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Isha Yiras Hashem's avatar

It is interesting that despite freedom of religion, even highly spiritual people often don't pray regularly, despite no formal barriers. The obstacle is friction: the simple need to redirect attention.

Social friction once regulated behavior effectively, but modern norms have weakened this mechanism. This makes social enforcement nearly impossible. For example, while it's still socially acceptable to mock someone for being a prude, it's politically unviable to look down on someone for, say, engaging in promiscuous behavior.

Consider business ethics: The Bible's rules about honest weights and measures were both religious laws and community standards.

With social friction diminished, we increasingly rely on legal rather than cultural enforcement, replacing informal community standards with formal laws.

Is it really an improvement to go from "what will my neighbors think" to "what will my lawyer think"?

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Vincent Vans's avatar

This feels like a post that will be a classic. It puts things I've thought about before but never paid full attention to into very clear words. I'll probably be referring people to this.

I do feel that it could have benefitted from slightly more examples in places where you go a little abstract, perhaps hidden away in footnotes, but overall it is excellent.

Thanks for writing it.

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