Magic doesn't work that way
jakobgreenfeld.comThis sort of content is intensely frustrating. OP is a software engineer and entrepreneur. There are actual people who actually study this stuff for a living. They are called historians and they work extremely hard for minimal pay in a field with few jobs and crushing hours.
Then some random startup person comes in and writes a blog post with a sentence like
> But there’s also another option if we don’t take it for granted that people in the past were really that different from us.
Like... this is the sort of sentence that makes people tear their hair out and scream into the void. It is like somebody coming to you and saying "wait... maybe we can... just hear me out... write a program in text and edit it over time to build software."
My wife is a professor of history and has done work on some of the questions raised in this blog post. Usually I show her these things because I know it'll be fun to rage at them together. But this one I chose not to show her because I do not believe that I have ever seen online writing that is more dismissive of her profession than this. Like, and I cannot express this clear enough, OP is just making shit up about a field of study that is centuries old and involves professionals who work 60+ hour weeks for shit pay because they are so invested in these topics.
I gave this post a pass because it's not as arrogant as most HN-variety STEMlords, but yeah, it's pretty embarrassing.
I took "HN-variety STEMlord" as a poignant personal attack on me ... and one I absolutely needed to hear. Somehow it's the perfect phrase for something I've (ashamedly) done myself quite a bit. Thank you for this much needed slap in the face.
Bro I feel like you're mixing up a whole lot of entirely unrelated thoughts and feelings here.
One thing is a random blog post. One thing is your frustration that teachers/historians don't get paid well. A third thing is that people find blog posts more engaging than history text-books.
I also find your expression "making shit up" really weird. Anyways that's all for you to unpack -- this is a fun read, if you want to be angry at everyone who has a non-academically-rigorous idea that they type up that's one way to spend your energy.
"Why did various people in the past use various forms of divination and how did they feel about it" is a real historical question with a commensurate amount of analysis. This article throws out three claims
> Well, sometimes building a consensus is more important than accuracy. A shaman’s random decision is better than a more optimal decision not everyone can get fully behind. This is especially true in war scenarios where conviction is key.
> Sometimes it is better to believe that a decision is sanctioned by a higher authority than to know that it rests on mere conjecture, as it usually does in the real world where we’re always dealing with incomplete information.
> And sometimes it is better to have a truly random decision than to continue to follow the predictable inclinations of one’s established prejudices. Surely, the enemy will not be able to predict a shaman’s completely random decision.
The author then makes conclusions about the beliefs people in the past had about divination.
This appears to have been derived entirely from the hunches of the author. That's best described as "making shit up."
It starts with the epiphany: "hey, maybe it is actually possible to understand the past" and then doesn't make the barest effort to consider that there are approaches for doing this.
I think any non-scientific publication is someone's hunch more than less, and that's okay, because it's not a scientific publication. It's not peer reviewed either!
This serves as a proper inspiration or food for thought for scientists living their lives outside of work and industry. It makes the world go around and should be cultivated and fostered in my opinion.
The article even treats an Elizabeth Gilbert quote as though she invented memetics, a claim she would never make.
It's an incredibly shallow and ignorant pastiche of pop-culture science-like voodoo nonsense of the Carlos Castaneda/I am Ishmael type.
Fun conversation to have at 2 AM while drunk at an undergraduate party but pure cringe in the context of a published blog entry.
Well all I can say is that you and your wife must be really poor teachers.
Here you have a child who knows nothing about history but has come to a realisation all by themselves about people in the past, and instead of praising them and saying, "here's where you can learn more" you decide to deride them for their ignorance.
That's not ideal.
I am not deriding them for their ignorance. I am frustrated that there is a mountain of available resources for this person to actually learn from scholars and they've instead presented their initial epiphany as unique and insightful and then run in what seems like a completely random direction based on that epiphany and no additional information.
The blog post is not presented as "hey, I am now interested in history and would like to engage with it." It is presented as "I can drive through this sort of analysis purely based on baseless hunches." If the article stopped at "hey, I've been thinking about the past wrongly" then I'd have a completely different response.
That's fair enough, but this isn't an academic paper. It's just a blog post - someone's random thoughts.
PreEdit: I was going to say they didn't know it would end up on HN but I thought I'd better check and sure enough it was submitted by the author. I think you may be righter than I am.
I'm being a little mean to OP. I've certainly written stuff online that I'd be embarrassed to show to an expert.
I find this sort of thing to be frustrating in ways that go beyond just OP's post. The humanities are being hollowed out in both education and professional research. Students are told not to take courses in history. They are funneled into software and business because these fields pay well and these people become leaders of major corporations whose technology shapes our society in so many ways.
And they also write things like this, which simultaneously suggest that history is useful (the original epiphany being something learned basically right at the beginning of any study). OP clearly thinks that this is important. They think that this understanding has the capability of changing how we see people of the past and people today.
But then... they also seem to think that the field is worthless when they take the next step. I can think of no other way that a person could get from their initial epiphany to "I dunno, I bet this is why people in the past read entrails" and just roll with that. Like, what does this person think that a historian does all day?
Maybe the humanities really are dead. And the outcome of that won't be "nobody cares about history." It'll be this. The leaders of the next generation pretending to do history without understanding what the thing even is. And it'll be people reading that content and internalizing it. A whole society just hallucinating understanding of humanity through entrepreneurship newsletters.
This article is nowhere near the most harmful one I've seen. It is just very blatant. And it makes me sad.
I feel like the author barely learned anything from that experience. One can imagine the irony of reading writings by a devout Christian who gets surprised by sophistication of heretics like Aristotle and Avicenna yet still keeps his absolute conviction in his own beliefs without any doubt or self-reflection as if it is something self-evident.
Have the author ever tried to understand what is science and engineering, and how they are justified? Does he believe in human rights? Have he ever thought where his ethical system originates? The author seems to firmly believe that he lives in “the end of history”; so the biggest insight he could come up with is that scriptures are kind of self-help books and prayers are kind of exercises that treat anxiety.
Right, this is just Dawkin's-type nonesense with a patronizing mask on.
In what way is even our modern scientific secularism not ultimately the same kind of faith that the author thinks is "dumb"?
Yes, yes, empiricism, method, peer review, the proof is in the technology pudding. All so many things that still produce a mind ultimately indistinguishable from a religious fanatic who is assured in their beliefs, mobilized to tell people they are wrong..
One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something. Putting your belief in an entire enterprise of empirical observation doesn't change the act itself, your not smarter because you happen to live at this time where you can put your belief into this particular enterprise of modern science, its just the cards you were dealt.
> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.
Can you expand a bit on that? Because to me statements like that are not right or wrong because to me they don't really mean anything. Clearly to many people it does mean something, because you are far from the only one to make statements like that. To be clear, I don't mean any of this in a condescending way; I'm truly trying to understand.
For starters, what exactly do you mean by 'faith' and 'to believe in something'? I presume that believing in a god will certainly fit the definition, but what about people who are not religious? Would something like believing in the general goodness of people fit the definition?
The thing is, when I read or hear a statement like 'you have to believe in something' I try to determine whether is applies to myself, and then I have a problem. Do I believe in something? I don't know. I don't believe in a god, that's for sure. I do believe in evolution, for example, in the sense that I believe it exists (or more precisely perhaps, I accept the evidence in favor of the theory). But somehow I feel things like that are not what is generally meant by 'something to believe in'. But then I feel like there's nothing really meaningful left that I believe in. And of course then I start to question why I should have to believe in something. But maybe that's just because of a misunderstanding on my part.
“We just don’t know” only gets you so far. In order to participate in modern society constant little assumptions sneak into your thinking. At about the rate videos are uploaded to YouTube. AKA faster than we have the time and capacity to audit them.
We all have faith in the same way we all have spam in our inboxes.
It doesn’t mean we all think a Nigerian prince is going to make us rich.
Funny you mention human rights, which is something the religion (Catholicism) fought frantically against.
There are different kind of beliefs. The author is quite explicit in that he’s describing one particular kind: religious beliefs. Which, as we now know, are just another kind of fringe theories, like flat earth. But - and that’s what the article is about - they could make sense in some specific circumstances.
Lots of angles here. For one thing, consider, like a Humean skeptic, small things. You believe if you hit a billiards ball with another, it will roll away at a certain vector. How might we justify this belief? You might say, "well I have seen billiard balls interact before, and this prediction is consistent with my past experiences, I have no reason to believe otherwise." Hume would say: "the belief itself that you can predict a phenomena based on prior analogous observations cannot be justified alone by those observations." That is, there is nothing in your experience alone that proves that things that act one way in the past will continue to act that way in the future, there is something like belief there.
But you are probably smarter than that. You would say, "well the study of physics shows that we can generalize the behavior of bodies in space such that we can predict their behavior. And look! We can make planes and computers and such with these generalized rules, so they must be real." But what fundamentally has changed here? Not only is it ultimately the same act of belief, but now you are at best 1 step removed from actual experience. Not only are you putting some belief into the consistency of the universe, you are putting it into a giant infrastructure of research and peer review and state-interest and grants that you can't possibly be personally a part of entirely. You have in fact contracted out your empirical life to others!
