Discussion
I was trying to understand EA and the person I was interacting with got very offended that I called it religion.
So I stopped doing that and let it go because I was trying to understand how this all works, what is the appeal?
The "not a religion" thing was really really really important to him. He explained that he grew up with fundamentalists and was proud of breaking free of constraining ideologies.
. . .
I didn't mean "religion" to be an insult.
As many others have written; the apocalyptic AI cult that "effective altruism" has become reproduces a lot of very specifically Christian ideas - just with "AI" in place of the Christian god.
But I am not sure that the reaction by self-identified effective altruists that you describe is specific to calling it a religion.
Since they make a big deal about Bayesian statistics and utilitarian moral calculus, and then react very badly if one points out that they did the math wrong.
@futurebird As an atheist, I characterise a religion as having supernatural elements. I don't know if that's just me and my biases, but it's a very important distinction vs. belief systems and philosophies. I don't see being religious, following a religion, as a negative, though. There are plenty of awful, idiotic atheists and wonderful, lovely believers for that to indicate anything.
@futurebird as other people have observed, the “rationalists” are really just Calvinists with a fake moustache, complete with a god they’re building that’s all powerful and will judge everyone guilty of original sin and cast them into hell for eternity.
These people may have left evangelical Christianity, but it absolutely hasn’t left them.
@futurebird if you don't know it you might be interested in the Dystopia Now podcast. the latest episode was dealing with this is it a religion question
@futurebird I forgot this was SBF and Grimes's Ex's whole thing - The idea that you should work really hard to find the most "effective" way to do altruism eg. If you have $50 to give a month should it go to a charity or the homeless guy on ur street, one could feed 5 people instead of just the one. I would actually agree that it's not a religion, because for a lot of these dudes the religion is like, great man theory. Rome is important because Caesar made it important. History has main characters and this is how you become one of them. That kinda thing.
Thing is - like, sure you could save more people with a donation to a well equipped machine than if you gave that money to the homeless person on your street. But someone still has to help that guy, and if everyone tries to hyper optimise their charity so only the "most good" gets done, we miss out on the little goods we can do too.
When I've given money to homeless people who I have seen of and on for many months... who I say hi to I'm not IDK "do good" I'm helping someone I know. I guess you could say that I'd hope if I were in their shoes people would help me and not treat me like problem and say hello to me. I want to be in a place where that's how people treat each other. Maybe that's selfish even.
I don't see how it's possible to quantify our actions fully. It's OK to analyze but not complete.
One of the most powerful traits of humans (and ants) is our ability to work cooperatively.
But when we attempt to calculate "how much good" there is never any value placed on the strength of a community, it's ability to coordinate to respond to a crisis-- we don't count up all of the little ways that people help each other.
Should I not give a stranger directions because my time would be better spent earning money to make the Super Intelligence?
@futurebird @mdstevens0612 possibly my favourite nietzche quote (which is perfect, because he's someone these kinds of people would misrepresent as thinking the opposite) is about this
Then there is the "value" created by shared knowledge. There is no one person who could build the technology we use every day from scratch alone. Every day we depend on knowledge and work done by millions of people we will never meet. Even a group of several thousand people dropped in the wilderness couldn't even come close. We benefit from living in a largely cooperative set of connected societies of *billions* of people.
I don't think EA recognizes that at all.
@futurebird having also grown up fundamentalist, there is a lot of "filed the spiritual serial numbers off and put in something more sciency-sounding, but didn't change the underlying philosophical approach" around the EA crowd (Roko's Basilisk is literally just Pascal's Wager with robots). The New Atheists a couple decades ago were doing the same schtick.
Personally, I don't think you've actually left fundamentalism until you're more concerned with being kind than being right, but that's a harder shift than (even dramatically) changing what your definition of "right" is.
@futurebird until scrolling through to the replies I was genuinely unsure how Electronic Arts fit into this story.
@futurebird They really do prey on this kind of person.
Also their biggest ongoing tactic for coercion, is that they like to redefine normal words and use that to put you, the outsider, on the back foot.
This guy you found was likely too hung up on the word "religion" because he wants to operate on some completely different definition of the word than most people would agree with.
We alone are free from dogmas. This is the one (and only) true way to be a free thinker.
@futurebird @pencilears "We alone are free from dogmas. This is the one (and only) true way to be a free thinker."
How can you be sure that this isn't Dogma?
@futurebird it's a real poser. how exactly do you tell someone they simply went from one sort of cult to another? all the words that seem to apply perfectly, like "cult" or "religion", they've schooled themselves to reject.
Philosophies don't have meetings, or people who tell you what to do... or secrets.
@futurebird or rituals, or sacred texts...but it's like they've reinvented all these things, all the while telling themselves they were totally original
@mxchara @futurebird Welcome to mystery cult religion, the most popular way to get started as a religious sect (see: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and c)
When I call something a "religion" that just means that it's part of someone's culture and identity. These are things people believe and do because they are traditional and we can find revelation and comfort in traditions.
Obviously that can also be dangerous and worth questioning at times.
@futurebird For some things like this, I prefer the term "belief system", although I've had to explain that to a few people. In fact, the need to explain the term to religious people I grew up with emphasizes why the term is necessary.
