In other news
In the current news climate we see that some figures and events tend to dominate the front-pages heavily. Still, there are important, interesting or just plain weird things happening out there and a group of people can find these better than one.
I thought I would test with a thread for linking general news articles about "other news" and discussion. Perhaps it goes into the abyss that is page 2 and beyond, but it is worth a try.
Some guidelines:
- Try to find the "clean link", so that links to the news site directly and not a social media site. Avoid "amp-links" (google).
- Write some cliff notes on what it is about, especially if it is a video.
- It's not an excuse to make outlandish claims via proxy or link extremist content.
- If it's an editorial or opinion piece, it is polite to mark it as such.
- Note the language if it is not in English.
- There is no demand that such things be posted here, if you think a piece merits its own thread, then make one.
don't kill requires an accompanying manual on when, actually, you can kill and it's moral to do so which let's say makes for very bad legislation.
I also want to be able to shop, work and go to restaurants on Saturday
Well, actually what they meant by that was "don't kill other members of our tribe". As seen in other parts of the OT, God was very big on massacres of other tribes.
You spelled it out yourself. Religiosity/religion seems very good at getting people to reproduce. And may have been evolutionarily selected for this reason. It really is that simple.
Suppose so. I was kinda being tongue in cheek, but you have a point. Humans, on the whole, are pretty dumb and superstitious.
I don't think it's good to worship god, which is in the very first one. Keeping the sabbath day holy is also very bad.
Personally I also don't like the one about honoring your father and mother, but if others want to do that, it's their business.
The first commandment is even more problematic. It’s sort of embarrassing to modern Jews/Christians who want to pretend the religion was always strictly monotheistic rather than some form of monolatrism. Really the entire old testment makes more sense if Yahweh is one tribal competing with other ones. If you’re reading it as a purely monotheistic text, Yahweh comes off like a homicidal maniac.
Let beer be for those who are perishing,
wine for those who are in anguish!
proverbs 31:6
As a fellow alcoholic, I appreciated his insights but disagree with his conclusions on drinking.
Humans offspring are insanely time and resource intensive, especially in a pre technology world. If you really think about it, it is actually pretty amazing humans as a species have survived as long as they have. If just a little bit higher % of our ancestors had decided to just relax and enjoy life instead of putting so much effort into having and raising children, none of us would probably be here.
What you call a virus was probably h
in pre tech times kids require far fewer resources. they help with babysitting, hunting & gathering, later in agriculture etc a lot sooner than they help pay the bill in the post industrial world. and a lot of them, like half, die before they are 5. the fragile resource intensive ones aren't kept around in pre-tech.
a big part of relaxing is having sex in the pre tech world and in a no-contraception world that tends to generate babies, especially when you are one of the very few mammal species in which the woman isn't even sure what her fertile days are.
I think the Harari version of why religion works evolutionarily has a higher chance of being he correct one, the role it had in allowing us to live in bigger-than-Dunbar groups without killing each others too much is kinda big.
we aren't built to care at all about strangers and religion kinda bypass that limitation.
+ religion might have been the emergent epiphenomenon of other pro-fitness attitudes, like asking why things happen.
most religions especially those with early roots are etiological in essence, a way to answer the "why we are here" and many "whys" about nature. the answers usually make no sense but the reason we need them is a craving for understanding causality which has a lot of useful application, religion might have just happened as an unintended by product of that
Marges main problem was forgetting that her supporters would rather burn books than read them.
Writing a book for people who don't read or can't read seems like a stupid idea.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has made me understand why the Romans would toss christians to the lions.
Marjorie Greene LAUGHED AT By Her Own Supporters
I think the Harari version of why religion works evolutionarily has a higher chance of being he correct one, the role it had in allowing us to live in bigger-than-Dunbar groups without killing each others too much is kinda big.
we aren't built to care at all about strangers and religion kinda bypass that limitation.
+ religion might have been the emergent epiphenomenon of other pro-fitness attitudes, like asking why things happen.
most religio
Makes sense. The point is, it seems fairly probable that religion/religiosity was a highly selected for adaptation, that may actually still be adaptive to this day; and the idea that it should be conceptualized as a virus, as popularized by Dawkins, seems incorrect.
Makes sense. The point is, it seems fairly probable that religion/religiosity was a highly selected for adaptation, that may actually still be adaptive to this day; and the idea that it should be conceptualized as a virus, as popularized by Dawkins, seems incorrect.
The second part of your sentence does not seem to follow from the first. Viruses adapt, that's what strains are.
The second part of your sentence does not seem to follow from the first. Viruses adapt, that's what strains are.
Well, if you conceptualize religiosity as a virus; it follows that this means it is an exogenous agent that can and should be removed from the host for its health. If you conceptualize it as an adaptation that was like selected for and possibly hardwired, then you can accept it is something we maybe shouldn't just be trying to remove out of hand; but possibly we can excise positive aspects and mitigate negative ones.