Because it is "better" or "worse" as a story, does not change the fundamental act of belief. Hume, I believe (its been a long time), would say this kind of believing is a habit, which makes sense to me.
To get even crazier, consider even perception itself, as Husserl did. You are looking at a table in your room, you can't see the other side of the table, but you "know" its there. But what do you really know? You know that perception itself tends to present a "world" with certain characteristics like extension, where moving around an object will present different parts of it. But that perception "shows" you a world like this does not justify the world itself, only the characteristics and tendencies of your perception.
This is what I mean in principle, perhaps we "know more" but we are certainly not "smarter" than religious people of the past. We just have longer stories for things. Stories that are sometimes, but not always, more fruitful.
And a related but different angle: I think even secular/atheist/agnostic people who aren't even necessarily militant weirdos like Dawkins/Harris unconsciously must contextualize themselves and their life in a world of belief. Trivially, you not believing in god is not an absence of delusion or whatever, but necessarily a belief. You go about the world and live your life based on unconscious assumptions that there is fundamentally a ground you are standing on, whether you are a philosopher or not.
Hm, OK, that's a whole different approach then what I expected. If one calls the expectation that the law of physics work the same tomorrow as they did today and yesterday and all the days before a belief, then yes everyone believes in that. It's so obvious that it doesn't mean anything anymore, at least to me.
> perhaps we "know more" but we are certainly not "smarter" than religious people of the past
Oh, I never said that we are smarter than people of the past. I would leave religious out of it though, since I think being religious is independent from being smart.
> And a related but different angle: I think even secular/atheist/agnostic people who aren't even necessarily militant weirdos like Dawkins/Harris ... By Dawkins I guess you mean Richard Dawkins? I don't know that much about him, but he doesn't really seem like a weirdo to me? I don't know Harris so I can't comment on they being a weirdo or not at all.
> ... unconsciously must contextualize themselves and their life in a world of belief. Trivially, you not believing in god is not an absence of delusion or whatever, but necessarily a belief.
I don't think it's trivial at all to state that not believing in god is necessarily a belief. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but I don't think it's at all trivial. There are infinitely many things that I don't belief in. Surely we can't say that for each and every one of those I actively belief in their absence? Or is there a fundamental difference between god and other things I don't believe in? Or is the distinction between absence of belief and belief of absence a distinction without meaning, just a play with words, not much different from discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
I just meant that my particular argument right there was trivial, not the belief itself. Ie:
Not believing in x === believing in not x.
Thats what we in the biz call "trivial".
If we lived in a world where the idea of god never crossed anybody's mind, then they would neither believe nor not believe. I dont believe in unicorns, but i neither believe nor disbelieve some random microorganism Ive never heard of.
Just consider yourself lucky you are not familiar with Dawson :).
> I just meant that my particular argument right there was trivial, not the belief itself.
Yes, that's what I thought you meant, and I disagree.
> Not believing in x === believing in not x.
Ah, so indeed to you the two are the same. Again, I don't think that's trivial at all.
Let me mention Shigella roterei, a species of bacteria, to you. There, now you have heard of it. But does it exist? Do you believe in it? What if I state that it doesn't exist? Just because I now mentioned it to you, do you necessarily have to believe it doesn't exist. You can't just not believe in it anymore. Fine with me, but I don't think I work that way.
I do think we are just in a linguistic wrinkle here. Because "not believing in x" is ambiguous in that it could also obtain those who have never even heard of x. I apologize, that was not what I meant, I thought the context was enough to understand that, but I get your confusion. I really dont think we are disagreeing about anything really!
But if it isn't the ambiguity there tripping us up, very curious to hear your argument for why that formulation is incorrect. I would believe in the fungus if I trusted the authority of the person telling me about it. But before I heard about it, I neither believed nor disbelieved it.
[Sorry, please ignore, I accidentally posted an incomplete comment]
Hm, OK, that's a whole different approach then what I expected. If one calls the expectation that the law of physics work the same tomorrow as they did today and yesterday and all the days before a belief, then yes everyone believes in that. It's so obvious that it doesn't mean anything anymore, at least to me.
Some of the questions philosophers think about are interesting to me in a w
Well the law is the thing we come up with to explain the phenomena. Its not about the laws changing, but quite literally the world the law is supposed to speak to. But I don't understand how its trivial, its a very deep epistemological assertion. You could imagine another world where experiments yield very different laws, but it would be no less science, and no less a world.
If you say that philosophy tells us that even the smallest observations we make require some belief about how the world looks, yes, that is an interesting assertion (though I feel philosophers make a much bigger deal out of it than what it's worth). I'm not arguing that.
But when you state "Everyone has to belief in something", that is just a trivial consequence of the above. We've defined 'belief' to be something that is inherent in the most trivial things we do in our life every single second of every single day. With that definition of belief, of course everyone necessarily believes.
At least from my view. From you view, as I now realize, "everyone has to belief in something" is a summary for the theory of knowledge, and thus not trivial at all.
> Its not about the laws changing, but quite literally the world the law is supposed to speak to.
I feel you're playing with the meaning of words like I feel philosophers tend to do, causing all kinds of misunderstandings. The laws of physics don't speak to the world; they try to describe the world. When I say that the laws don't change, what I mean is that the way the world itself works doesn't change.
> You could imagine another world where experiments yield very different laws, but it would be no less science, and no less a world.
I could, but that has nothing to do with the world we live, or what I do and don't believe in. I don't see how this is relevant at all.
Sorry, I meant "Speak to the world" as precisely "describe the world". As in, "the countries stringent laws speaks to its cultural values" or "his eloquence speaks to his strong reading ability."
And yes, my point was to try to show that something seemingly trivial in fact shows something implicit about the way we think. That is the form of my assertion. I don't really think we are disagreeing about anything, but philosophy is definitely not for everyone! Only really for the worst kinds of people in my experience ;)
>Trivially, you not believing in god is not an absence of delusion or whatever, but necessarily a belief.
At, the old “_not_ collecting postage stamps is a hobby too” argument.
> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.
"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain…In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar." - Richard Feynman
The only thing I believe is that what I believe can and should change to fit the data I have available.
An example of this would be the fact that science ultimately provides an approximate truth, really a truth relative to the other accepted scientific truths, as time progress and it can relax itself into the scientific web of understanding. However, many scientific evangelicals will take any current study or hypothesis as immediate truth.
This is blind faith and poor understanding of the process. Essentially, they elevate scientists to priesthood where they have direct communication with the higher power where they have access to ultimate truth.
That was beautifully said.
> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.
Dawkins's point is that you don't have to believe in something that is clearly wrong, like horoscopes and Christianity, and you can choose not to make major decisions (like punishing people) over beliefs you have no evidence for and have evidence against.
The problem with the author is that he points out people believing in stupid things like shamans and gods and assumes that they must have a smart reason for it. Horoscopes and Christianity are the modern day equivalent, and there is no smart reason for the people who believe in those to do so today, so there is no reason to suppose that there used to be for their equivalents in the past.
You pray to the alter of "smartness" and your God is no less vengeful and irrational as all the others!
As I mentioned above, an insult is not actually a form of rational argument.
Science works. Religion doesn't. When I want someone to fix my broken arm or build a bridge, or pretty well anything else I would want to do, I'm going to go with the system that works.
You cannot just brush that part aside!
If the inner life of a human was simply pure intentionality, this would be a good story, but we are unfortunately concerned with things beyond "I want to do x" whether we like it or not. That is, you don't simply want to build a bridge in a vacuum, you want to build a bridge because you believe it will help you with crossing the river. You want to get to the other side of the river because you believe there will be treasure there, because indeed you found a treasure map and you believe it to be bona fide. You want treasure because you believe it will give you comfort and happiness.
Or whatever. I am just saying you can't help but believe, I am not saying there aren't necessarily good or bad beliefs, but I am saying that one belief or another doesn't make you "smarter."
Is not the idea of intelligence itself a kind of belief? Have we ever seen it in a microscope? How can you definitively answer, e.g. the Chalmer's zombie problem? The general issue of solipsism, of experience itself? Don't you believe that those who you love are full humans who hopefully love you back?
(Also I am sorry you keep feeling insulted, not sure what to do about that. Please know I fully implicate myself in all this as well.)
Religion worked for thousands of years to create society and a shared code of ethics and morals. To say otherwise is an uneducated understanding of human history. It may be outdated in many ways now but to say it doesn't work is not a take that gets you any closer to understanding how the world and people work, it just sounds edgy and spiteful.
You've got it backwards. Non-human species develop societies and naturally evolve arbitrary codes of ethics for how they should treat each other based on what keeps the society alive. Humans were no different, then we evolved language, and immediately began retrofitting religion to these arbitrary sets of ethics to justify them.
Brains are glorified pattern matchers, but we hadn't yet figured out how to judge the quality of a perceived pattern, so in a desperate fit of apophenia, religions naturally emerged. Eventually we stepped back and developed systematic ways of distinguishing good patterns from bad. We call this system science.
Edison said, "I didn't fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a lightbulb; I only needed to find one way to make it work." I see the thousands of religions that humans have come up with as those 2,000 non-light bulbs, and science as the one method that works. Now that we have a working light bulb, we can throw out those other attempts.
