

Reason as memetic immune disorder - rntz
http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorder/

======
netsp
Very interesting threads of thought in this essay. The idea of culture as an
evolved complex, similar to an ecosystem in some ways and similar to an
organism in others is a strong one.

Like an ecosystem, there is a certain equilibria that uses both rational and
non rational elements to maintain. Some of the elements are downright
irrational. There is a brilliant representation of this by Douglas Adams that
I often quote. The whole thing is definitely worth a read if you enjoyed this
essay. It is really a different way of looking at the same thing. I'll paste
some pieces of it here:

 _..The one I have in mind at the moment is one that describes the culture and
economy of Bali, which is a small, very crowded island that subsists on rice.
Now, rice is an incredibly efficient food and you can grow an awful lot in a
relatively small space, but it's hugely labour intensive and requires a lot of
very, very precise co-operation amongst the people there, particularly when
you have a large population on a small island needing to bring its harvest in.
People now looking at the way in which rice agriculture works in Bali are
rather puzzled by it because it is intensely religious. The society of Bali is
such that religion permeates every single aspect of it and everybody in that
culture is very, very carefully defined in terms of who they are, what their
status is and what their role in life is. It's all defined by the church; they
have very peculiar calendars and a very peculiar set of customs and rituals,
which are precisely defined and, oddly enough, they are fantastically good at
being very, very productive with their rice harvest. In the 70s, people came
in and noticed that the rice harvest was determined by the temple calendar. It
seemed to be totally nonsensical, so they said, 'Get rid of all this, we can
help you make your rice harvest much, much more productive than even you're,
very successfully, doing at the moment. Use these pesticides, use this
calendar, do this, that and the other'. So they started and for two or three
years the rice production went up enormously, but the whole predator/prey/pest
balance went completely out of kilter. Very shortly, the rice harvest
plummeted again and the Balinese said, 'Screw it, we're going back to the
temple calendar!' and they reinstated what was there before and it all worked
again absolutely perfectly. It's all very well to say that basing the rice
harvest on something as irrational and meaningless as a religion is stupid -
they should be able to work it out more logically than that, but they might
just as well say to us, 'Your culture and society works on the basis of money
and that's a fiction, so why don't you get rid of it and just co-operate with
each other' - we know it's not going to work!..

..this bit of engineering practice and that bit of architectural practice; you
don't really know what to make of them. Compare that to somebody who tosses a
cricket ball at you. You can sit and watch it and say, 'It's going at 17
degrees'..

..instead of going through all the business of trying to work out the angles
and trying to digest which genuine architectural principles you may want to
take out of what may be a passing architectural fad, just ask yourself, 'how
would a dragon live here?' We are used to thinking in terms of organic
creatures; an organic creature may consist of an enormous complexity of all
sorts of different variables that are beyond our ability to resolve but we
know how organic creatures live. We've never seen a dragon but we've all got
an idea of what a dragon is like, so we can say, 'Well if a dragon went
through here, he'd get stuck just here and a little bit cross over there
because he couldn't see that and he'd wave his tail and knock that vase over'.
You figure out how the dragon's going to be happy here and lo and behold!
you've suddenly got a place that makes sense for other organic creatures, such
as ourselves, to live in._

<http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/>

------
tokenadult
"To paraphrase Steve Weinberg, 'For a smart person to do something truly
stupid, they need a theory.' Actually, I could have quoted him
directly--'stupid' is just a lighter shade of 'evil.' Communism and fascism
both begin by exercising complete control over the memetic environment, in
order to create a new man stripped of cultural immunity, who will do whatever
they tell him to.)"

That's an interesting idea. There is considerable research support

[http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...](http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852)

for the idea that people can be smart in the IQ test sense and just end up
using their smartness to elaborate and make more rigid ideas that are just
plain wrong.

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805070893/>

So reason has to be checked both substantively and procedurally to offer
improvement in human thinking. Reasoning from irrational premises can often
result in tightly developed delusions rather than better recognition of
reality.

------
rms
Have any religious people here read this article? What did you think?

~~~
fizx
I was raised Christian. Around the end of college, I had a bit of a quarter-
life crisis, and I ended up applying reason to my religion in the way talked
about in this article. I joined a Christian missionary organization, and was
determined to "go therefore in to all the world and preach the gospel to all
nations", one of the typically semi-ignored Christian commands.

I was also convinced that it would be a good idea to prove that the key
disputed points of Christianity were in fact correct. I went on
skepticsannotatedbible.com and the Atheism sub-reddit and compiled a list of
arguments to refute. I couldn't refute enough of them, and so found myself in
a conundrum. I ended up choosing to live in the real world.

Most of my close friends, however, are still from the Christian communities I
used to frequent. I prod and poke them mentally a little bit. Its amazing to
me how Christians can justify almost anything, as long as their community
mostly agrees with them. I have a group of friends who go to church multiple
times per week, and have no problems sleeping with their boy/girlfriends. I
have gay Christian friends, Christian friends who are bartenders, etc. My
parents would be livid.

Anyhow, I just wanted to point out that when I think back about my life so
far, the part of it that scares me, was when I took my religion and decided
that I had to take it seriously and _do something_.

