X-Message-Number: 28513
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:52:29 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: zealotry and sales

At 09:00 AM 9/26/2006 +0000, Robert Ettinger wrote:

>I think there is considerable misunderstanding about religion(s) and its
>(their) appeal.
>
>First, there is little important difference between religions and
>"non-religious" ideologies.  The prime example of a religion  ostensibly 
>non-religious
>is communism.

Many years ago I proposed a way to measure how much some ideology (meme) is 
like a religion.

     "The agents memes of the religious class build often get very high
priorities in the mind, sometimes seriously interfering with survival.

snip

     "Molecular biologists investigate receptor sites on cells indirectly by
determining which molecules fit sites well enough to displace each other,
since a "lock" can hold only one "key" at a time.  With less precision, we
can apply similar techniques to investigating possible agent sites.

     "One class of agents to examine by this method would be those built by
religious memes.  We can take self-identification of Catholics or Southern
Baptists as evidence of possessing -- or being possessed by -- religious
agents built by competing memes.  Cases of a person claiming membership in
both organizations are rare indeed, but conversions from one to the other,
while uncommon, do happen.  This suggests that there are a variety of
functionally equivalent religious memes that can build agents that occupy a
religious agent site (RAS) in a person's mental space.

     "Just as molecular biologists can measure the competition or exclusion
among the various molecules that bind to receptor sites, we can measure the
competition for sites among memes.

     "One way to measure this competition for the RAS is to determine how
much possession of an agent built by a particular meme reduces the
probability (compared to the general population) of an individual's having
this site occupied by something that is clearly a religious agent.
Belonging to a religious organization can be taken as evidence for a
person's RAS being filled by a religious agent built by a particular meme.

     "To take an arbitrary (and to my knowledge untested) example, I would be
surprised to find that whatever agents are built by taking up bowling had
much influence on the rate of claiming membership in a religion.

     "On the other hand, the agents built by the communist meme (as indicated
by membership in the Communist Party) must reduce the probability of being
in any religious organization by 90% or more."

http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics8604.txt

Similar statements a year before were in the L5 News (1985)

snip

>In practice, the choice of martyrdom or zealotry is mostly the same,
>regardless of the name. The glow or rapture of zealotry is mostly a matter 
>of
>group-think and slogans and habits or customs, including potential 
>sanctions by
>police or neighbors. Many people can get a high just by doing scutwork for 
>the
>campaign of a political candidate, and almost everybody is afraid of being
>thought bad or queer.

>Stained glass windows and hymns evoke wonderful feelings. So do drums and
>trumpets, many drugs, some kinds of self-abuse, mob approval, etc. For some
>people, so do mathematical equations or geometrical figures. The analysis of
>feel-good is so far barely primitive.

It is beyond primitive.  The common pathway is activating the brain's 
reward system.  There are thousands of research reports on fMRI studies of 
this brain system.  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_bombing
**************
     "Some people seem to be born with vulnerable dopamine systems that get 
hijacked by social rewards." Dr. Hans Breiter, a neuroscientist at Harvard.

     (Quoted in Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot Machine By 
SANDRA BLAKESLEE, New York Times February 19, 2002)[1]

Keith Henson developed an Evolutionary psychology model where (for reason 
rooted in our stone age past) attention is rewarding:

     "It should come as no surprise that this powerful reward mechanism can 
be taken over by drug-induced rewards, but this is not the only way the 
brain reward system can be hijacked. Memes . . . which manifest as cults 
and related social movements, have "discovered" the brain's reward system 
as well. Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour 
between cult members. This trips the attention detectors. Tripping the 
detectors causes the release of reward chemicals . . . . Anyone who has 
ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public 
speech is well aware of the effects of attention.

     "Examples of cults using focused attention include "love bombing" in 
Rev. Moon's Unification Church and "training routines" and "auditing" in 
Scientology. [...] An explanation consistent with evolutionary psychology 
for the propagation of the hard-to-explain memes at the top of this article 
is that successful memes of this class induce focused attention between 
those infected with the memes."

     From Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on 
why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be 
done to mitigate the effects, The Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 
343-355 [2]
*************

>How can we compete in this arena?

I think it might be as important to consider if we even want to.  The 
problem is that turning *on* the brain mechanisms behind cults to a 
considerable extent turns *off* the ability to reason (as opposed to 
"rationalize").  There might be ways to employ the high energy drives 
without doing so much damage to rational thought, but I have not figured 
out how so far.  (Suggestions based on understanding evolutionary 
psychology would be very welcome.)

>We probably don't have to, because the
>obvious advance of science cannot be resisted, barring calamities. We are
>gaining, and the rate of accelereation will improve. But it would 
>be  helpful--and
>in some scenarios essential--to speed things up and be seen as 
>more  attractive.
>
>One way to do it is the transhumanist path. It is interesting that there  are
>many more transhumanists than cryonicists.

Putting numbers on it, the WTA list 3000 members, the total signed up for 
suspension is around 1500.  But it is a bit hard to say how many of them 
are serious.

>Since so many transhumanists are
>not cryonicists, it seems clear that they are just masturbating, to put it
>bluntly. (They aren't as bad as the  science fiction crowd, which  is much
>larger and much more obviously just looking for entertainment.)

My informal survey of transhumanists found that generally the ones not 
signed up for cryonic suspension felt guilty about it.  If anyone wanted a 
group to sell cryonics into, that's who we should be working.  I was amazed 
that the cryonics organizations don't have a presence at their meetings.

>The  appeal of
>transhumanism is partly that it has trappings of idealism, a 
>better  future for
>humanity.
>
>One tactic might be to press some of the transhumanists directly. They  ought
>to be somewhat better candidates for recruitment than the general public.
>They have at least one web site, and somebody could make a project of  that.
>
>Another nexus might be the physicians and scientists who favor cryonics,  and
>may even be signed up, but stay in the closet for fear of professional
>reprisal. Many of us know some of these. Try to persuade them that their 
>fears  are
>overblown and they should show a little backbone.

And the more who do come out, the easier it is for the rest of them.

>As for providing some of the standard incentives, e.g. fellowship and
>slogans and personal support, this is more difficult. We mostly 
>don't  have a zealot
>or group or fraternal mentality, and even have sharp  political differences.
>But we could nibble around the edges of this, and try  harder and more often
>to help others, both members and potential recruits. If  they LIKE YOU it is
>much easier to recruit them. Many politicians are elected  not because of a
>platform, but sometimes even in spite of it--just for 
>personal  likability. And if
>we're not already likable, as many of us are not, this can be  improved by
>some simple conscious effort.

Well said!

Brian Wowk wrote

>What do cryonicists really want?  Do they want evidence-based cryonics 
>that is based on mainstream scientific and ethical principles, and that is 
>eventually embraced by mainstream medicine?  Or do they want faith-based 
>cryonics that occupies the same psychological niche as religion, . . . .

Yes.  :-)

Keith Henson

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