Religion helped us reach the next stage of societal evolution far beyond what existed before language. For instance, the catholic church forbidding cousins to marry is largely considered the cause of a large leap in both genetic diversity, health, intelligence, and a more expansive social network. This is just one example. Religion is just the word for the collection of knowledge about how the society should operate and I think you are getting too caught up on the metaphysical aspects. The comparison to animal societies and the idea that everything was figured out before we had written language.. hardly an idea worth engaging.
You're giving religion credit for things that other species consistently manage to do without religion (like actively avoiding inbreeding). To say religion was useful because it inadvertently generated beneficial selection pressures is like saying abusing a child is useful because it teaches a child how to defend themselves.
I'm also curious why you believe evolution to be a metaphysical concept. From my POV you're introducing unnecessary, loaded terms like "religion" to explain phenomena that are already explained without them.
"Religion" is much more than "just the word for the collection of knowledge about how the society should operate". Maybe "ethics" is a better term for that? Religion is a very loaded term. The history of religion represents an ecosystem of competing industries vying for power over each other. I agree that religion has been used as a tool to influence the behavior of human society for both good and bad, but so has advertising and marketing (bacon for breakfast, diamonds for wedding bands, KFC for Christmas, etc.). Does that make advertising religion? Is religion a form of advertising? Or are they both just superfluous terms for something more simple: evolution.
And now you don't need religion the same way kids don't needs fairy tale monsters so they behave well at home.
Tom didn't say otherwise. You're arguing against a straw man.
To say there are smarter options now is different from saying it didn't work then. Getting illiterate people to gather for a sermon where they could be told to avoid shellfish that could kill them and to avoid harming other people (because an invisible wrathful being would catch them even if the society they lived in did not) served a purpose then that we have developed better systems for since.
That cognitive dissonance you're feeling comes from justifying horoscopes and jihad in order to try to avoid feeling silly about your unjustified beliefs.
Being smart is the opposite of irrational. Vengefulness is orthogonal to correctness. If the punishment serves to increase the length of your life, it is rational (equivalently, smart). If not, it is stupid.
Nobody should feel silly! These are good conversations to have.
Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality? This is important because rationality is something I assume we agree is a characteristic of humans. Humans can't help but be rational, which is why irrational behavior can be the exception that proves the rule. To say "being smart" is the opposite suddenly creates a a somewhat unscientific rift among human animals, doesn't it? But I do get why you want to say that for your argument, but you should be a little more nuanced in order to get one over on me. Not that I am particularly smart or anything, but just because I am listening to what you are saying.
But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you? That is a somewhat novel argument in this context.
> Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality?
If you are smart, you must be rational. The contrapositive must also be true. If you are irrational, you cannot be smart. My comment points out that your argument that worshipping at the altar of smartness is irrational makes no sense.
> But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you?
This is self-evident. If you die, all other rewards lose their utility.
I don't understand. Some people spend their whole lives in prison because of false convictions, others live beautiful and exciting lives and die before they're 30. I'd probably want the latter there, but I guess you'd want the former?
Edit to your edit: I have had the pleasure to know and study with some of the "smartest" people around in the hard and soft sciences, and let me tell you they can definitely act irrationally (we use the euphemism "eccentric" to gloss over this). Consider a genious mathematician who happens to have OCD. Does their sometimes irrational behavior mean they can't be smart?
Have you ever seen "smartness" in a microscope?
If you are offered a choice between prison and death, you should choose prison because you get to live and have the possibility of living an exciting life after prison (and maybe even in prison). The possibility increases as more people get smarter because those people can figure out how to extend your life.
Your scenario makes no sense because in both cases, you are dead, and dead people have no preferences.
Ha! Ok, I see. If you could really have the discipline to live like this, then yes you perhaps have extinguished dirty, irrational belief from your mind, achieved full Vulcan status. But at what cost?? How could you ever fall in love? How could ever be happy? It just sounds very lonely, very difficult, and not very human.
> How could you ever fall in love? How could ever be happy? It just sounds very lonely, very difficult, and not very human.
How is that different from belief in certain religions, where sex is solely for procreation? Everybody puts some sense of what they want to achieve over biological urges for immediate hit of dopamine. The only difference is that I say that these choices should be rational.
Because despite what their religions told them, people still surely fell in love, experienced passion! Im not talking about biological urges, I am talking about the need to feel whole, Desire itself. The idea that some moments can make you feel like life is beautiful, moments where you feel you can die right then and it would all be worth it.
In general you are suddenly being prescriptive rather than descriptive, which implicitly seems to show you agree with what I am saying about belief, but you simply think that humans should change fundamentally. Which is fine, but it is itself a belief you have that you contextualize your life with!
> I am talking about the need to feel whole, Desire itself. The idea that some moments can make you feel like life is beautiful, moments where you feel you can die right then and it would all be worth it.
That feeling comes from dopamine. If you actually believe that feeling is better than actually living to experience that feeling again in the future, a heroin dealer will be more than happy to help you out.
> but you simply think that humans should change fundamentally.
Only in that they should be more rational. I don't think that is an onerous request. Many people already try to be.
Reductivism is a hell of a drug in itself don't yeah think?
What you call reductionism, I call reality. Have I removed anything important from my model?
> In what way is even our modern scientific secularism not ultimately the same kind of faith that the author thinks is "dumb"?
In literally hundreds of ways; if you took the effort to read almost any atheist forum you'd find them. I'll give you what I think is most important one:
Scientific secularism is obsessed with proving itself wrong; religion is obsessed with proving itself right.
I dont understand how this is an argument for what we are talking about? We aren't talking about scientific secularism or religion in themselves, but how a person can relate to either of them. Science itself isnt walking around trying to prove themselves wrong, people do science and have a belief of what its supposed to be.
Some people have a belief that they have five fingers on their right hand. Some people have a belief that 1 + 1 = 2. Some people have a belief that the world is flat and worldwide governments are conspiring, for shits and giggles apparently, to deceive you. Are all these beliefs equal?
I can count the fingers on my hand. I can understand the definitions of "1", "+", "2", and "=", and verify to my own satisfaction why that statement is true. I, and anyone else, can challenge these beliefs, and I personally commit to changing them if the challenge is successful.
That's not what happens when flat-earthers or the religious have their beliefs challenged. It's completely the opposite. They refuse to change their beliefs even when their own experiments prove them wrong. They usually refuse to challenge their beliefs at all.
You're choosing to use this word "belief" in very different ways, and then pretending it means the same thing. It doesn't.
I dont understand. I have found that when you argue with a flat earther or an atheist, they typically argue the same way. Flat-earthers have tons of "scientific evidence" they want to show you, same for conspiracy theory people, they always have lots of evidence and painstakingly construct rational arguments around possibly faulty assumptions. Athiests are not special in this way! Even in particular I find conspiracy theory people and athiests share a lot of rhetorical devices.
And further, I have never ever ever met an "athiest" in the world that would even think about questioning their own beliefs, why would they? Wouldnt it be irrational for them too? What could ever make an atheist change their mind? God could come down and tell everyone in the world she is real, and I bet atheists would pick it apart, going over the footage, proving how it wasn't really God. How could they not, it would mean throwing away so much of their work and existential commitments (I would be like this I think).
It is you that are not telling me how these beliefs are different, im not trying to ambiguate, I'm being serious each time I say "belief."
Edit: Also think about the math one a little more. That is a good one! The belief in "1+1=2" involves understanding things like cardinality or summation, or you can just remember from school. But either way what you believe about it is that it is self-evident insofar as there is a shared understanding of the rules for those symbols. That "1" is a certain kind of thing, and so is "+" and "=". But in reality there is nothing about this situation that precludes that someone else could understand "1+1=2" differently. They could have been taught for some terrible reason that there is an exception in the rule of addition which means whenever you add 768 to 406, you get "potato". And yet, you wholly agree that 1+1=2. How could we verify our shared understanding without going through all the rules and making sure we are the same. But there is nothing in experience or in science that can justify that we are on the same page, so to speak, as those we communicate with. Its a belief because we always find ourselves among people and we strive for agreement, or already find ourselves in agreement.
Kripke does a better job of explaining this than me :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Pr...
It honestly just sounds like you're not very steeped in the subject. You're re-hashing very simple arguments that have been covered many many times by prominent atheists, if you're interested. If you're not interested, that's fine, but I'd stop arguing about it online.
> I have found that when you argue with a flat earther or an atheist, they typically argue the same way. Flat-earthers have tons of "scientific evidence" they want to show you.
Sure, lots of people argue by presenting evidence. Evaluating the quality of that evidence is something humanity has gotten much better at in general, but it does take some work. The fact that scientists and crackpots both claim to present evidence doesn't mean that the act of presenting evidence is flawed.
> I have never ever ever met an "athiest" in the world that would even think about questioning their own beliefs. Wouldnt it be irrational for them too?
It sounds to me like you've literally never met an atheist. Talk to one. And no, questioning your own beliefs is almost the defintion of rationality. Why would it be irrational to question your own beliefs?
> What could ever make an atheist change their mind?
Evidence.
