this discussion is the apparent ideological uniformity, not the content of their doctrine. My points would hold even if their positions were anywhere to the left or right of the present ones, as long as they were equally uniform.
Point taken, and thanks for the interesting link. Googling around a bit more, it seems like there are a few groups like these, but they are small and extreme outliers without influence and status. Before writing my above comments, I checked out the links on the first few search pages that come up when you google “Unitarian Universalist,” and I definitely encountered perfectly predictable and uniform positions advocated on those.
Yes, I have rummaged around his website already. There is some interesting stuff there.
Interestingly, in the “Market for Sanctimony” article, he confirms my impressions about Unitarian Universalism, contrary to the claims of User:handoflixue:
Officially, UU does not have a creed. A consequence of this is that any psychological needs that depend on getting together with co-believers are likely to be frustrated at a UU church. This in turn leads people to promote hard left-wing politics as an unofficial creed. [...] Thus a church that prides itself on not asking people to check their minds at the door ends up doing it anyway, just in a different fashion.
he confirms my impressions about Unitarian Universalism, contrary to the claims of User:handoflixue:
My claim was about unquestionable dogma, and the UUs as a whole. I’m not sure how we can still be having this debate after someone else provided you links to UUs who question the dogma...
My concern is about using the term “left wing” in contexts that have nothing to do with socialism. Being pro immigration is also a policy of some libertarians, so that doesn’t qualify.
Having been raised Unitarian Universalist, I always find it very odd that “religion” is conflated with “unquestionable dogma”. I don’t think Unitarians have that any more than LessWrong does.
I was raised a Unitarian Universalist too, by agnostic parents. It probably has a lot to do with my generally positive attitude towards religion. (I now sing in a High Anglican church choir and attend services regularly mostly because I find it benefits my mental health.)
Having been raised Unitarian Universalist, I always find it very odd that “religion” is conflated with “unquestionable dogma”. I don’t think Unitarians have that any more than LessWrong does.
That said, if “religion” is being used as a shorthand for “unquestionable dogma”, then the comments about religion make significantly more sense :)
I highly doubt that. For one, a glance at a typical Unitarian web page will show a comprehensive and consistent list of left-wing ideological positions. Are you really claiming that if one were to express deep disagreement with those among the Unitarians, the reactions would be equally dispassionate, upfront, and open to argument as they usually are when the prevailing opinion is challenged on LW? (Not that LW is perfect in this regard either, but compared to nearly any other place, credit must be given where it’s due.)
Of course, some would claim that old-fashioned religious dogma is somehow incomparably worse and more irrational than modern ideological dogma, so much that the UU stuff doesn’t even deserve that designation. However, I don’t think this position is defensible, unless we insist on a rather tortured definition of “dogma.”
The more I think about it, the more I find it difficult to answer this question. The main obstacle I’m running up against is that the two have very different communication styles, so the answer varies heavily depending on which communication style you’re seeking.
In my experiences, LessWrong is a very blunt, geeky approach to communication. It is also post-based, and thus neither real-time nor face-to-face. It’s very good at problem solving and science. People are likely to try and refute my stance, or treat it as a factual matter to be empirically tested.
Unitarian Universalist churches, by contrast, have been very polite and mainstream in their approach to communication. It’s also in-person, and real-time interaction. They’re very good at making people feel welcome and accepted. People are likely to simply accept that I happen to believe differently than them. People are likely to treat strong assertions as an article of faith, and therefore not particularly worth challenging.
I can’t really find a way to translate between these two, so I can’t really compare them.
Viewed through a mainstream, polite filter, I see LessWrong as a place that is actively hateful of religion, and extremely intolerant towards it, to the point of being willing to reject perfectly useful ideas simply because they happen to come from a religious organization.
