While you could call the French Revolution âsuccessfulâ, in the dictionary sense of âaccomplishing an aim or purposeâ, you certainly donât have to. Thatâs a reasonable distinction to draw.
As I said, I wouldnât have put the list together the same way, and Iâd also much prefer to learn from movements and groups that actually achieved things I value.
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That said, Iâve seen a lot of people in rationalist spaces discuss the rise of certain religions as interesting phenomena worthy of study, at least in piecemeal ways. Even if religious rituals are used to bond small social groups together, around shared belief in something false, one can still consider whether itâs possible to copy the bonding elements without getting false beliefs at the same time. On a larger scale, can we learn from people who successfully lobbied for bad policies if we want to lobby for good policies?
(Another spin on this is to find examples of groups that started with worthy goals, then lost sight of the goals as they grew more capable of changing the world. What happens to groups like that, and what makes them different from groups that keep hold of their goals? How can we keep our own groups in the second category rather than the first?)
While you could call the French Revolution âsuccessfulâ, in the dictionary sense of âaccomplishing an aim or purposeâ, you certainly donât have to. Thatâs a reasonable distinction to draw.
As I said, I wouldnât have put the list together the same way, and Iâd also much prefer to learn from movements and groups that actually achieved things I value.
*****
That said, Iâve seen a lot of people in rationalist spaces discuss the rise of certain religions as interesting phenomena worthy of study, at least in piecemeal ways. Even if religious rituals are used to bond small social groups together, around shared belief in something false, one can still consider whether itâs possible to copy the bonding elements without getting false beliefs at the same time. On a larger scale, can we learn from people who successfully lobbied for bad policies if we want to lobby for good policies?
(Another spin on this is to find examples of groups that started with worthy goals, then lost sight of the goals as they grew more capable of changing the world. What happens to groups like that, and what makes them different from groups that keep hold of their goals? How can we keep our own groups in the second category rather than the first?)