> God could come down and tell everyone in the world she is real, and I bet atheists would pick it apart, going over the footage, proving how it wasn't really God.
"Footage?" It's not clear whether your hypothetical is "Clouds open and God appears before you, speaking in a divine voice" -- evidence! -- or "someone comes out with grainy footage of something that could maybe kinda look a bit God-ish". Details matter!
> How could they not, it would mean throwing away so much of their work and existential commitments (I would be like this I think).
I have done literally no work being an atheist. It takes none of my time, except for the occasional pointless online discussion like this. I have literally no "existential commitments". It's not an important part of my identity. It's literally the lack of all of those things.
How much work has it been for you not believing in Zeus?
Honestly, we're trodding the same exact path that has been trodden a million times. Literally read any prominent atheist and you will have the answers to most of your questions.
Haha I guess you are right, I am just out of my depth here, I'm sorry to waste your time. :)
Definitely happy for you that you could have steeped yourself with "prominent athiest thinkers" but also have not spent any work at all on it. Quite an accomplishment! I am glad you are as unbothered as I am, its good to just to talk it out sometimes.
And just for the record, I am in fact an athiest! I know I don't necessarily get my atheist badge for that, but gotta count for a little right?
It rather obviously isn't or you wouldn't have competing factions within religions (and I think you'll accept you often do).
> In what way is even our modern scientific secularism not ultimately the same kind of faith that the author thinks is "dumb"?
> Yes, yes, empiricism, method, peer review, the proof is in the technology pudding.
That is the correct answer! How will you refute it?
> All so many things that still produce a mind ultimately indistinguishable from a religious fanatic who is assured in their beliefs, mobilized to tell people they are wrong..
Oh. Big disappointment: you have no refutation, just a lot of insults.
It is simply a claim, it is one that I would probably attribute to myself sometimes if I'm being honest! I am forced into the act of secular belief like all of you after all, I'm no better.
You can feel secure in your beliefs without feeling superior because of them, and you can understand the specificity of our modern scientific framework without sacrificing the force of the scientific story.
If you really really think the scientific method or whatever is the end all of human belief, that is precisely a reason to try and stay humbled in that belief, not the opposite. That is just being a good scientist.
If you feel insulted by what I said, that is quite telling of your own insecurties and another reason you should pause and breath and listen to others, instead of telling yourself over and over again how smart you are.
>I feel like the author barely learned anything from that experience.
The author very likely did learn nothing, he unfortunately doesn't have a sense for appreciation and learning:
"... when you visit a museum everything is kind of broken, so nothing is really that impressive."
You have to have a certain level of historical, scientific, and cultural apathy and arrogance to be able to say something like that with a straight face. Being in a museum is a humbling experience.
He is explaining an experience. Usually museums have no effect on him, he cannot appreciate, for reasons stated. This he did appreciate, and he explains it.
Yeah, I agree. It starts out all "Woah, I was arrogant as hell to believe that everyone who lived in the past was very dumb" and moves right on into "these ignorant backwards spiritualists believe in nonsense, but purely by coincidence that nonsense happens to actually be effective and if I reframe it in the clearly superior terms of secular western society it can make sense".
I remember the first time I genuinely lost my "modern techno hubris", I was about 25 years old.
I was in the throes of lamenting the peak oil situation after watching the doco The End of Suburbia and reading The Long Emergency. I was at the tail end of a mechatronic engineering degree and thought it was just my luck that, after having found something I really enjoyed, it was all about to become obsolete as we devolved into picking through rubbish tips for food scraps.
I became interested in permaculture and went to visit a farm on the outskirts of Sydney to see how it worked. While talking to the guy there about the land, I all of a sudden realised how information rich this environment was, and how similar the task of managing it was to any other creative or engineering endeavour.
I realised that the people who stood in that spot 60,000 years ago and worked with the land to sustain themselves were "doing engineering" as much as I could ever hope to.
It was a tremendous relief to know that I could get the same thrill from engineering a landscape as I could from engineering a microcontroller, and it gave me a respect for Indigenous Technical Knowledge. I thought about how much ITK must have been lost during colonisation, and how we might regain it.
I love watching this guy on youtube, Primitive Technology, because I see him do things and think, if I were in that situation - or out in the sticks with nothing but my trousers on - I too would get creative with clay and whatever else he's got available to him, with just the basic knowledge of things that I have picked up over the years. And that's just from absorption, if you and a hundred generations of your ancestors lived in that situation they'd thrive.
I can see why there's many that claim that older times were more leisurely, as in, less time spent "working" as people do today. I'm not saying it was easier, but definitely simpler.
Similar experience, about twenty years ago I hung out briefly at David Holmgrens house (Melliodora) in Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria (Hepburn Springs), followed by some WWOOFing experiences in Tasmania, where I returned to ten years ago.
My primary income is engineering focused still, and definitely glad I have that permaculture mindset.
> worked with the land to sustain themselves
Most evidence suggests the extent of land-work utilized by early Australians was controlled burns. There is a bit of a recent effort to promote the idea that they may have done extensive planting as well, but there's not much evidence for it. It also would have been kind of a waste of effort - the accessible food biomass was high enough for the relatively small population without planting.
>the accessible food biomass was high enough for the relatively small population without planting
This seems circular. Why was the population small?
It’s funny to see someone, after realizing that humans in the past are just as intelligent as the ones today, interpret all past human beliefs through his own worldview rather than seriously considering that his worldview may be the one that is flawed rather than the most intelligent humans of the past. Believing that people in pre industrial societies had post industrial beliefs and were only pretending flies in the face of mountains of evidence both historical and anthropological.
> interpret all past human beliefs through his own worldview rather than seriously considering that his worldview may be the one that is flawed rather than the most intelligent humans of the past
You're saying it's irrational to assume that smart people with the accumulated knowledge of nearly all of humanity at their fingertips, backed by hundreds of years of the most effective method for knowledge collection humanity has ever known, analyzed by incredibly sophisticated statistics, pondered by a network of millions of specialists, distributed and digested and re-interpreted and challenged by literally billions of literate humans; versus smart people with much less efficient means of knowledge collection, an extremely low literacy rate, no effective methods of statistical analysis, poor data collection measures, no scientific method, and only a handful of knowledge specialists ... it's irrational to assume the former group has a better understanding of the world than the latter?
Our current collective knowledge strongly indicates that pre industrial societies really, sincerely believed many things we consider ridiculous today. Those beliefs were the product of an ecosystem that was just as detailed and complex to them as our society is to us - a realization the author of this blog post had after viewing a Viking ship that you apparently haven’t had yet.
Of course our beliefs make sense to us in our post industrial society, and even if those beliefs aren’t some kind of ultimate truth they are incredibly useful for navigating our world. For instance, even though the function of corporate logos may be closer to magic sigils than rational objects, thinking of them as rational objects allows branding agencies to design more effective logos. But in a past world where marketing agencies didn’t exist, treating symbols as having inherent magical power more closely reflected the realities of certain times.
There’s a further step since our world isn’t static, and many of us carry beliefs that just don’t work well anymore. An example some might agree with is the rejection of any kind of religiosity. Humans need social community to live a healthy and happy life. While I’m not saying that we should return to a religious era, someone who found themselves in a lonely situation might want to reconsider what beliefs led to that situation and update them to be more effective.
Talking to a religious believer today will dispel this kind of thinking quickly. People really do believe in gods! Literally! And they'll die for those beliefs. It was even more true back when we didn't understand what the sun was or why it rose every morning and set every night.
I'd roughly put individual 'religion' of a person into one of two bags: cultural and faith (what you're talking about). The faith part by far not every member of a religion actually shares if they can talk openly (and the differences between the religion on this matter is quite vast).
Some examples: East Asian state religions are almost entirely a cultural thing outside of monk communities. Judaism I'd also expect to be majority cultural only. Christianity in Europe, again, mostly cultural. I think the US has a bit of a different viewpoint since the boundaries between Christians that have faith with those that don't, are much more extreme and seem to regularly cause interpersonal conflict.
Sure -- that's why I specified religious believer (i.e. someone with faith in their deity/religion, not a religiously-cultural agnostic/atheist). I myself am culturally Jewish, but don't believe in the religion or in any particular deity. But I grew up Orthodox, and for the most part they nearly all actually do believe in a God. It's not fake! And they're not stupid; plenty of them are extremely smart, hold advanced degrees, etc. The OP's belief that since ancient people were smart, they must not have actually believed in gods, just doesn't hold. It's a myopic viewpoint that can be dispelled simply by talking to people today who believe in gods and are perfectly smart too.
I suspect again that it comes from this religious-vs-atheist trench warfare that has developed along mostly political boundaries in the US. On the other side of the Atlantic, I'd claim religion is mostly just a private thing that people don't bother each other about much.
When a large part of the population vote based on their religion then separation of church and state doesn't really work. For example if a part of the population votes that all stores needs to be closed on Sundays because Sundays are holy days then it affects non-believers. That isn't a joke, that is what some countries in Europe looks like, how do you argue against that without arguing that their beliefs are nonsense?
why would understanding the sun's energy or orbits change your ideas about the Creator? The foundations of science come from studying nature to learn more about the truth of creation.