Viewed through the blunt, geeky filter, I see UUs as blindly accepting and unwilling to actually challenge and dig in to an idea; I feel like I can have a very interesting discussion, but in many respects I’m a lot less likely to change someone’s mind (although, in other respects, I’d have a lot more luck using Dark Arts to manipulate a church-goer)
Well, there are seven formal UU values:
*The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
*justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
*world peace, liberty and justice for all; and
*respect for the interdependent web of all existence.
*Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
*a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; and
*the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregation and in society at large.
I would consider the first four to be values that are roughly shared with LessWrong, although there are definitely some differences in perspective. The fifth one, UUs focus on spiritual growth, LW focuses on growing rationality. The sixth principle is again shared. The seventh seems implemented in the LessWrong karma system, and I’d actually say LW does better here than the UUs.
It’s also worth noting that these are explicitly “shared values”, and not a creed. The general attitude I have seen is that one should show respect and tolerance even to people who don’t share these values.
LessWrong is a place for rationalists to meet and discuss rationality. UU Churches are a place for UUs to meet and discuss their shared values. It doesn’t serve LessWrong to have it dominated by “religion vs rationality” posts, nor posts trying to sell Christianity or de-convert rationalists. It doesn’t serve the UUs to have church dominated by challenges to those values.
This is a list of applause lights, not a statement of concrete values, beliefs, and goals. To find out the real UU values, beliefs, and goals, one must ask what exact arrangements constitute “liberty,” “justice,” etc., and what exact practical actions will, according to them, further these goals in practice. On these questions, there is nothing like consensus on LW, whereas judging by the uniformity of ideological positions espoused on the Unitarian/UU websites, there does seem to be a strong and apparently unchallenged consensus among them.
(To be precise, the applause lights list does include a few not completely vague goals, like e.g. “world peace,” but again, this says next to nothing without a clear position on what is likely to advance peace in practice and what to do when trade-offs are involved. There also seems to be one concrete political position on the list, namely democratism. However, judging by the responses seen when democracy is questioned on LW, there doesn’t seem to be a LW consensus on that either, and at any rate, even the notion of “democracy” is rather vague and weasely. I’m sure that the UU folks would be horrified by many things that have, or have historically had, firm democratic support in various places.)
The core theme I’ve seen repeated across congregations is the “seven core principles” that I posted above. I’ve seen some degree of ideological consistency across those, but I’ve attended seen quite a few sermons discussing various perspectives on the seven core principles. It seems like a fairly common tradition to even invite speakers from other religions or affiliations to come and share their own thoughts.
Certainly a bias towards those who are “compatible” with the group consensus, and there is some degree of “group think”. LessWrong has this going for it as well, though: there’s a strong thread of anti-religion bias, and I’d say there’s a moderate pro-cryonics/singularity bias. I don’t see a lot of posts about how SIAI is a waste of time and money, or how Christianity is really misunderstood and we should come to embrace our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Can you can point to something specific in the UU literature that makes you feel that they’re less tolerant to dissent than LessWrong?
Before I even click at a link to a Unitarian Universalist website, I know with very high probability that there is going to be a “social justice” section espousing ideological positions on a number of issues. And for any such section, I can predict with almost full certainty what precisely these positions will be before I even read any of it.
Now, the UU folks would probably claim that such agreement exists simply because these positions are correct. However, even if I agreed that all these positions are correct, given the public controversy over many of these issues, it would still seem highly implausible that such ideological uniformity could be maintained in practice in a group highly tolerant of dissent. In contrast, I see nothing comparable on LW.
You say:
Actually, in my opinion, LW does have its collective quirks and blind spots, but you’re nowhere close to pinpointing them.
Regarding SIAI being a waste of time and money, I’ve seen such opinions raised in several threads without getting downvoted or otherwise creating any drama. (I can dig up some links if you insist.) As long as you make a polite and coherent argument, you won’t elicit any hostility by criticizing SIAI.
