Nobel prize winner Czesław Miłosz writes brilliantly in The Captive Mind how intellectuals, elites and creatives alike, essentially the intelligentsia of Krakow, Poland, were easily conscripted into the communist propeganda machine by various mechanisms which were essentially human weakness towards conformity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind

It reads like an interesting article, but I couldn't understand the emphasis about what's "popular" and what's "unpopular". Maybe because I'm already in my mid 30s, but I for myself couldn't care less if what interests me is either seen as popular or unpopular, the same as I don't care about what people think about the music I listen or the movies I watch. Is there something I'm missing?

Yes. Your experience is atypical. Most people like being in groups. I don't think religion works if people don't have a strong drive for conformance.

I think religion works because parents coerce their children into it by denying them basic live necessities if they do not comply. E.g. they will not eat until they pray.

> I think religion works because parents coerce their children into it by denying them basic live necessities if they do not comply.

Certainly childhood indoctrination (even if without this particular kind of coercion) is part of the continuity of religion (though adult conversion into, out or, and between religions is a thing), but I'm not sure there is any evidence that childhood coercion of the sort you describe makes religion stickier.

Do you really think that's how it works in any but the most abusive families?

Yes, I actually think that's how it works in "normal" (or rather typical) families. We will never know until somebody actually has a poll of some kind.

Also, what do you mean by "the most abusive"? If we are talking the entire world, I'd guess that's how it works in >80% of religious families. Perhaps that number is lower in US, but not by much. Considering how abusive it is, I'd say the most families are "the most abusive".

P.S. in the first para by "normal" I mean that if you ask many random religious people of age 30+ most of them would consider that behavior normal.

I bet if you don't put any bad words in your question like I did in my statement, and simply ask "would you consider normal making child pray before he can eat?" even among well-educated religious people many will answer "yes". Try on your close friends, eye opening thing it is.

> P.S. in the first para by "normal" I mean that if you ask many random religious people of age 30+ most of them would consider that behavior normal.

I was raised in a religious household, am 30+, and don't consider coerced prayer of the type that seems to be described [0] normal (in fact, I find coerced prayer theologically unsound.)

OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised to find it fairly common.

[0] An expectation of respectful silence while someone else leads prayer, or an offer without obligation to lead group prayer, certainly. But coerced prayer is another thing altogether.

I understand, that it does not apply to all people, but, obviously, those considering it normal won't comment here.

Do you have children? If you do, do you coerce them into your religion (btw what is it)? If you do, how?

Do you have any evidence for this or is it pure speculation?

It is a speculation I drew from observing behavior of people I know.

Yeah. The most abusive get far worse.

Never heard of anyone approaching it that way. Much more on the level of "wash your hands before you eat."

"Woops! Don't forget to [pray/wash your hands]!"

Hygiene and religion both start out as learned behaviors before the child is able to understand the principles.

Studies show people in groups are more relaxed than loners. This is not a ding against loners but there are pretty significant evolutionary drivers for conformance. It stands to reason we'd be biased.

True, but the other side of this is the bystander effect - wouldn't you like to be the one person who acted when everyone else stood by?

Not that it would be very relaxing.

Even if we assume that all of the beliefs (eg: likes/dislikes) of all actors are logical (and not just because our friends think that) we can still see some evidence for why groups conform. We are all choosing our beliefs based on what information we have. The majority of our information comes from, and is shared with, our group. All of the people in our group are working with very similar sets of information, and are therefore likely to have very similar beliefs.

If you were purely logical and rational you would seek to diversify your information sources but people actually do the exact opposite. They go out of their way to not be exposed to out-group information sources and will often violently oppose such sources. Even within the group dissenting voices are silenced.

There is no logical or information theoretic perspective that justifies or explains conformance behavior. It's all pure biology.

> We are all choosing our beliefs based on what information we have.

So why do religious people stay religious when there is often a great deal of evidence against it. Its not as if the information is hidden from them.

"But when we look at our conscious thoughts and motivations regarding our specific behaviors, we find almost no conformity pressures."

Yeah, I couldn't get past this sentence, sorry.

How self unaware can you possibly be to not recognize conformity pressures in your own thinking?

>Yeah, I couldn't get past this sentence, sorry.

If you'd read the very next sentence ("We are only rarely aware that we do anything, or avoid doing other things, because we want to conform."), you'd have realized that the author is making exactly the opposite point you thought. The whole article is about how conformity pressure does slip in, and how we make excuses for it to convince our conscious minds that something else is actually at play.

HN is one giant non-comformance conformance party. You're more unaware than you thought.

I like to call it the Hot Topic phenomenon.

Maybe you're subject to even more conformity than you think you are, and it's in places where you haven't noticed yet.