If you previously believed that the sun rose every morning because it was attached to Helios's chariot and he flew it across the sky, and then you discovered that actually the sun didn't rise at all and it only seemed to "rise" and "set" because the Earth was rotating on its axis, and also the sun was a giant perpetually-exploding hydrogen bomb that the Earth orbits and definitely can't be attached to someone's chariot and dragged around the Earth, you might stop believing that the people who told you it was because of Helios and his flying chariot had any idea what they were talking about.
I don't think the Greeks of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle's time were atheists, though they had some decently mechanistic views of astronomy, IIRC. Not totally sure your example holds up.
It's kind of obvious with how development of religion went overall.
As we understood more of the world, pantheons grew smaller and smaller. There are still religions around with many gods, but their roles have drastically changed away from being banally associated with natural phenomena and towards spiritual stuff or other things that most humans can't adequately explain (yet, or because they just lack the education).
There are practically no religions around anymore that have a god whose purpose is like "this guy brings the tides" or whatever, for good reason.
>There are practically no religions around anymore that have a god whose purpose is like "this guy brings the tides"
Catholic saints are pretty much exactly this, “lesser gods”, just not called that.
The practice started to help acclimate new converts from polytheism, so yah, originally that’s how it was thought about. But I think the current Catholic view on Saints is that they are like your specific causes lobby. They are more empathetic to your concerns, as they were humans that dealt with the issue you are seeking help with. And they have better access to the big guy. I’m sure some still consider them “lesser gods” with absolute weather control, but that isn’t what’s commonly taught.
Actually, in Ancient Greeks some people took that knowledge and actually became atheists. Some of the 'cool' young intellectual would walk into temples and say 'stick me down if you exist' and then were smug when it didn't happen. It also became a common believe that all gods are just historical figures and stories.
However the norm for most of history is to find some way to ratify the two believes even if they contradict.
Ancient Jewish writers like Philo simply wrote a whole bunch of stuff about how every part of the bible is to be interpreted as some Platonic way. He was very influential on Christianity. Ironically he had basically no influence on what became modern Judaism and his interpretation were all rejected.
And this is not just between science and religion. Even within religion this is a problem, because they are simply contradictory.
Its literally possible to believe in all of the bible, because it contradicts itself. And trying to reason your way around all that nonsense requires tons of scholars coming up with elaborate explanations on why everything is actually not nonsense. Usually you have some elite set of priests who guard the interpretation.
Today, there are whole field of Christian fundamentalists apologists who have whole universities field with smart people who do nothing then trying to 'read' the bible in ways that is not contradicting even if it very clearly is.
The simply fact is, unless you view the bible purely allegorically and massively change the interpretation totally from what anybody who actually wrote the bible might have believed you can't have a modern scientific worldview and be a Christian. But at that point you can just base your worldview on Lord of the Rings or whatever you want because its your morals driving the interpretation, not the other way around.
So its easy and reasonably consistent to believe in a Prime Originator who started the universe and then just let laws of physics work, but that is very different basically all religion.
> The simply fact is, unless you view the bible purely allegorically and massively change the interpretation totally from what anybody who actually wrote the bible might have believed you can't have a modern scientific worldview and be a Christian.
How can you go around telling people what they can and can't believe? What does it mean, in your opinion, to "be a Christian"?
> But at that point you can just base your worldview on Lord of the Rings or whatever you want because its your morals driving the interpretation, not the other way around.
You say this like it's a bad thing, it isn't, but in any case religion doesn't work that way. A Church of Tolkien hasn't been around for hundreds of years to be passed down from generation to generation.
It might be logically consistent to mock one religion or another in this manner, but it isn't kind, and it certainly isn't going to change people's minds.
For many religious people, family is the most important aspect of their lives, and for better or worse religion has woven its way into the fabric of family bonds.
I appreciate the deep and sincere regard for rationality and science that atheist viewpoints bring to the table, but I think the more evangelistic expressions fail to appreciate the wildly interesting tapestry of traditions that are the religions of the world.
People will believe whatever they want, that's never going to change. Others might feel they don't have that freedom. Why waste time trying to change minds about something as immutable as religion, of all things? Better to build up than to tear down. We're all stuck on the same planet, might as well make some friends while we're here.
Those were metaphors and considered a more intellectual view than the previous animist religions by the pre-socratics. It’s clear you don’t understand this subject, so please don’t perpetuate a lie.
Ppl believe in silly stuff like gender ideology today, even tho we have an almost complete understanding of human biology, so let’s not throw stones at history
> we have an almost complete understanding of human biology
Frankly I can’t believe someone would state such a thing with a straight face.
Also, gender is a psychological construct more than a biological one. Are you confusing gender and sex?
>gender is a psychological construct more than a biological one.
are you saying that psychology has something other than a biological basis?
>Are you confusing gender and sex?
American Heritage Dictionary usage note on this point:
Usage Note: Some people maintain that the word sex should be reserved for reference to the biological aspects of being male or female or to sexual activity, and that the word gender should be used only to refer to sociocultural roles. Accordingly, one would say The effectiveness of the treatment appears to depend on the sex of the patient and In society, gender roles are clearly defined. In some situations this distinction avoids ambiguity, as in gender research, which is clear in a way that sex research is not. The distinction can be problematic, however. Linguistically, there isn't any real difference between gender bias and sex bias, and it may seem contrived to insist that sex is incorrect in this instance.
source, and of course the definitions
> are you saying that psychology has something other than a biological basis
Yes, yes, psychology is applied neurology is applied biology is applied chemistry is applied physics. And yet we have psychologists and neurologists and biologists and chemists and physicists and they all seem to believe they have different jobs.
Your quoted usage note is stating that the word “gender“ can mean the same thing as “sex” in certain contexts. Not that it can’t mean something different. And the context is quite clear from the surrounding discussion.
Playing pointless semantic games doesn’t buy you any points.
your statement doesn't make any point other than mine, but do you mean semantic games like saying that gender is different from sex?
the (Big) Five Factor model of personality (standard psychology) measures sex-based population (density) differences, and shows up across cultures.
Since you’re a fan of the dictionary, I am certain you will appreciate the following:
Merriam-Webster[1]:
> b: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
> c: GENDER IDENTITY
American Heritage Dictionary[2]:
> b. One's identity as female or male or as neither entirely female nor entirely male.
O.E.D.[3]:
> b. The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones
[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender
I don't like dictionaries, I like research.
Merriam-Webster 2018 says, sense 1 abc [gramatical gender] but sense 2 is all about sex.
>2a SEX ...
>2b the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
http://web.archive.org/web/20181125203538/https://www.merria...
it doesn't mention gender identity, but gender identity is a perfectly good word for gender identity.
I don't have access to the OED here but I'm sure we'd see a similar timeline.
We do have an almost complete understanding, and I actually think I was being too generous; but at least for the purpose of this convo, we certainly do know about X & Y chromosomes.
I don’t believe that gender is a psychological construct. I believe that gender & sex are synonymous & it’s a politically correct construct to differentiate them in any way.
Sure, why have two words to describe two separate but related concepts when we could just decide to pretend that one of those concepts doesn’t even exist?
“Someone’s physical reproductive bits” and “someone’s own internal perception of their sexual identity” are two separate concepts even if you believe they ought to be in sync with one another. And then when you acknowledge that there do exist people who seem quite certain that those values differ for themselves—even if you think they oughtn’t—isn’t it nice to have a word that allows us to describe this exact scenario?
Also, I’d encourage you to ask more or less any biologist whether or not they think we’re just about done wrapping up their field of expertise.
Some people of the same sex feel differently about their bodies and their sexuality. It seems useful to me to have words to describe that difference. I don't really see an "ideology" in that any more than I see "ideology" in other cultural phenomena, e.g. "surfer dudes", "skaters", or "weed aficionados". It's only made into an ideology by people who seek divisional talking points for political discourse.
Just imagine how quickly society would fall apart if we had people who don’t even surf calling themselves “surfer dudes” simply because all their friends surf, they dress and talk the part, and they participate enthusiastically in wider surfing culture.
Then how do you define trans and nonbinary people such as myself?
If you produce sperm then you are male.
If you produce ovum you are female.
Do you make a habit of collecting eggs and/or sperm from the people you meet for the purpose of determining their biological sex? How many of your friends’ and acquaintances’ gametes have you confirmed?
If this person[1] tells you that they are a man, what level of scrutiny should they be subject to in order to confirm this to your satisfaction? If you do not intend to reproduce with them, to what end is it important that you establish which type of gamete they produce?
If a future surgery allows a woman to produce sperm, is this what will qualify them as a man from your perspective?
Where do hermaphrodites fit into this picture? What about people that produce neither sperm nor ova?
[1]: https://trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/transgen...
Yes, if future surgery allows a women to change their chromosome and produce sperm then they will be a man.
Do you consider a tomato to be a vegetable or a fruit?
Biologically, a tomato is a fruit. This is inarguable fact. If you are a biologist breeding new strains, you will conceptualize a tomato as a fruit. And yet culinarily a tomato is a vegetable. Put a tomato in a fruit salad and people are going to look at you funny. Note that a biologist who eats food can and will consider a tomato both a fruit and a vegetable depending on the context.
