It is bad to participate in organized religion, because you are thereby exposing yourself to intense social pressure to believe false things (and very harmful false things, at that). This is very straightforwardly a bad thing.
You claim:
You can find religions you can practice without being asked to give up your honest search for truth with no need to even pretend to have already written the bottom line.
And this may formally be true—you may not be officially asked to believe false things. But if your social context consists of people who all believe approximately the same false things, and if that social context is organized around those beliefs in false things, and if the social context valorizes those beliefs in false things… then the social pressure will be intense nonetheless. (And some of these false beliefs are fairly subtle; Eliezer discusses this at length in a number of Sequence posts.)
You say:
I also got asked about how I feel about religions and truth seeking. My answer is that you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it because religions are doing something orthogonal.
And here we have a perfect example of the damage done by religion. The claim that “you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it” is absolutely typical anti-epistemology.
Of course religion is about “the truth as rationalists typically think of it”. There is nothing but “the truth as rationalists typically think of it”, because there’s just “the truth”, and then there are things which aren’t truth claims at all, of any kind (like preferences, etc.). But get into religion, start relaxing your epistemic standards just a bit, and very quickly you descend into this sort of nebulous and vague “well there’s different things which are ‘true’ in different ways, and what even is ‘truth’, anyway”, etc. And then your ability to know what’s true and what’s false is gone, and nothing is left but “vibes”.
And here we have a perfect example of the damage done by religion. The claim that “you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it” is absolutely typical anti-epistemology.
This is an uncharitable and unkind claim to make given you have about 1200 words worth of my position in this post. We’ve gotten into it over many years and at no time have I felt the better for you commenting on my posts. I welcome the criticism, but not the way you deliver it, and in all our years of debating I feel you have never engaged seriously in any way other than trying to hammer what you already believe, so effectively immediately using the ban feature to ban you from my posts.
I’m sorry it’s come to this. I’d like to engage with you as a critic. As you can see, I gladly do that with many of my other critics, and have spent hours doing it with you specifically for many years. But having you comment on my posts is net-negative for me and makes me want to use Less Wrong less, so I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.
Sorry it had to come with so little warning and after such a long hiatus from us having interactions. I also wish it was on a less contentious and visible post, but that’s perhaps what has finally pushed me to do what I should have done before.
For the benefit of other readers, I deny that I am taking some kind of anti-epistemology position. Instead, I take a view that most people do epistemology in ways that overreach and makes metaphysical claims when none need be made, and am writing a book about that. I also can say that, in my experience practicing Zen, there is no culture of subtly pulling me towards obviously false beliefs. I’m sure this happens in many religious communities, but not in mine. If I am pulled towards any false beliefs, it’s within the same degree of error to which I am pulled towards false beliefs by my entire life, including the part of it that’s on Less Wrong.
“well there’s different things which are ‘true’ in different ways, and what even is ‘truth’, anyway”
Well I am not sure what conception of truth do you buy into, but the lesswrongian theory of truth is fairly deflationist. Tarskii’s semantic theory of truth requires two different language one meta language which is open-ended, and other one being object language. So you could have different things which are true between two pair of languages, so things can be “true” in different ways in that sense.
I think that sort of truth is something everyone in practice buys into, due to usefulness but I think someone could have different notions of truth, like in maths or morality.
It is bad to participate in organized religion, because you are thereby exposing yourself to intense social pressure to believe false things (and very harmful false things, at that). This is very straightforwardly a bad thing.
You claim:
And this may formally be true—you may not be officially asked to believe false things. But if your social context consists of people who all believe approximately the same false things, and if that social context is organized around those beliefs in false things, and if the social context valorizes those beliefs in false things… then the social pressure will be intense nonetheless. (And some of these false beliefs are fairly subtle; Eliezer discusses this at length in a number of Sequence posts.)
You say:
And here we have a perfect example of the damage done by religion. The claim that “you shouldn’t think of religions as being about the truth as rationalists typically think of it” is absolutely typical anti-epistemology.
Of course religion is about “the truth as rationalists typically think of it”. There is nothing but “the truth as rationalists typically think of it”, because there’s just “the truth”, and then there are things which aren’t truth claims at all, of any kind (like preferences, etc.). But get into religion, start relaxing your epistemic standards just a bit, and very quickly you descend into this sort of nebulous and vague “well there’s different things which are ‘true’ in different ways, and what even is ‘truth’, anyway”, etc. And then your ability to know what’s true and what’s false is gone, and nothing is left but “vibes”.
This is an uncharitable and unkind claim to make given you have about 1200 words worth of my position in this post. We’ve gotten into it over many years and at no time have I felt the better for you commenting on my posts. I welcome the criticism, but not the way you deliver it, and in all our years of debating I feel you have never engaged seriously in any way other than trying to hammer what you already believe, so effectively immediately using the ban feature to ban you from my posts.
I’m sorry it’s come to this. I’d like to engage with you as a critic. As you can see, I gladly do that with many of my other critics, and have spent hours doing it with you specifically for many years. But having you comment on my posts is net-negative for me and makes me want to use Less Wrong less, so I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.
Sorry it had to come with so little warning and after such a long hiatus from us having interactions. I also wish it was on a less contentious and visible post, but that’s perhaps what has finally pushed me to do what I should have done before.
For the benefit of other readers, I deny that I am taking some kind of anti-epistemology position. Instead, I take a view that most people do epistemology in ways that overreach and makes metaphysical claims when none need be made, and am writing a book about that. I also can say that, in my experience practicing Zen, there is no culture of subtly pulling me towards obviously false beliefs. I’m sure this happens in many religious communities, but not in mine. If I am pulled towards any false beliefs, it’s within the same degree of error to which I am pulled towards false beliefs by my entire life, including the part of it that’s on Less Wrong.
Well I am not sure what conception of truth do you buy into, but the lesswrongian theory of truth is fairly deflationist. Tarskii’s semantic theory of truth requires two different language one meta language which is open-ended, and other one being object language. So you could have different things which are true between two pair of languages, so things can be “true” in different ways in that sense.
The simple one.
I think that sort of truth is something everyone in practice buys into, due to usefulness but I think someone could have different notions of truth, like in maths or morality.