Ordinary Banana

as a social institution, monasteries take people as an input and provide trustworthy people as an output

I tried to formulate a question about transformation vs selection but all the practices I thought of seemed like both

i’m not sure I understand, are you talking about the selection bias?

I was wondering how much the Bryan Caplan critique of education applies (signaling/selection theory of monasteries, say) - but it seems sillier in this context!

vows, meditation, asceticism, etc. seem to both produce and certify a trustworthy person in a pretty complex manner

i'm not familiar with Caplan, i'll have to look this up! am i understanding you that you think these things /do/ produce trustworthy people, but that from your perspective the mechanisms are not obvious / simple?