If you can understand this, you can understand that someone’s biological sex—primarily relevant to reproduction and healthcare—can differ from their psychological sex (i.e., their gender), which is more relevant to social contexts. Both can be true simultaneously, but unless you’re a doctor caring for a trans person or intending to perform reproductive acts with them, someone’s psychological sex is almost certainly more relevant to your relationship with them than which gamete they happen excrete.
Tomato is a fruit, always was.
Sex is way more important in social context. If I am looking for sexual relationship I am interested only in females. For other social contexts I don't really care whether someone is male or female or thinks they are someone else. Gender is irrelevant.
> Tomato is a fruit, always was.
Are you genuinely incapable of understanding the concept of context?
> Sex is way more important in social context.
I sincerely hope that the vast majority of your social relationships are not based upon the promise of reproducing with them.
What if you produce neither or both from birth? What if surgery changes which of those, if any, you produce?
What if I told you that none of this really matters to me? What if people discriminating against people who want to be one or the other now makes it matter because discrimination increases crime and reduces productivity?
If a surgery changes their chromosome then they change sex too.
What if I tell you I don't care what sex you are or you think you are.
> If a surgery changes their chromosome then they change sex too.
Now you've completely changed your definition in the course of a few minutes, but you still don't want to change your beliefs. Funny how that works. Imagining what your new definition will be, what if you have any of these sex chromosome anomalies, as more than 2 out of every thousand humans do? What if you use gene therapy to change your chromosomes but don't alter your anatomy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_anomalies
> What if I tell you I don't care what sex you are or you think you are.
Then why are you making a big deal of trying to define it for others and supporting those trying to legislate who can believe what?
If you can change sex without changing chromosomes, I would really like to know how it is possible to produce sperm not being male.
I was only stating definition of male and female. If someone believes for example, they are Apache Helicopter, good for them.
> I would really like to know how it is possible to produce sperm not being male
Here is somebody who wasn't male according to your original definition producing sperm after surgery. https://www.thepinknews.com/2019/12/09/testicle-transplant-s...
> If someone believes for example, they are Apache Helicopter, good for them.
Certainly. That's no skin off my back, just like people believing in magical invisible beings and praying to them doesn't affect anybody else. Both groups can believe what they like.
Legislating who gets to identify as what when it's not hurting anybody does make society worse, just like the people who believe in magical invisible beings legislating what everyone else can do based on the voices they hear in their heads also make society worse. That is a problem worth fighting against.
It's massively complex once you start digging down into the details, and the bulk of it really is unknown. I used to work in biomedical research and the enormity of just how much we don't know became more apparent the more I learned about the topic.
That said, I agree with you on how nonsensical gender ideology is. I find it particularly irksome because of how unscientific the whole thing is, there is a huge amount of bullshit being passed off as facts.
There’s quite a variety of views when you’re talking about 5 billion people. Though I’m sure it’s true for a lot of them, there are also vast numbers of people who find that style or religion rather distasteful.
Yes sure, putting all believers in a single bag really shows how complex and informed your point on the matter is.
Can we please stop putting up with useless sarcasm on this site? Someone's point on a matter is simplistic and uninformed. Fine. But a fancy "you're stupid" as a response is even more devoid of content.
Like, I could've just said "Wow, that really deepened the discussion there, good job". But how about this instead:
Try actually specifying some of the complexities that have been missed. Try plainly demanding evidence and reasoning. Choose some goal posts and plant them firmly where they can be hit.
Because if I wanted to read useless sniping I'd be on reddit.
I did not use ad hominem, I clearly and unequivocaly reflected on the post's brievity and unearned assertivity as being of little value in the context of a discussion. Maybe I'm doing a bit of sniping, but so are you, and I have the same feeling that if I wanted to read "religious is bad end of discussion" post I'd go on reddit.
I know plenty of those religious people who don't care if people have sex outside of marriage or practice sodomy, wore mismatched textiles and probably offend their god in multiple ways.
You can be religious and not a believer, and the original comment only talk about believers.
We're not "putting up" with it, we're downvoting it and ignoring it. That's how you get it to stop or at least be filtered out.
It's better to shun and ignore an unwanted post than to try to berate, punish and ban or delete it, IMO. Let people shout into the void if they choose to. You gave them the validation - there is no such thing as bad attention.
It is difficult for me to have any faith or belief in any of the Gods or God they worship.
That's pretty much only my beef with it.
It is hard to put yourself in other's people state of mind, and to reason that it's because they must be idiots is not really the proper way to go. I don't have any advice to give on religion, if it's not your thing fine, but painting people with too broad a brush may lead to misuderstandings, conflicting exchanges, and ultimately animosity for no good reason.
So my only point is: you probably have something that you hold dear to your heart and you would not liked to be judged or criticized for that, in some ways it's not even anyone's business but yours. Religion, spirituality, or weird new age practices are the same for a lot of people, and it doesn't presuppose that any of this is good or bad, it just is, and mounting a file against all of that at once is bound to be fruitless, and hurtful for the people involved.
It is hard to put yourself in other's people state of mind, and to reason that it's because they must be idiots is not really the proper way to go. I don't have any advice to give on religion, if it's not your thing fine, but painting people with too broad a brush may lead to misuderstandings, conflicting exchanges, and ultimately animosity for no good reason
I can't believe something that isn't true. It's not about them being idiots, it's about the sheer lack of evidence.
> in some ways it's not even anyone's business but yours
If religionists ever, ever, ever behaved that way then there would be no problem, but the fact is that for thousands of years they have imposed their beliefs on the rest of us with violence.
And that's fair, nobody's telling you you should. I think.
I don't believe myself, but I can recognize the comfort that people get from faith, either faith in a higher power or a belief in what happens after death. My GF is pagan, she says she can see spirits leaving the body; for her, it makes dealing with death a lot easier. Like when our dog died, she just got on with dealing with the body because it was just an empty meatsack to her. Likewise, she said she doesn't care what happens with her body after death, because empty meatsack. If that gives her comfort, who am I to tell her she's wrong? I don't know either.
Personally I'm more of a nihilist and think there's nothing after death, so there's no reason to fear it or care much about it, I won't be around. I've always theorised that life-after-death religions are at least in part based on fear - fear of nothingness, or fear of being judged and punished for things done (or not done) in life. I don't want to live in fear like that myself, but if others are more fearful and find comfort in faith that's good for them.
I get that, but just because a belief makes you happier, doesn't make it true.
I know a lot of people who chose to believe that COVID was a hoax, and that vaccination was a conspiracy, because these beliefs made them happier.
But the consequences of these false beliefs was an incredibly large amount of death and suffering, all avoidable.
> she says she can see spirits leaving the body
But we both know this is a false belief. If she tested this scientifically, you know she would be unable to do better than chance.
That's because gods evolved to more comprehensively capture their hosts, early gods might not have been so efficient.
I think there was likely always a small percentage of the ruling class or philosopher kings who knew it was bogus but needed a "noble lie" to make their society work. Not much has changed.
I think hierarchy of needs comes into play here. You may not spend all that much time thinking about philosophy if you're foraging or farming, and busy with physical labor.
Also, messages get lost, and misinterpreted. Quickly. I do believe that most [non explicit cult] religious texts shouldn't be interpreted literally, but instead take them the lessons they teach, or are interpreted to be.
It’s an interesting discussion, really. A lot of wisdom literature outside of academic discourse emphasizes the philosophy of the common man. This gets lost at higher levels of study. Zen Buddhism emphasizes the mundane ("chop wood, carry water"), while some Christian sects embody their philosophy through work and service to others. I agree with what you say about not interpreting texts literally, but we have a real problem in the US with angry, vocal, and frankly violent religious people who defend inerrant scriptural readings of the text. Outside of the US, I think it would be difficult to have a discussion in, let’s say, a predominantly Muslim county, where I held a debate about how the Quran should not be interpreted literally. So while I agree completely with the spirit of what you say, the practical reality is very different.
There is a lot more on the role of gods and magic in the book "The Secret of our Success" [1]. I'm not sure if all of the studies in there have been replicated, but it's certainly food for thought. One theory is that divination functioned as a kind of RNG for those cases when picking something at random was better than relying on your own bias, such as when and on which flank to attack an opposing army - where being unpredictable is a feature.
Another example from the book is that certain types of shark were taboo to pregnant women in ancient Polynesia; no-one could explain why except for things like "it would upset the gods otherwise". But it turns out that said animals' meat actually contain chemicals that are indeed bad to consume when you're pregnant.
I can also recommend Brett Deveraux' "Practical Polytheism" series [2]. One of his key quotes is "It is safe to assume that people in the past believed their religion." (Actually, I can recommend all of acoup.blog to HN readers, including the latest post on ChatGPT, but that's going off topic.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domestic... [2] https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...
> There is a lot more on the role of gods and magic in [this book] ... One theory is that divination functioned as a kind of RNG for those cases when picking something at random was better than relying on your own bias, such as when and on which flank to attack an opposing army - where being unpredictable is a feature.
Or, you could have discovered that stated about one scroll down from top of the article:
"And sometimes it is better to have a truly random decision than to continue to follow the predictable inclinations of one’s established prejudices. Surely, the enemy will not be able to predict a shaman’s completely random decision."
