Citizen Science Done Badly

Mark Honeychurch - 18 March 2024

Apologies for this week’s newsletter being a little late - I was planning to finish it off last night, but I was hit by some weird medical issue where I had a horrible headache and ended up sleeping from 5pm to get rid of it.

Last week I had a visit from a new pair of Mormon sisters - as always, it was a pleasure to have them around, and we had a fun chat about the life of a missionary, how we can know whether something is true, etc.

This particular couple were left scratching their head somewhat when it came to the observation that the vast majority of religious people end up holding the same religious belief that their parents do - and that, for all the claims of finding one’s own way to what is true, the most reliable predictor of someone’s religion, short of asking them directly, is simply to ask them what their parents believe in. This question has serious ramifications for religious people about whether they really did choose freely, and for my recent visitors one of them (from Samoa) seemed happy to accept this, while the other (from Arkansas) was adamant that she had made her choice independently of her parents, even though they were also Mormons.

One thing we talked about was all the different tasks that Mormon missionaries are given, and they mentioned that these days missionaries are expected to take on social media outreach. So it was no surprise to hear from committee member Dan Ryan that he’d recently been contacted by a Mormon:

I guess this is what they mean by “social media outreach” - spamming people with invites to go to church. I wonder how often this approach works.

In this week’s newsletter, Bronwyn has responded to a journalist who is planning to write about a psychic cafe in Katikati - we’ve published her full response, as presumably nothing more than a soundbite or two will likely make it into the finished article. Craig visited an Effective Altruism meeting at Rationalist House, and was underwhelmed with what he heard. If you’re interested in some more details about how Effective Altruism has lost its way, I’ve written an article for the NZARH’s Journal, Open Society, so if you’re a member you should receive a copy in the next month or so. And finally I’ve tried, and failed to make myself even more young and beautiful than I already am by using a jade roller on my face. You are invited to be a judge of the results.