I think most sensible people can agree that worshipping religious texts written hundreds of years ago that codify slavery and gender apartheid and glorify genocide are bad things we should strive to mitigate. But like Lucium articulated, there may be some benefits as far as socialization and cooperation we shouldn't just dismiss out of hand.
Well, if you conceptualize religiosity as a virus; it follows that this means it is an exogenous agent that can and should be removed from the host for its health. If you conceptualize it as an adaptation that was like selected for and possibly hardwired, then you can accept it is something we maybe shouldn't just be trying to remove out of hand; but possibly we can excise positive aspects and mitigate negative ones.
I think most sensible p
I would go further and say that superstition and stupidity in general is something we should strive to eradicate, regardless of whether it's worshipping ancient texts and imaginary omnipotent beings, looking to stellar constellations as predictors of someone's personality or behaviour, or believing in some of the insane conspiracy theories you see even on this forum. I struggle to reconcile myself to the idea that this sort of idiocy is somehow beneficial or selected for.
Well, if you conceptualize religiosity as a virus; it follows that this means it is an exogenous agent that can and should be removed from the host for its health. If you conceptualize it as an adaptation that was like selected for and possibly hardwired, then you can accept it is something we maybe shouldn't just be trying to remove out of hand; but possibly we can excise positive aspects and mitigate negative ones.
I think most sensible p
It's complicated, some viruses become beneficial to the host
https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/article...
Not in my human
Another group of researchers is interested in viruses that infect humans without causing disease and then fend off more dangerous viruses and bacteria. GB virus C, an asymptomatic blood-borne virus, slows progression to AIDS in people with HIV and lowers the risk that infection with Ebola virus will prove deadly. Mouse studies suggest that certain innocuous herpesviruses and cytomegaloviruses prevent infection by Listeria and Yersinia pestis, which causes bubonic plague. Even harmful viruses can harbor disease-combating strategies for scientists to adapt. The hepatitis A virus can protect against hepatitis C, and researchers have used lymphoma-associated viruses to cure type 1 diabetes in mice.
Proponents lament that human viruses remain underexplored as infection fighters. “Medicine may benefit from taking mutualistic viruses more seriously,” reads a 2011 article in Nature Reviews Microbiology titled “The good viruses.”
//
I do agree that Dawkins almost certainly intended it in a negative sense.
Otoh i do agree with Dawkins that we should look at components not at the emergent epiphenomenon. Ie it's not religiosity, it's what makes religion (a fairly recent creation of humanity) possible and widespread.
So i would look at "deference to authority", "need to believe some agent causes things to happen", "superstition as in the belief that it's action X by humans which caused unrelated event Y" and so on. These concurring elements can clearly have pro-survival values in some (many?) environments , and all togheter make the emergence of structured, hierarchil, rule-based religion possible if not inevitable.
For the "superstition" the golden bough explains it fairly well imo.
I would go further and say that superstition and stupidity in general is something we should strive to eradicate, regardless of whether it's worshipping ancient texts and imaginary omnipotent beings, looking to stellar constellations as predictors of someone's personality or behaviour, or believing in some of the insane conspiracy theories you see even on this forum. I struggle to reconcile myself to the idea that this sort of idiocy is som
If you dig into it you realize it's basically genetical.
Stupidity isn't beneficial and isn't selected for, it's just that "highest possible intelligence" wasn't selected for as it comes with associated tradeoff costs. We became as intelligent as it was useful to be (in the environment at the time), not more than that.
And anyway stupidity is just a point in the distribution of a trait, it's like saying you want to eradicate "shortness". Unless everyone is tall the same , there will be shortness.
Superstition is the byproduct of experimenting in the world noticing causal links, and believing people with more experience than you. Both things are pro-survival.
Basically you happen to be doing something and something else fairly rare happens, somebody else notices the same, by pure luck (or unluck) your group becomes convinced of that causal link, and then it gets passed through the generation as objective knowledge of the world.
The collective "you" act as if the type of people who commit heinous acts of violence or bigotry in the name of their religion would be kind and gentle souls if they hadn't been tainted by extremist interpretations of religious texts.
Have you met people?
Some people are just ****ed up.
I used to go to church. I was even in a small group study for a few years. Some of the couples in our small group would do ridiculous things in the name of God, like legally adopt a pair of disadvantaged sisters from Nigeria and raise them in an upper middle class American suburb instead of African squalor, or donate their time and money to ensure at-risk populations in Southeast Wisconsin were fed and cared for around holidays, or facilitate grief counseling for elderly people navigating life after the loss of a spouse. They also admit their personal failings toward living a Christlike existence, and make an effort to realign their lives in that direction. That's my experience with bible-thumpers. Really despicable stuff.
My experience with atheists is them screeching at me on the internet about bad things that happened a thousand years ago, or reminding me that there are pedophiles in Catholicism.
I'll take the Lutheran bible-thumpers, thank you very much.
The collective "you" act as if the type of people who commit heinous acts of violence or bigotry in the name of their religion would be kind and gentle souls if they hadn't been tainted by extremist interpretations of religious texts.
Have you met people?
Some people are just ****ed up.