I've had similar revelations to culturally held beliefs which look like rituals.
Some Hindu communities don't allow families to enter a temple if someone in your close family has passed away for 14 days. They couldn't explain contagious diseases then, but realised that if it can kill you, something would show up within 14 days and it's better if you don't enter community spaces.
Reframing these rituals as explanations that could be given at time is a good way to look at the world.
> They couldn't explain contagious diseases then, but realised that if it can kill you, something would show up within 14 days and it's better if you don't enter community spaces.
But somehow no text suggests anything of the sort and the reasoning is always in terms of ritual purity. And the prohibition is only on entering sacred spaces which must be kept ritually pure. There is no prohibition in entering other community spaces.
Likewise, circumcision was a health practice, still applied today to pigs for the same reason.
With both health things and laws, it's often easier to convince people they have to do it because a higher power than them says so, than to explain the reasoning to them.
I mean think of children or dogs (if I may be cruel). A dog doesn't understand why he shouldn't eat off the table, but they do understand that if they do they will get punished. You can't reason with a dog (although it's cute if you talk to them), but you can teach them cause and effect.
I'm still pretty convinced that, while humans individually are and have been pretty smart for as long as we can remember, as a group and statistically they're pretty stupid. If percentage-wise more people will wash their hands and feet more often if they do it as part of a religious ritual, then it's worthwhile.
People went to the Moon and praised their god there, it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch that humans in the past could be both competent and religious.
> For most of my life I had assumed that all the people that had lived before our modern times were dumb. Really dumb. Borderline braindead.
What education institution is responsible for this?
Not teaching history of mathematics, science. Teaching STEM with total disconnect to the historical developments of these disciplines. Perfect theories out of the blue. (Not teaching the dead ends: phlogiston, ether etc)
I believe we are slowly but surely getting out of this. Positivism as a strict adherence to the dogma of "the scientific fact" (with a conveniently moving definition, backed-up by Sagan quotes for TV viewers, or Popper for book readers) is as nefarious as any totalitarian idea.
Yes scientific papers are great, no I don't put too much weight on someone's take on hapiness, truth, or the fundamental nature of our universe just because they're wearing a lab coat, that would quite literally be thinking that the cowl makes the monk.
>Yes scientific papers are great, no I don't put too much weight on someone's take on hapiness, truth, or the fundamental nature of our universe just because they're wearing a lab coat, that would quite literally be thinking that the cowl makes the monk
Sounds a bit like a straw man to me. "Scientific fact" by definition is subject to change. The "scientific facts" we have right now are the best explanation for reality that we have. Nobody who isn't a researcher in a particular field has the required context to judge whether some fringe theories have the potential to displace the current consensus, so it's prudent to just accept the consensus as a layperson.
"Trust the science." is about as unscientific as someone could get; might as well be just another religion.
Apparently acknowledging that one is unqualified to judge the veracity of almost all scientific claims is now unscientific. TIL.
Blindly trusting someone because they're "experts" is no different from worship.
Healthy skepticism is the root of all things science, if you forfeit that for any reason you are anything but being scientific.
I'm guessing that you don't spend your entire life personally checking that all Previous science was done properly. At some point you have to trust your fellow human beings.
not the guy you were replying to, but sure, but I don't recite ritualistic dogmatic incantations reaffirming my deference to renowned experts. surely it is possible to naturally, organically defer to experts on things while still perceiving the societal harm of institutionalizing ritualistic reaffirmations of deference?
I am 100% behind this affirmation, we have been historically bitten times and times again by blind trust in "renowed experts", and while I trust most of them om their fields of expertise, saying we should ritualistically let them be up and front on any societal issue by "trusting the science" is very naive. Case in point: no more public debate on energy policies, because experts have made it a battlefield.
It's unfortunate. This would be so easy to fix, too, just tax carbon as it comes out of the ground and let the market sort out the rest. Let the best technologies win.
I'm sorry, but I just do NOT believe your implied claim, that you have personally verified all the scientific facts you believe in.
There is no consensus on truth, happiness, or the reality of the universe we live in though, so nothing to accept there "as a layperson".
Society at large.
When you paint faithful people as morons, primitive people as stupid, old fashioned people as out of touch, etc., kids and even younger adults are going to come to the logical conclusion.
We aren't even getting into the recent nonsense of declaring our histories as shameful pieces of shit to be revised and forgotten.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Isn't there an analogy with software projects there? I regularly hear that some code needs to be replaced because it's "old" or "written by X, who is no longer here".
The underlying assumption seems to be that people in the past were stupid and incapable of writing the great code that we today are capable of writing.
I mean obviously old code can be written badly (just as modern code can be written badly). And sometimes there are newer techniques or libraries which weren't available at the time the original code was written. But more than a few times I've seen old code rewritten by modern code where the modern code is worse than the old code, and the justification is nothing more than the code was "old". Or the way desktop UIs change and evolve and throw away old paradigms - but the people who developed Windows 95 weren't fools just because they lived in the past. (e.g. all icons are monochromatic now whereas it was a design guideline in the past to use colours to aid memory of which icon was which.)
I found it funny. It’s a tongue in cheek opener and imho, you guys take it way too literal. I can relate to the feeling that people in the past (at least the vast majority) were kinda stupid, because they were uneducated in many things. Of course, stupidity and education are different things.
People in 500 years will probably say the same about us. "Look at these morons from the year 2023. Most of them were dumb and wasted their lives."
That line got to me too. So apparently, according to the new world order, calculus was invented just last Thursday :eyeroll:
whig history
That's the key question here. I've personally not been exposed to such a sense of superiority over people of the past. I grew up in Germany, and I remember history class showing lots of examples of ingenuity and at worst mistakes that ought not to be repeated now that we supposedly know better (arguing we have more knowledge now, not intelligence). Is this maybe a local thing related to where the author grew up?
Author is actually German lol.
From some quick research, it at least says that he's based in Denmark - but I couldn't figure out where he actually grew up.
That said, from what I know, education in Denmark and Germany is sufficiently similar for my hypothesis to not really hold. Another interesting data point is that he is in marketing (advises people on how to cold email potential customers from what I've read) - maybe that's a more meaningful cohort. Not education per se, more socialisation in the work life.
But I suppose correlation does not imply causation anyway.
I can definitely relate to the notion that really good ideas come from somewhere outside oneself. This happens to me sometimes with musical ideas. If I consciously try to come up with a melody, it will never sound any good - whereas any good musical ideas I've had, just sort of appear fully formed - from somewhere...
For context, I assume the author is referring to the Oseberg Ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseberg_Ship
It's rather humbling to walk into its display room and I urge anyone visiting Oslo to check it out.
The construction methods of longboats is really quite impressive. You get a lot of strength out of the clinker-style construction, but the structure retains a lot of flexibility so it moves with the ocean. Which means you can trade beam for length and get a faster boat.
And it was the SUV of its day. Shallow draft meant it had access to inland waterways, much to the consternation of various monasteries and villages.
I think it is interesting that when author switched to thinking they were smart, he could only talk about religion. Not about the technology or how it developed.
> For most of my life I had assumed that all the people that had lived before our modern times were dumb. Really dumb. Borderline braindead.
It's an extreme strawperson argument. That's not what I think and thought of pre-modern people, nor does it match anything I've read.
They were biologically the same species as us. However, there was almost universal illiteracy and belief in things like causing sick people to bleed, witches, alchemy; embrace of extreme cruetly; disasterous (by modern standards) outcomes for lifespan, health, survival of children, justice, freedom, prosperity, famine, war, etc. etc.
We're not so perfect. The trick is to learn about humanity - about ourselves - from them, and look closely in the mirror for our own cruetly, etc. How many people die from lack of healthcare, for example?
Lost me when he started talking about gods. Five minutes reading about modern religious practices would dispel his notation that religion was mostly pragmatical.
My neighbor burns sages to remove evil spirits from her house. She fully believes this is real.
I broke a 10 year spell of entrepreneurial failure with vase breathing, kaballah and rituals. I am an atheist. But there is something about the idea about the aether containing ideas which you can pluck from. Einstein and company were fond of it too. The mind is like a radio and all that. Point being, this year I had $4 million profits / taxable income. Pure rationality just wasn't enough.
Beeing determined is the limiting trait in healthy educated humans. If we can fix this by culture, devices or drugs, humanity will take its bigges leap since the invention of machines and evolve into an never before seen powerhouse of technology, compassion, creativity and innovation.
We're becoming fine with LLMs and other models having emergent aka "insightful" or "creative" properties, but not with the brain emergently generating concepts?
Don't attribute to magic what can also be attributed to luck.
Sure. But I haven't had luck in the past? I think it is a bit more than that. I think it is alchemical change of an entire person. The philosopher's stone is less important than the actual whole personhood change. And once you go down this path you will realize, it is not some one off magical event. It is rather a change of state. That is why it is so hard to explain and test for.
Can you say more?
Sure. Anything particular?
