whereas drugs and quitting religion offer excellent rewards now, but may involve heavy costs down the road.
What long-term costs would quitting religion have?
ETA: The answer is presumably in the post:
maybe we should be slower to advise people to give up the health benefits (footnote 15) of belonging, emotionally, to one or another religious community.
I think the post was referring to the loss of friends and status that can sometimes result. The benefits may outweigh the costs sometimes, if one is faced with the choice between “staying in the closet” and living a lie, and leaving the church and losing friends. I have no direct experience with this, but many atheists unaffiliated with Less Wrong do come out and don’t regret it, so I don’t think this counts as a “weird belief” that LW pushes on its members. At any rate, it’s not all that weirder than atheism itself.
If we are to continue having access to the useful intersubjective truths stemming from the Enlightenment, I don’t think we can wholely buy itnto the rival intesubjective truths of religion.
Burkean conservatism translated into modern philosophical jargon. This argument would apply only to religions that are at least centuries old. How many of these remain in unchanged form in modern Western world?
What long-term costs would quitting religion have?
ETA: The answer is presumably in the post:
I think the post was referring to the loss of friends and status that can sometimes result. The benefits may outweigh the costs sometimes, if one is faced with the choice between “staying in the closet” and living a lie, and leaving the church and losing friends. I have no direct experience with this, but many atheists unaffiliated with Less Wrong do come out and don’t regret it, so I don’t think this counts as a “weird belief” that LW pushes on its members. At any rate, it’s not all that weirder than atheism itself.
Another example is loosing access to useful intersubjective truths that religions have accumulated over the centuries.
If we are to continue having access to the useful intersubjective truths stemming from the Enlightenment, I don’t think we can wholely buy itnto the rival intesubjective truths of religion.
Burkean conservatism translated into modern philosophical jargon. This argument would apply only to religions that are at least centuries old. How many of these remain in unchanged form in modern Western world?
Wouldn’t Burkean conservativism recommend being a member of any reasonably stable religion, perhaps preferably the one you were born into?