~~~
netsp
I have come across gay men from Orthodox Jewish backgrounds. Since secular or
even atheist Jews are a perfectly possible thing to be, they can have an
identity as Gay & Jewish. Most go that path. But some seem to want exactly
what this article is talking about to be developed. They want some smart
rabbis to come up with some smart reasons around the contradiction.

The Jewish tradition doesn't really emphasise a rule against homosexuality as
much as many think. Many of the much more explicit rules (eg. If your brother
dies, you get his wife) have ways around them or are ignored. They are sort of
vaguely interested in the how and have this sort of instinctive understanding
that it's possible.

------
asdlfj2sd33
The idea of ideas as viruses is old. They can infect you, then can breed with
other ideas, they spread, etc.

Religion world wide does seem to follow a pattern of more complicated and more
energy demanding religions being replaced by religions which require less
effort. One god instead of many, and lately that god doesn't even want
sacrifices, oh and peace is better then war... most of the time.

Obviously it not that simple, religion can spread through war, some religions
make themselves extinct by demanding life long celibacy from everyone. And
there's been some studies which found the _us vs them_ pattern common in
religious groups can decrease and/or slow the spread of disease.

There's one particular thing about Christianity though. Well OK, a couple of
things, one it's kind of a modern less complex flavor of Judaism, no offense
meant to any Hebrews reading this.

But the other thing is Christ's rather extreme _love your enemies, turn the
other cheek_ message. You have to see that in the context of the Roman empire
and Roman culture at the time.

Rome was EXTREMELY pro war, violence and punishment. Think crucifixion,
gladiators, pax romana etc. But even more then that, Roman culture saw mercy
as a dirty animalistic emotion, to be surprised like all animalsitic and
primitive urges should be. Reason was human, emotions, especially mercy were
disgusting instincts not to be trusted, but to be fought against, with reason.

In short it was an extreme culture, that must have put some unique
psychological pressures on those living there. Think how people in Japan who
remember the end of WWII describe how the emperor announcing Japan's surrender
felt like a bow breaking and huge pressure being relieved.

Christianity is like the perfect counter culture to the old Roman culture. No
wonder it successfully spread throughout the empire. And from Rome to all of
Europe, to the new world.

The other parts of the old world, have not turned Christian, and it's not for
lack of trying by well funded Christian missionaries, suggesting there really
was something unique about Rome and early Christianity.

Modern American Christianity is often quite, shall we say unique, why with the
pro Gun, pro war thing.

~~~
mgreenbe

      There's one particular thing about Christianity though. 
      Well OK, a couple of things, one it's kind of a modern 
      less complex flavor of Judaism, no offense meant to any 
      Hebrews reading this.
    

First, the similarity between the practice of Judaism and Christianity is the
product of the last century or so. At the time, the ideas of, e.g., Paul
diverged significantly from contemporary Jewish thinking.

Second, if you don't want to offend Jews, don't call them "Hebrews". ;)

~~~
netsp
Why, not? It's archaic and not strictly a synonym, but why would it be
offensive. I understand that those that use it, usually mean offense, but
there is no real reason for it.

In lots of languages it is not derogatory.

~~~
maxwell
Equating a religious group with an ethnic one is mistaken (like saying 'Arabs
when 'Muslims is meant), regardless of whether anyone is offended.

~~~
netsp
Thinking of those two things as distinct concepts with clear borders is a
mistake. Both religious and ethnic group do not usually have definite
boundaries and they are not always seperate from each other. Saying Arabs when
you mean Muslim is what you mean is indeed a mistake. Most Muslims are not
Arabs, but that proves nothing about how to classify these things.

Hebrews is a different issue. Jewish is actually Judah-ite, from the tribe of
Judah. These were (according to the tradition) the surviving tribe of the
Israelites or People of Israel. People is actually a bit misleading. In Hebrew
it uses the word normally translated as 'Nation'. In modern times, the
relationship between Judah & Jewish has been blurred since some groups trace
their heritage to other (lost) tribes.

In any case, all of these equally refer to an ethnic group though you could
argue that they are not exact synonyms. This is not just about the origin of
the words. It is also the religious tradition. Jewish is not a Religion in the
sense that Islam or Christianity are. It are not something you chose. It is
not something you can stop and it is not something that anybody who is not
(ethnically) Jewish is required or encouraged to join. Basically, the
"religion" as you would probably call it doesn't distinguish between religion
and ethnic group. The members of this ethnic-religious do not usually do so
either. That is, many secular, atheist Jews describe themselves as Jewish, and
behave in someway that indicates this.

Hebrews & Israelites, People of Israel, are as far a I know, used
interchangeably in the old testament. In modern Hebrew all but the most
pedantic (and religious) will use Israelites interchangeably with Jews.
Secular Jews are unlikely to say Jews. "Hebrews" is not really used in modern
Hebrew unless making some sort of biblical reference. In some languages it has
a derogatory ring but in some languages describing someone as a
Jew/Hebrew/Israelite is derogatory regardless of the word you use.

------
toadpipe
Maybe it is possible for lesswrong to be less wrong after all.