Basically, it is all about mindset and filters right? You have better ideas about things your mind focuses on which is sold as the "law of attraction". But you can get to a state where ideas are free flowing and make sense in the context of the problem when the mind has had the chance to break free from the usual loops it is running. All these activities I mentioned essentially do that in a way which doesn't make sense to the rational brain so it can't cordon it off. This Quora answer might also help: https://qr.ae/prWLjc
A few years back, I committed myself to learning how to machine metal. Bought a mid-60's lathe and tore it down to the bits to clean and restore it.
Someone told me to buy How To Run a Lathe (https://idoc.pub/documents/how-to-run-a-lathepdf-x4e6k0o189n...) First print was in the early 1910's, and the intro described how the magic of a lathe is that a less-precise tool can be used to make a more precise tool...how you could start with a hand powered lathe between two trees and end up with a machine that could hold half-a-thousandth of an inch in a surprisingly small number of iterations.
Also, the Gingery series (https://kk.org/thetechnium/bootstrapping-t/) showed how you could bootstrap a machine shop with scrap aluminum and charcoal.
We've been smart apes for thousands of years.
...or, you know, some kind of spiritual world is real, and people of the past, being less distracted with stuff, were better attuned to it. Like most people can't see the starry skies anymore (direct and obvious evidence that it doesn't exist!) and yet, you know, it's there.
I guess you put the line somewhere between considering other people's beliefs and "duh".
> And sometimes it is better to have a truly random decision than to continue to follow the predictable inclinations of one’s established prejudices. Surely, the enemy will not be able to predict a shaman’s completely random decision.
Our individual brains do this too.
Belief grabs hold of one viewpoint, because it looks like the best for a moment, because things will go better for us if agree with our group, because it makes us feel better, because we want other people to believe it for our own reasons, because we are too tired to care, ...
Then it discards future alternatives, saving wasted cognition rethinking over and over.
Our brains don't care what the truth is, they care that we operate well. And there are so many good reasons to believe something that isn't true.
Many people have a hard time grasping that their feelings of overwhelming certainty, have virtually nothing to do with actual certainty. And that is the way our DNA builds us!
Constantly integrating new idea's is costly. Fatiguing. Ideology is so cognitively efficient. And our certainty feels so good!
I literally go worship a sky deity every week with my family, along with a lot of my friends
One, or three, or three-in-one?
three-in-one
"Usually, when you visit a museum everything is kind of broken, so nothing is really that impressive"
"Writer on entrepreneurship, creativity, and marketing with over 10,000 email subscribers"
O woe to vikings, woe to us.
And we wonder why the modern business environment is so toxic, broken, and self centered.
> Now that my frame “people in the past were dumb” was broken, suddenly hundreds of unanswered questions entered my mind.
> Most importantly, I started to wonder “what’s up with all these gods people used to believe in?”
I mean, a lot of people still believe in gods. I don't think you necessarily have to think people in the past were dumber than they are now, or had different cognitive needs than they do now, to explain gods.
(Jesus really was a mushroom though)
tl;dr:
Tech founder newsletter guy saw a boat and was absolutely ethered by the idea that he had single-handedly manifested the concept that there were smart people before now. The sheer weight of the this beautiful satori inspired a post of heretofore unimaginable power
Probably more likely - tech founder newsletter guy needs to keep up his posting schedule and knocked together some low effort content.
Ughh, max-width of 540 pixels? This is even worse than most. I really wish sites would stop this madness. This site renders as a tiny vertical sliver down my browser window with 4X that width as whitespace. Blog authors, please stop doing this!
Looking at all the architecture around me would suggest that people all had an IQ of 170 one and half century ago, whereas our current average is 80. You can't end admiring the people who built these beautiful (but also ironic and meaningful) houses.
You could still buy and build exactly same. Probably even keeping the modern features well designed and hidden. It is just the reality that less people are ready to pay for it. And labour needed is more expensive.
People who had the determination to pay for beautiful buildings appear even more comparatively smarter than modern bean counters, than architects of old vs. the modern ones who have to yield to bean counters while observing all kinds of building codes and other busy paperworks.
So yeah, maybe it's just that the landlords had an IQ of 170 a century and half ago, whereas now they have "just" 70.
But also no. Modern architects think they're so much smarter than architects of a century ago, solely on the basis of living later, as the article describes. They think they could do the same greatness effortlessly, whereas when they actually try, they usually fall flat on their face. Turns out, it was actually quite hard even with appropriate practice, and without said practice it's often impossible to just build a nicely-looking house.
This is just a complete baloney non-sequitur. What does architectural style have to do with the average IQ?
Survivorship bias. Buildings with brilliant architects and engineers are more likely to last through history and/or be preserved by their fans. So the expectation would be, when looking at the best products of the past, the average IQ of their producers would be above the average of both their time and ours.
Almost everything has survived - I'm living in a city where buildings were mostly preserved indiscriminatingly. They're just that good.
Also average IQ at any given time is 100, by definition. I believe this post was trying the classic "all contemporary creations are degenerate" take on architecture and art, but not doing so very eloquently.
There is an argument to be made that people of olden times were far, far, far, far more capable at a fundamental level than people of today.
Because they had to be.
I don't need to know how to grow crops, weave a shirt, or wire a plug - those things have been mechanised and automated.
Would someone from 200 years ago trade having to gather firewood for flicking a switch for instant heat? Absolutely!
Would you trade access to Wikipedia for having to travel to a monastery in order to look up a scrap of information? Unlikely!
Hah. There are absolutely people here on HN right now who would be happy to live in a world of quiet labor and pilgrimages and digital disconnection.
Other lifestyles needn’t be romanticized more than our own, but they also don’t need to be demonized. Keeping yourself safe and fed isn’t a big stress for most people through most of history, yet does get quite hard for some people some times even now. The difference is mostly just textural.
We are no longer a hunter-gatherer or agrarian society -- people of olden times would fare as well in our society as we would in theirs. Maybe they could be more self-sufficient, but modern society is free from tending to our fields or bison or whatever so we can have more time to do things beyond just subsistence farming during all our waking hours.
It reads like he just discovered Graham Hancock. I do agree that the ancient peoples were not dumb, in fact as smart as we are today.
So we should really think about why they decided on certain cultural traditions.
I skimmed the entire thing and have no idea what point he was trying to make. It felt like he's trying to sell me a self-help course.
Tldr: teenager reads Macbeth and realizes that people are the same then as now. We just put our pants on differently.
Is this guy a teenager? Or do you just mean metaphorically?
It’s a weird article. There are Christians right now who are scientists and mathematicians. Are they dumb? Clearly not if they achieved certain levels of education.
And if you made it past high school and did sciences, you quickly realise the ancient people figured out all sorts of nifty tricks to workout things like the diameter of the earth in 240BC.
Modern people also believe all sorts of dumb things. That’s why we have conspiracy theorists.
You can get an education and become smart, but not wise. Works for everyone, both believers and not.
How can anyone think that people before modern times did not know anything about science, practically “brain dead” as the article states (CRINGE) when Einstein died almost a century ago?
The Dunning-Kruger makes my head hurt.
Take some pain reliever and chew on it...
Also maybe modern times is most commonly known as like the last 2k years or so. Egyptians and Mayans and Olmec and so many other cultures have left fingerprints of their engineering prowess. Listen to Graham Hancock with earnest and you'll have a mystery on your hands.
Usually, modern history in this sense begins with the Rennaisance (~13th-15th cen). 2,000 years encompasses the Middle Ages, which are held up as nadir of history.
> 2,000 years encompasses the Middle Ages
Err, ~ 850 years, maybe 1,000 years at most, from the fall of Rome ( ~470 CE ) to the beginning of the 14th Century (1301 CE) perhaps to 1501 CE depending on your historian of choice.
> held up as nadir of history.
Not so much a low point of human activity, but definitely a low point in the human activity of recording history.
>the Middle Ages, which are held up as a nadir of history.
Mostly as a result of Renaissance- and Enlightenment-era propagandizing. I think we’ve mostly moved beyond that reading of history, thankfully.
I've seen people say that many times, without addressing the merits of the issue. And I've seen many strawperson arguments - i.e., the Middle Ages weren't uniformly awful - but nothing that compares the track records of before and after.
It seems straightforward - most of what we have is post-Middle Ages, from our political systems to our economies, science, technology, arts; and the results are orders of magnitude better.
> encompasses the Middle Ages, which are held up as nadir of history
If you think only Europe matters, sure.
It is still wrong even if you think only Europe matters!
Do reverse psychology i.e. how do you keep people from doing bad things?
Religions/societies around the world have different ways to maintain the order.
Hindu religion propose incarnation belief.. they say if you do bad stuff in this life, the bad stuff will happen to you in your next life and of course you won't be able to remember your previous life. It's a perfect theory because it's unfalsifiable.
And it works in India.
Of course you don't necessarily need to believe in such theories to know that you shouldn't do be doing bad stuff anyway but hey most people aren't that smart hence the unfalsifiable theory :)
There's a much simpler explanation. That those in positions of power don't believe, and those who are not do. Which makes shamans a very effective way to manipulate your followers.
Is there actually an element of randomness? Of course not. Any successful shaman knows that if you don't say what the guy in power wants you to, that you're going to wake up dead, and some other shaman is going to be doing your job.