Regarding religious proselytism, that is generally considered impolite anywhere. On the other hand, I actually do believe that there is a lot of misunderstanding of religion on LW, in the sense of many people having a “reversed stupidity” attitude towards various religious teachings and beliefs, developing “applause lights” reactions to various loudmouth atheists who bash traditional religion but believe far crazier stuff instead, etc., etc. I have made arguments along these lines on occasions, and I’ve never encountered any hostility in response, just reasonable counterarguments.
Regarding cryonics, it may well be that the average opinion on LW is heavily biased in favor of it. But again, if you want to argue that cryonics is bunk, you’ll be welcome to do so as long as you have something new, intelligent, and well-informed to say about it. (In fact, I remember posts from people who solicited for anti-cryonics arguments.)
In contrast to these topics, one that usually destroys the quality of discourse on LW are gender issues. This really is a recurring problem, but then, I seriously doubt that a diversity of views on these issues is welcome among UUs. Another problem are certain topics whose understanding requires familiarity with some peculiar theories that are discussed on LW occasionally, where certain (seemingly) very theoretical and far-fetched speculations are apparently taken seriously enough by some of the prominent people here that discussing them can lead to bizarre drama. None of this however comes anywhere close to the ideological uniformity that I observe among the Unitarian Universalists, at least judging from their internet presence.
I suppose I should reiterate this, as it seems to be unclear: My point was not that UUs don’t have a degree of “group consensus.” My point was that they do not treat it as an unquestionable dogma.
That they generally have a “social values” page does not seem at all contradictory to this—the issue is whether they’re willing to entertain discussion from opposing views.
In my (anecdotal) experience as someone who has actually attended UU churches, the answer has been very strongly yes. If you have actual experiences to the contrary, or have seen websites from them that seem to make it vividly clear that dissent is not tolerated, I’d be genuinely curious to see this. It’s entirely possible that my experiences aren’t typical, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support that theory.
Tangentially: The discussion of actual issues and biases on LessWrong is appreciated. I’ve only been here briefly, so I haven’t really gotten to know the community that well yet.
This was sadly not clear in my original post, but my goal was to compare “looking at a public website” to “reading top-level posts”. I’ve never seen a top-level post supporting Christianity or condemning the SIAI here. On an individual level, I’m sure there are people that hold those stances, just as there are individual UU members who don’t agree with the values you’re seeing on the UU websites.
My point was simply “when you look at the ‘public face’ of an organisation, you’re going to see some degree of consensus, because that’s just how human organisations work”
LessWrong FAQ:
You don’t see a lot of posts about how gravity doesn’t really exist and it’s just the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down with his tentacles, either.
Note the previous part of the sentence by Vladimir_M that you quoted: (emphasis added)
There’s a difference between consensus on empirical questions where the evidence falls overwhelmingly on one side, and consensus on higher-level ideological questions with a much less clear distribution of both evidence and arguments.
And my original post:
I’m not sure how pointing out that LessWrong explicitly has unquestionable dogma disproves my point.… That LessWrong’s dogma is primarily about scientific/empirical/factual matters is simply a function of it’s focus: LessWrong is about that sort of thing, whereas Unitarian Universalism is about social justice, community, and spirituality.
So, when you put it that way, I’d actually say the UUs have vastly less questionable dogma.
Nope. There’s a big difference between “settled issues where questioning is a waste of time and effort” and “arbitrary positions where questioning is declared heretical by some authority (either a person or social mores).”
This sounds like a separate magisteria argument.
Well, yes. You’re defining this yourself: LessWrong is about “settled issues” of science, and therefore it’s okay to dismiss debate as a “waste of time and effort”. Unitarian Universalists are about significantly more arbitrary positions, and therefore there’s a lot more room for discussion, because people have different starting assumptions and/or goals.
Science does have the advantage that, more or less, everyone is willing to accept the same starting assumptions. Social justice and morality do not run in to that.
If you take the starting assumptions of the UUs as a given, then most of their stances are settled issues where questioning is a waste of time and effort. You can still have some really interesting discussions on corner cases and implementations, since the world is very chaotic and no one has yet managed to arrange a control group for controlled study :)
Of course, the UU stated stances are still fairly vague, so even within those, there’s the question of whether violence is ever okay, etc.