Different people use the word "religion" in different ways, and it can carry a lot of baggage/assumptions about epistemology and how people derive their morals. People from a religious background prefer to see atheism and agnosticism as just "other religions", and not necessarily out of malice - it's a familiar framework, and when all you have is a hammer, etc. But it leads to misunderstandings like "who tells you what to believe?" and "who tells you what's morally right?" Excellent questions to ask in good faith, not so much if your pastor told you the answer to both is Satan.
So, many non-theistic people like myself prefer an umbrella term that doesn't have the same connotations of coerced belief.
Not every coerced belief is a part of a religious tradition. Not every religious practice is coerced (or more coerced than other things that people do)
Religions can and often do lead to coercion. But I worry that holding those ideas to be too identical and lead to a failure to recognize other brutal forms of social control.
@futurebird @MaddieM4 right...I've always thought of religions (in their least corrupted forms) as attempts to communicate and explain the spiritual realm(s), so in certain ways they are like languages.
And in -monotheism- there's always some external mechanism that must be agreed on, so to me, it seems coercion is ….right next door, waiting to step in, if not right there.
Belief in any "one true way" is sort of definitionally authoritarian, ya know?
This is how I think religions works for pastors, priests and those who have made it their responsibility to conduct some part of the religion but I think it isn't how it works in most people's lives.
I don't think most people spend a lot of time thinking about this aspect of religion, it's more important in its social and cultural roles. In fact pastors complain about this all the time in more aggressively evangelical churches.
@futurebird @MaddieM4 seems like the social/cultural aspects of -mainstream- religions was/is often much more important to people attending than the dogma.
but the dogma, the one belief -is- a lynchpin, and quite frankly, I think it's what drives many folks away, as they develop their own -internal- senses of ethics and don't "need" religion…
so I don't quite understand what you mean by evangelical preachers complaining, because churches -are- self selecting for folks who accept dogma?
There are many sermons given to "the faithful" about how "you all come to church but that's not enough you need to really believe and help bring more people to church to be saved... etc."
I think a lot of people go to church and enjoy it but don't really think much about what they *really* believe.
Speaking about Christianity there is a lot of variation in how important that is. But the most conservative churches want to take over the world and thats... not great.
@futurebird @MaddieM4 oh okay, they keep urging them to become more and more pious and obedient. Yeah, I see what you mean...
Just believe what I say as I interpret this often mistranslated 2 thousand year old text according to my small minded misogynistic, racist, crapitalistic worldviews, my dear little sheep!! Believe on me, as I tell you what God/Jesus would say and do as your official intermediary!!!
Most people are at church because they want to see their friends, eat food and sing and listen to music.
I think that's fine. Some churches also think this is fine, but even those that do not KNOW that's their real function. They help form community, help people when someone dies, or is sick or is born, and create community.
"Do you live like Christ or just talk about it?" (something my grandma would say)
@futurebird @MaddieM4 right, at their least corrupted churches/temples/sacred gatherings of any sort can cover all the functions for some/many folks: social, cultural and offer some spiritual direction and energy for doing good works in the world.
But so many millions of us have been materially harmed by…well you know.
@futurebird @MaddieM4 I still think it's been profoundly…problematic to so thoroughly outsource your personal sense of the sacred, your personal sense of ethics to some intermediary.
(I mean for this dynamic to have happened in such a widespread way...in a larger cultural sense, NOT necessarily for every person who does this)
I think it's kind of more rare than it ought to be for people to really think about what they find sacred. Which can make it easy for someone else to come in and manipulate those feelings.
Nostalgia or simple feelings of protectiveness for young people or family are mistaken for "sacred" ... not that there aren't aspects of the sacred there but maybe it would be better to explore those feelings so those nerves aren't so easy to play.
@futurebird Religion to me is a system of thought control, and that is a different thing from the culture of the people having that religion as a part of their life.
The spirituality of the people often have very little to do with the dogma of the priests and the stricture it imposes.
So to me the word "Religion" is perhaps not as much a insult, as much as a condemnation of abuse and fraud.
Not all religion is evangelical. And different expressions of religion will have these qualities to different degrees.
It heats up like this:
1. I believe this.
2. It makes my life better.
3. I want other people to know how much it means to me.
4. It could help some other people too.
5. It could help everyone.
6. They need to know for their own good.
7. Anyone who gets in my way spreading this idea is hurting everyone.
8. Anything is permissible to get them to see.
Anything past #3 or #4 is in the danger zone for me because it means if two people don't agree they are on the road to fighting each other over it.
@futurebird It is not so much about the evangelical bit (although I admit it certainly not helping) but just the "bow your head and submit to your better, because I know the truth and you don't (peasant scum)" part.
I wont name any religions here, but there a certain non evangelic religion that is kind of in the heat now that still have that feel.
@futurebird "He explained that he grew up with fundamentalists and was proud of breaking free of constraining ideologies. "
Oh dear
yeah, the rationalists are like that too. They're doing some speculative calculus as to future possibilities, convince themselves of it, and then it's faith, but they think it is based on reason. :/
Gebru and Torres, 2024, is a must read on this:
Effective altruism
@futurebird @CarstenBoll it's a cult. In that, it's a high-control group with an ideology.
@futurebird IMO it was probably very important to him that his ideology is not only based on belief, and therefore potentially false, but it s "rational" and therefore "true absolutely", which is something that you may see in many religious people...