If you spend two years trying to convert people that way, the median expectation is “no conversions” (one or two is substantial success, and more than that is a crazy outlier).
That’s useful information (for the cultishness discussion thread). Do you have a cite to hand?
I must admit, I’d assumed this method had some success, enough to bother. So I’m glad we don’t have to fear rationalists going door to door waking people too early on Saturday morning and saying “Say, friend, have you read the Sequences?”
Searching for confirmation on google I found different statistics quoted in an article about relative religious growth rates here. The source may have incentives to inflate their numbers but they claim:
The average missionary in 1989 brought 9.1 people into the church, while in 2000 the average missionary brought 4.6 people into the church. When one accounts for actual activity and retention rates, with the great majority of LDS convert growth occurring in Latin America and other areas with low retention and only 20-25% of convert growth occurring in North America, it can be determined that of the 4.6 persons baptized by the average missionary each year, approximately 1.3 will remain active.
I think the book would be helpful for the “cultishness discussion” here but also for the general “rapture of the nerds” critique aimed at the singularity hypothesis when people first encounter it. One helpful thing about The Future Of Religion is to dissolve the confusion that comes up from the conjunction of particular supernatural theories and particular sociological processes.
Sloppy thinking can lead to accusations that some political movements or psycho-therapeutic fads are “cults” when there is no substantial religious doctrine, just a certain set of “human tribal instincts” being deployed in a manner that is characteristic of many voluntary social processes. The LaRouche Movement is an instructive edge case, which is sometimes accused of being a “political cult”.
Any conscious/rational human improvement system probably will have to make use of some of these basic mechanisms if it is to be effective, and the question (as always) is simply whether they are being used for good ends, given the actual state of the world.
Another useful item for the cultishness discussion might be the Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame because it encodes a useful set of symptoms that predict whether something is going seriously wrong with a group… or at least signal that is is “playing with fluorine”. There are reasons to play with fluorine, but not many good reasons.
Those numbers and references are utterly wonderful, thank you!
Calling something with no substantial religious doctrine a “cult” is not a category error for the thing I’m talking about as the word “cult”. It’s not my private definition either. It’s a particular sociological phenomenon in a group. It’s the thing someone is worried about when they say “Has Bob joined some sort of cult?” I need to actually describe what I’m talking about, which I’m not sure how to unpack with the requisite accuracy. But LaRouche is right in there, and Amway is too for another one.
Now to relate that more specifically to predatory infectious memes. And dig up all the stuff I read ten or so years ago.
Yeah, I read into that stuff largely out of a curiosity about memetics too :-)
It’s the thing someone is worried about when they say “Has Bob joined some sort of cult?”
I like “the mom test” for that. If you’re hanging out with a group based around a common set of beliefs that are taken by the group to be formally true, would you be too embarrassed to ask your mom for advice about the group or the beliefs? If so, then for you (given your parents and their community and so on) it’s close enough to a cult that you really should stay away (unless you’re just doing participant observation as a research project). On the other hand, if you’re not too embarrassed, then you really should actually go ask her for advice, because that kind of practical and emotionally grounded feedback is good input for people to be mindful of, even if it isn’t always perfect.
This is a primary reason I recommend that people talk to one or both parents about SIAI if they start suspecting that they should get personally involved with existential risk activism and FAI and so on :-)
I’m personally not at all surprised that the success rates are so low. If the evangelists had actually internalized the idea that they’re doing it to save people from hell, they’d take it much more seriously. Instead, it’s generally framed as a matter of duty to the religious community, or a sign of personal virtue for making the effort at all. It doesn’t need to have a significant success rate to sustain itself, although I imagine that if it were inefficient enough that most door to door evangelists had never heard of a successful conversion, they might reevaluate their methods.
If you really wanted to convert others though, not merely to do the most that was comfortable, or convince yourself you had made an honest effort, I think that the mainstream Mormon approach would not be the most effective method. Or rather, it doesn’t take the approach far enough. Maybe I’m merely projecting an atypical attitude, but I think it would be far more effective to dedicate your life to moral causes. Give away everything you own, work your hands to the bone to give away more, try to set a standard that would make Ghandi look undercommitted. The number of people who will be impressed and interested in the beliefs of a mere upstanding community member is nothing compared to that which would be interested in a moral paragon.
Of course, one might argue that people will be driven off if they suspect that the religious beliefs demand too much of them, but while religious believers tend to claim status from the efforts of the most exemplary members of their faith, they rarely try to meet their standards. Also, I’m highly skeptical of any argument that states that the most effective approach conveniently intersects with what is most comfortable.