All this really boils down to the question:
What evidence, exactly, do you have that Unitarian Universalists declare things ‘heretical’ significantly more often than LessWrong does?
No, Less Wrong isn’t about settled issues, but they do come up fairly often in the course of relevant discussions. Separate magisteria arguments fail because they imply that consensus can be found based on different standards of evidence for different areas of discussion. Every area needs to be held to the same standard.
I’m not sure what the UU starting assumptions are. However, it seems unlikely that they are only terminal values, so standards of evidence should apply.
The point of the first post that I made in this chain is that coming to a consensus based on overwhelming evidence is not the same as declaring something heretical.
You seem to be pursuing two lines of argument. In some places you’re just asserting that UU does not have dogmatic elements, in contradiction to Vladimir_M’s observations. That’s a separate conversation, and not really my concern.
In other places, though, you’re asserting that LW does have dogmatic elements. I have two problems with this. First, it’s not accurate, as I’ve explained. Second, taking the two lines of argument together, it sounds like you’re saying “UU doesn’t have dogma… and anyway, LW does too!” The two clearly aren’t consistent, so which is it?
Just to be clear, my main point is that LW doesn’t have dogma or declare things heretical, not that UU does (although I think it might approach those things in some areas). For that point, I’m providing examples and descriptions of the difference between consensus based on overwhelming evidence and arbitrary dogma. Dogma is arbitrarily absolute; it’s something to be questioned under no circumstances. Consensus based on evidence is a matter of Bayesian updating.
Different definitions of dogma. The easiest translation would be “based on this usage of the word dogma, neither the UUs nor LW have it. Based on this other usage of the word dogma, both the UUs and LW seem to have it about equally. I can’t see any evidence that either definition results in the UUs having more dogma, and I can’t think of a third definition that makes sense, so I’m not sure why you’re insisting that the UUs are more dogmatic”.
English sucks for handling different definitions of the same word, and my brain does a wonderful job of not noticing when I’ve done this ^^;
Ahh, okay. Then I think we’re actually on the same page. I was reading your “arbitrary absolutes” as being a reference to the UUs specifically. This makes much more sense now :)
An unchallenged consensus on positions of social policy, which are complicated and generally do not have conclusive evidence on one side of an argument, indicates the existence of some reinforcing social mores.
Edit: the comment at which this reply was directed was significantly altered after I typed this reply. Please hold on while I attempt to catch up.
I think we can both agree that even LessWrong has social mores. The topic is “unquestionable dogma.”
Having been to a UU church and attended UU sermons, I cannot understand how you could possibly portray it as an “unchallenged consensus”.
Edit: Sorry about the edit, and completely understood :)
I think we might have ended up off-track, so let me try to sum up my stance:
1) Unitarian Universalists, by default, must have “arbitrary positions” because they are not discussing settled matters. Therefore, the fact that they have arbitrary positions in and of itself is simply a function of their focus; all social justice groups will run in to this issue, whether they are religious or not.
2) Unitarian Universalists do not demonstrate any particular tendency towards an environment where “questioning is declared heretical by some authority”. Unitarians are “dispassionate, upfront, and open to argument” on roughly the same level as LessWrong.
What I would be interested in hearing is actual evidence that I could use to update either of these.
To the previous evidence offered: I do not understand how having a consistent stance on an organisational level is evidence that they are close-minded or otherwise less open to discussing and debating opposing viewpoints.
If your thought process consists entirely of “having a consistent organisational stance means you have unquestionable dogma” then I think we are either running in to a definitions issue, or will have to agree to disagree. Otherwise I’d be curious if you can elaborate on the missing pieces.