I used to go to church. I was even in a small group study for a few years. Some of the couples in our small group would do ridiculous things in the name of G
It's hard to coordinate people if there isn't a common interest.
Religion creates an artificial common interest, shared by people far away (think pre-engine society) that can be harnessed to coordinate them toward a single goal. Everytime that furthers the survival of a group, at the expense of a group that, lacking that coordination tool, is less prosperous, religion solidifies itself as part of the memeplex of surviving humans.
Religion is also a very powerful tool to control the masses (which for most of history were dirty poor in agricultural societies). Rulers that employ religion survive more than rulers that don't and so on.
Ofc religion isn't the only way to achieve that. Some areas "deified" the rulers to achieve basically the same result. That should clarify what the role of religion was and why it thrived.
Your experience with atheists is probably with radical leftist atheists. Rational , or otherwise right-leaning atheists are completly different.
You can find the roots of atheism in romans if not even in greeks. It's not only Bakunin and the USSR legacy
According to EU statisticians, when you account for purchase power and actual consumption, Ireland is poorer than Italy... and Poland and Romania do far better than most people think
Nothing wrong with religion/philosophy.
The problem is when it try to do science or force people to believe in what they believe .
Putting faith above everything else is what is the problem .
There rise the stupidity and the blind following of crazy shitty ideas…
i fear SK won't be able to significantly reverse the disastrous decline in fertility but I really hope I am wrong
And anyway stupidity is just a point in the distribution of a trait, it's like saying you want to eradicate "shortness". Unless everyone is tall the same , there will be shortness.
Yes, but on average, humans have got taller over time. The tail end of the curve today might well have been average or better several hundred or thousand years ago. Hopefully, they will also get smarter over time, and there will come a point where even those at the tail end of the curve have left all the superstitious nonsense behind.
Yes, but on average, humans have got taller over time. The tail end of the curve today might well have been average or better several hundred or thousand years ago. Hopefully, they will also get smarter over time, and there will come a point where even those at the tail end of the curve have left all the superstitious nonsense behind.
I'm more worried about the opposite.
Broken YouTube LinkYes, but on average, humans have got taller over time. The tail end of the curve today might well have been average or better several hundred or thousand years ago. Hopefully, they will also get smarter over time, and there will come a point where even those at the tail end of the curve have left all the superstitious nonsense behind.
We just got to fulfill our genetic potential better wrt height, in terms of nutrition mainly but also avoiding most developmental problems in the womb and in early childhoods. I don't think we will go much taller than this in first world countries (there could be some cm to gain yet in some poor countries).
I don't remember if you are an IQ denialist like some others here or not, but using IQ as a decent proxy of intelligence, we had the Flynn effect for a while (a broad base increase in intelligence) in many places , but recently it looks like we have a slight reverse Flynn effect ongoing (maybe, controversial, debatable).
We aren't sure of the causes of either.
That said you might have a very wrong assumption at work here, that intelligence means no superstition.
You might be the kind of logical down to earth rationalist who often deals with peers with similar attitudes.
But even if religiosity is inversely correlated with most proxies of intelligence, even among STEM PhDs there are plenty of people who believe in unprovable things.
Elements of religion you despise might stay even if human IQ grew by 10 or 15 points in some decades (which would be a massive, almost miracolous result, if it happens without genetical modification, akin to what the Flynn effect is estimated to be from 1940 to 2010)
House Ethics Committee is continuing its investigation into Rep.
Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
In the MAGA era of Donald Trump, Gaetz is the genuine article,
a young politician who has successfully fashioned himself in Trump’s image.
Both came to Washington to break the system, not to fix it.
In national elections, Republicans have performed as a minority political coalition for 30 years,
only outperforming Democrats in the national popular vote once in the last eight presidential elections.
It’s been a depressing decade for the GOP.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opin...
The Florida Republican is trying to capitalize on the ethics probe with a new fundraising campaign.
A member of Congress finds himself facing an ethics investigation.
The probe was launched by a committee chaired by a colleague from his own party.
The member stands accused of possibly accepting improper gifts,
dispensing special favors, and obstructing government investigations.
All of this, of course, is unfolding in an election year.
In a normal political environment, that member would do everything
possible to downplay the probe’s importance and hope voters don’t notice.
But in 2024, Gaetz realizes that this isn’t how the game is played anymore.
House Ethics Committee is continuing its investigation into Rep.
Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
In the MAGA era of Donald Trump, Gaetz is the genuine article,
a young politician who has successfully fashioned himself in Trump’s image.
Both came to Washington to break the system, not to fix it.
In national elections, Republicans have performed as a minority political coalition for 30 years,
only
Yeah this guy is a nutcase the guy wants term limits and banning members from trading on insider info
Well I guess if he has 2 reasonable views then all the crazy ones and the sexual misconduct don't matter.
Re alleged illegal acts, the DOJ investigated him for like 2 years then decided not to press charges.
Not sure why when the DOJ does that it's a sign nothing illegal happened for Biden, but not for Gaetz.
Oh wait maybe I do know why