That’s useful information (for the cultishness discussion thread). Do you have a cite to hand?
I must admit, I’d assumed this method had some success, enough to bother. So I’m glad we don’t have to fear rationalists going door to door waking people too early on Saturday morning and saying “Say, friend, have you read the Sequences?”
Searching for confirmation on google I found different statistics quoted in an article about relative religious growth rates here. The source may have incentives to inflate their numbers but they claim:
I don’t remember where I read the numbers I gave above, but the first place I’d look would be The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation which is a generally interesting read.
I think the book would be helpful for the “cultishness discussion” here but also for the general “rapture of the nerds” critique aimed at the singularity hypothesis when people first encounter it. One helpful thing about The Future Of Religion is to dissolve the confusion that comes up from the conjunction of particular supernatural theories and particular sociological processes.
Sloppy thinking can lead to accusations that some political movements or psycho-therapeutic fads are “cults” when there is no substantial religious doctrine, just a certain set of “human tribal instincts” being deployed in a manner that is characteristic of many voluntary social processes. The LaRouche Movement is an instructive edge case, which is sometimes accused of being a “political cult”.
Any conscious/rational human improvement system probably will have to make use of some of these basic mechanisms if it is to be effective, and the question (as always) is simply whether they are being used for good ends, given the actual state of the world.
Another useful item for the cultishness discussion might be the Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame because it encodes a useful set of symptoms that predict whether something is going seriously wrong with a group… or at least signal that is is “playing with fluorine”. There are reasons to play with fluorine, but not many good reasons.
Those numbers and references are utterly wonderful, thank you!
Calling something with no substantial religious doctrine a “cult” is not a category error for the thing I’m talking about as the word “cult”. It’s not my private definition either. It’s a particular sociological phenomenon in a group. It’s the thing someone is worried about when they say “Has Bob joined some sort of cult?” I need to actually describe what I’m talking about, which I’m not sure how to unpack with the requisite accuracy. But LaRouche is right in there, and Amway is too for another one.
Now to relate that more specifically to predatory infectious memes. And dig up all the stuff I read ten or so years ago.
Yeah, I read into that stuff largely out of a curiosity about memetics too :-)
I like “the mom test” for that. If you’re hanging out with a group based around a common set of beliefs that are taken by the group to be formally true, would you be too embarrassed to ask your mom for advice about the group or the beliefs? If so, then for you (given your parents and their community and so on) it’s close enough to a cult that you really should stay away (unless you’re just doing participant observation as a research project). On the other hand, if you’re not too embarrassed, then you really should actually go ask her for advice, because that kind of practical and emotionally grounded feedback is good input for people to be mindful of, even if it isn’t always perfect.
This is a primary reason I recommend that people talk to one or both parents about SIAI if they start suspecting that they should get personally involved with existential risk activism and FAI and so on :-)
I’m personally not at all surprised that the success rates are so low. If the evangelists had actually internalized the idea that they’re doing it to save people from hell, they’d take it much more seriously. Instead, it’s generally framed as a matter of duty to the religious community, or a sign of personal virtue for making the effort at all. It doesn’t need to have a significant success rate to sustain itself, although I imagine that if it were inefficient enough that most door to door evangelists had never heard of a successful conversion, they might reevaluate their methods.
If you really wanted to convert others though, not merely to do the most that was comfortable, or convince yourself you had made an honest effort, I think that the mainstream Mormon approach would not be the most effective method. Or rather, it doesn’t take the approach far enough. Maybe I’m merely projecting an atypical attitude, but I think it would be far more effective to dedicate your life to moral causes. Give away everything you own, work your hands to the bone to give away more, try to set a standard that would make Ghandi look undercommitted. The number of people who will be impressed and interested in the beliefs of a mere upstanding community member is nothing compared to that which would be interested in a moral paragon.
Of course, one might argue that people will be driven off if they suspect that the religious beliefs demand too much of them, but while religious believers tend to claim status from the efforts of the most exemplary members of their faith, they rarely try to meet their standards. Also, I’m highly skeptical of any argument that states that the most effective approach conveniently intersects with what is most comfortable.
Of course, in this context, it’s easy to see how putting one’s beliefs into their proper perspective and fully internalizing them can be a tremendous disadvantage. It’s no wonder if most people interpret their religions to only demand as much of them as is convenient.