I did the same in my new reply to your previous post. Let me just address one side point:
The best method of operation for a social justice group which wishes to find optimal conclusions may be to hold off on proposing solutions. Getting stuck in a position that’s incorrect or not useful seems like a serious concern. There shouldn’t necessarily be a consensus position on a given issue, regardless of the goal of the group.
Mmm, my gut response is thinking that there are not a lot of solved social issues so this wouldn’t be very useful for a social justice group that actually wanted to get things done? The UUs have been fairly politically active in spreading their values for a while, and I haven’t seen any evidence that their politics is particularly ineffective for their values.
Nevertheless there are some from time to time, as well as comments to effect and many more that are ambivalent.
For clarity: How do you think the members of your local UU congregation would react if one of their members turned up one day and said something along the lines of “you know, I’ve been thinking about it and doing the math, and it looks to me like war is actually pretty useful, instrumentally—it seems like it saves more lives than it takes, and at least in places with recruitment methods like ours, people who choose to be soldiers seem to get a fairly good deal out of it on average”?
I’ve been to sermons on exactly that topic, so I’d have to argue that in my experience they take it very well.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat? Class struggle? Ownership of the means of Production? Universal Free Healthcare, even?
Or did you mean the kind of lpoliicies that count as “left wing” in the US, and liberal/moderate/centre-left everywhere else.
“Everywhere else”? I hate to break the news, but there are other places under the Sun besides the Anglosphere and Western Europe! In most of the world, both by population and surface area, and including some quite prosperous and civilized places, many UU positions would be seen as unimaginably extremist. (Try arguing their favored immigration policies to the Japanese, for example.)
You are however correct that in other Western/Anglospheric countries, the level of ideological uniformity in the political mainstream is far higher than in the U.S., and their mainstream is roughly similar to the UU doctrine on many issues, though not all. (Among their intellectual elites, on the other hand, Unitarian Universalism might as well be the established religion.)
In any case, I didn’t say that the UUs had the most extreme left-wing positions on everything. On the contrary, what they espouse is roughly somewhere on the left fringe of the mainstream, and more radical leftist positions are certainly conceivable (and held by some small numbers of people). What is significant for the purposes of this discussion is the apparent ideological uniformity, not the content of their doctrine. My points would hold even if their positions were anywhere to the left or right of the present ones, as long as they were equally uniform.
There are some conservative Universal Unitarians, which seems to indicate that there isn’t complete ideological uniformity.
Point taken, and thanks for the interesting link. Googling around a bit more, it seems like there are a few groups like these, but they are small and extreme outliers without influence and status. Before writing my above comments, I checked out the links on the first few search pages that come up when you google “Unitarian Universalist,” and I definitely encountered perfectly predictable and uniform positions advocated on those.
In case you haven’t encountered him before, Peter A Taylor, the author of that FAQ has some interesting articles on religion and politics: Rational Religion, The Market for Sanctimony, or Yet Another Space Alien Cult, What Does “Morality” Mean?, etc. - he apparently is a reader of LessWrong.
Yes, I have rummaged around his website already. There is some interesting stuff there.
Interestingly, in the “Market for Sanctimony” article, he confirms my impressions about Unitarian Universalism, contrary to the claims of User:handoflixue:
My claim was about unquestionable dogma, and the UUs as a whole. I’m not sure how we can still be having this debate after someone else provided you links to UUs who question the dogma...
My concern is about using the term “left wing” in contexts that have nothing to do with socialism. Being pro immigration is also a policy of some libertarians, so that doesn’t qualify.
I was raised a Unitarian Universalist too, by agnostic parents. It probably has a lot to do with my generally positive attitude towards religion. (I now sing in a High Anglican church choir and attend services regularly mostly because I find it benefits my mental health.)
Given that Unitarianism was originally Christian and yet some UU’s have collectively embraced atheism, you are probably right about that.
ie they won’t burn you at the stake, and they won’t stick around to be questioned when they can find someone else to talk to who’ll agree with them.
I’m curious if you’re being sarcastic or serious. It’s hard to tell online :)