It seems to me that you tried to renegotiate the entirety of your social contracts by brute forcing others into rationality: it’s not surprising that you experienced a certain degree of frustration...
My suggestion is to invest effort only in the critical nodes: your wife, your closest friend, etc and leave the rest of your social network to react as it may, provided that you don’t seek direct confrontation. With very low priority nodes, you can just pretend to be agnostic, a position which seems prone to elicit much less evangelization… You could just pretend that you lost your faith and nowadays you’re just very confused.
OTOH it’s crucial that high priority nodes get a precise picture of your beliefs, and that you ask them to be accepted as you are. Again, it’s not necessary to be confrontational, but you must be firm in asserting your rationality and equally firm in demanding that others accept that from you (obviously, you have to offer the same degree of tolerance).
In intersecting beliefs domain, such as raising your children, it’s not difficult to hack religious memeplex with rationality methods: expose your children to the 12 virtues in a context-safe environment, and manage for them to have as much space as they need to grow their own posteriors. Even if a mind has been buried under tons of religious conditioning, you can generally expect it to evolve into a rational point of view, given the right attitudes.
It is also my very personal opinion that it’s much more important for your children to grow in a loving family than for them to become mini-Yudkowski at the age of 10
Thanks for the comment—I haven’t really tried to “brute force” many others at all. I might have written my post in an unclear manner. My fears actually stem from the fact that so many don’t know, yet I still participate in events now and then where I see a lot of the “uncritical nodes.”
I think we’re generally on the same page. Close friends know where I stand, but we keep our discussions to the “meta-level” (how it affects life, my wife, etc.) and things generally go pretty darn well.
Good point re. the children. I think my wife is considering my suggestion to educate them about religions rather than teaching her a specific one as literal truth, and teaching only as fact those things which are universally accepted. She’s not a huge fan of it, but at least she’s understanding my hesitancy to simply jump in and teach her Catholicism from the get go.
Side note: It just occurred to me this morning that first communion age is 7. It really struck how unlikely it is that a child that young can have much if any comprehension of the subjects, arguments, evidence, etc. that would be required to profess assent to a wafer being the literal body of god incarnate. But that’s the age set for this.
I used the words “brute force” in the cryptographical sense, meaning to argue with someone until you deplete his stack of objections: though possible, a frustrating and time consuming effort it is...
I forgot to add a thing, which I get you already are doing: substituting uncritical nodes—with which you have to fight for acceptance—with nodes more aligned with your meta/beliefs… After all, the beauty of low utility nodes is that they are easily detached. I think this has also the benefit to increase the overall utility of your social network’s immediate neighbourhood...
meaning to argue with someone until you deplete his stack of objections: though possible, a frustrating and time consuming effort it is...
Indeed! In fact… the stack is never ending, I’m finding :)
I also agree about uncritical nodes. This seems to have happened quite naturally, and even in cases where I didn’t think the nodes were even uncritical. I’d estimate that 50 out of 300 people in my religious community know. Most of those know, but don’t ever say a word to me because they didn’t find out except by gossip and probably just pretend they don’t know (but they tell my wife they’re praying for “our situation,” so I know via her that they actually do know...).
What’s interesting is that 2 who were in my weekly men’s small group, contact pretty much stopped contacting me at all except when they need help with something (I got asked to help move furniture off a truck for one’s in-laws) or when there’s a larger party that my wife is invited to, and I get invited by extension.
Anyway, I found it quite interesting that contact even with them, who I thought I had a closer relationship with, dropped off so severely and suddenly.
I suspect that as the word gets out, most of these nodes will prune themselves anyway. I find that the friendships that “stuck” were those that had more going for them than pure religious agreement.
Indeed. There’s probably just not enough intensely dividing subjects to repeatedly be able to pull something like that off. Just keep changing religions and political affiliations? :)
It seems to me that you tried to renegotiate the entirety of your social contracts by brute forcing others into rationality: it’s not surprising that you experienced a certain degree of frustration...
My suggestion is to invest effort only in the critical nodes: your wife, your closest friend, etc and leave the rest of your social network to react as it may, provided that you don’t seek direct confrontation. With very low priority nodes, you can just pretend to be agnostic, a position which seems prone to elicit much less evangelization… You could just pretend that you lost your faith and nowadays you’re just very confused.
OTOH it’s crucial that high priority nodes get a precise picture of your beliefs, and that you ask them to be accepted as you are. Again, it’s not necessary to be confrontational, but you must be firm in asserting your rationality and equally firm in demanding that others accept that from you (obviously, you have to offer the same degree of tolerance).
In intersecting beliefs domain, such as raising your children, it’s not difficult to hack religious memeplex with rationality methods: expose your children to the 12 virtues in a context-safe environment, and manage for them to have as much space as they need to grow their own posteriors. Even if a mind has been buried under tons of religious conditioning, you can generally expect it to evolve into a rational point of view, given the right attitudes. It is also my very personal opinion that it’s much more important for your children to grow in a loving family than for them to become mini-Yudkowski at the age of 10
Thanks for the comment—I haven’t really tried to “brute force” many others at all. I might have written my post in an unclear manner. My fears actually stem from the fact that so many don’t know, yet I still participate in events now and then where I see a lot of the “uncritical nodes.”
I think we’re generally on the same page. Close friends know where I stand, but we keep our discussions to the “meta-level” (how it affects life, my wife, etc.) and things generally go pretty darn well.
Good point re. the children. I think my wife is considering my suggestion to educate them about religions rather than teaching her a specific one as literal truth, and teaching only as fact those things which are universally accepted. She’s not a huge fan of it, but at least she’s understanding my hesitancy to simply jump in and teach her Catholicism from the get go.
Side note: It just occurred to me this morning that first communion age is 7. It really struck how unlikely it is that a child that young can have much if any comprehension of the subjects, arguments, evidence, etc. that would be required to profess assent to a wafer being the literal body of god incarnate. But that’s the age set for this.
I used the words “brute force” in the cryptographical sense, meaning to argue with someone until you deplete his stack of objections: though possible, a frustrating and time consuming effort it is...
I forgot to add a thing, which I get you already are doing: substituting uncritical nodes—with which you have to fight for acceptance—with nodes more aligned with your meta/beliefs… After all, the beauty of low utility nodes is that they are easily detached. I think this has also the benefit to increase the overall utility of your social network’s immediate neighbourhood...
Indeed! In fact… the stack is never ending, I’m finding :)
I also agree about uncritical nodes. This seems to have happened quite naturally, and even in cases where I didn’t think the nodes were even uncritical. I’d estimate that 50 out of 300 people in my religious community know. Most of those know, but don’t ever say a word to me because they didn’t find out except by gossip and probably just pretend they don’t know (but they tell my wife they’re praying for “our situation,” so I know via her that they actually do know...).
What’s interesting is that 2 who were in my weekly men’s small group, contact pretty much stopped contacting me at all except when they need help with something (I got asked to help move furniture off a truck for one’s in-laws) or when there’s a larger party that my wife is invited to, and I get invited by extension.
Anyway, I found it quite interesting that contact even with them, who I thought I had a closer relationship with, dropped off so severely and suddenly.
I suspect that as the word gets out, most of these nodes will prune themselves anyway. I find that the friendships that “stuck” were those that had more going for them than pure religious agreement.
Too bad this kind of shock can’t be produced systematically… it would be a wonderful way to detect ‘false’ friends.
Indeed. There’s probably just not enough intensely dividing subjects to repeatedly be able to pull something like that off. Just keep changing religions and political affiliations? :)