aaa
10mo ago
Several people in response to this have mentioned New Atheism and this is something I've been curious about for a while. Can someone explain the whole New Atheism / internet atheism wars thing to me?
America was going through its mini great awakening with a christian evangelical president when 9/11 happened, to which the Bush responded by starting his own holy war in the middle east. It seemed like religious fanatics would just keep ruining everyone's day forever and atheism looked very good by comparison. A few books were published about the topic, somewhat coincidentally and it sort of picked up steam on the internet, especially the nascent youtube.
The label "New Atheism" is mostly just a press label, like IDW, it doesn't really denote anything in particular. If you read arguments about atheism from the late 1600s almost everything is already there (minus evolution and geology).
And then the evangelical awakening died out, McCain lost to Obama (who acknowledged atheism in his inauguration speech) and there was no reason for the movement anymore. What remained ended up being the first victim of SJWs in 2012. Then gamergate happened and people from new atheism either became sjws or anti-sjw (the "skeptics"). The anti-sjw side of atheism doesn't really have a home in american politics (it can't be with the democrats but it also can't be republican because it would alienate the reliable evangelical voter base); when tech platforms (twitter and youtube in particular) moved to do politically biased content moderation (mid 2017 and 2018) the atheistic side of anit-sjw was essentially wiped out.
I think atheism is due for a comeback, this decade, because of all the dissident right people who are adopting orthodoxy/sedevacantism to own the libs.
While I am not a fan of stereotypical Redditors, I also fail to see why being convinced that a man 2000 years ago rose from the dead despite a near-total lack of evidence that this happened other than the writings of a few people who probably never knew him in real life is supposed to make one better than a stereotypical Redditor.
Boy, you're opening a huge can of worms here...
aaa
10mo ago
If you’re raised in a culture that is absolutely convinced that the Eucharist is literal actually the Body and Blood, you will believe it.
I didn't. I was raised in a culture that was monolithically christian (at least nominally) and I always took it as a metaphor until I was explained that it was actually meant to be taken literally (transubstantiation) and it seemed... idiotic? That was the first crack for me.
aaa
10mo ago
We used to have to commit things to memory to remember them, then we invented writing to do the remembering for us. Just like we don't need to use our minds to remember, by using AI we can also offload the process of hallucination to a computer.
aaa
10mo ago
The bible is vague on a lot of things, so early theologians filled in by borrowing from greek philosophy, mystery cults, etc. The idea that an infinitely good god will eventually save everyone, and therefore that hell is temporary (i.e. apokatastasis), is not that far fetched (certainly less so than a hierarchy of angels, or the trinity) and thus it circulated, pretty much for all of the history of christianity.
Eriugena's version is explained in his book de divisione naturae and it's a very abstract philosophical theory where creation starts in god as ideas (he thinks platonic forms) which eventually become material. Because god has to be the ultimate form of all aristotelian causes he's also the ultimate final cause so everything returns to him through an inverse process.
aaa
10mo ago
This is a theological issue on which the Church has softened over the centuries. Even relatively conservative Catholics today get squeamish when the issue of Hell is raised. They will say that we "cannot know" who is in Hell and who is not; that this is a matter for God and God alone. It is not our place to pass judgement. But Dante had no such qualms.
I think I should remind you that Dante was not, in fact, a theologian. He never claimed that his work was theological in nature and was not received as such. It was meant as entertainment: it's original title was "Comedy" and large chunks of the book are spent on trivial political diatribes where Dante "wins" the argument by portraying himself as the Yes Chad and his political opponents as crying soyjaks tortured by devils.
Just to underline how much his views did not reflect the official views of contemporary Christianity it's worth remembering that one of his other books, De Monarchia, was declared heretical shortly after his death, burned on the stake and 200 years later it was entered in the very first edition of the Index where it stayed until the late 1800s.
He wasn't held in especially high regards in literary circles either, he did have his own small fan club but generally intellectuals considered Boccaccio and Petrarca to be the better (vulgar) italian authors. His contemporary fame is mostly due to being rediscovered, at the end of the 1800s, as part of the founding myth for the italian language.
On the topic of the Church having softened on the topic of hell... probably. However consider that the idea of Purgatory was very prevalent throughout the middle ages and I suspect most people expected to get that, rather than hell, for their minor infractions. If that wasn't the case it would be hard to explain all the money they made off of indulgences.
Furthermore the concept of universal reconciliation (in some form) isn't alien to old christian theology, Origen (~200AD) being the early example. You can find more examples by reading the history of Apokatastasis. I like Eriugena's version, the theological big crunch: you can use it to make a transhumanist version where we all get eternal life through being part of a LLM.
This image of the universe as a cosmic lottery with infinite stakes, this idea that one could be consigned to eternal damnation simply for having the bad luck to be born in the wrong century is, of course, psychotic. There is no sense in which it could be considered fair or rational.
I'd say that the idea of infinite punishments (or rewards) being dished out for finite transgressions is psychotic and possibly betrays the fact that nobody ever truly believed it. As Borges puts it:
There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one’s own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all profess belief in immortality, but the veneration paid to the first century of life is proof that they truly believe only in those hundred years, for they destine all the rest, throughout eternity, to rewarding or punishing what one did when alive
I need not persuade you that we suffer from a lack of responsibility today; it is a common enough opinion. We are told that young men are refusing to "grow up": they aren't getting jobs, they aren't getting wives, they aren't becoming stable and productive members of society. Birth rates are cratering because couples feel no obligation to produce children.
I think you should seriously consider the possibility that people used to do those things because of the immediate material rewards that they entailed and they don't do them anymore (as much) because the calculus has changed. It's likely that "be responsible" is just an easy cudgel to reach and beat people over the head with when they are not doing what you want them to do.
aaa
11mo ago
The fact that it “knows” as much factual information as it does is simply remarkable
There's enough parameters in there that it isn't that surprising. In a way, however, it's a sign of overfitting.
aaa
11mo ago
Sure. The point I was trying to make is that it has to fit with its surrounding.
aaa
11mo ago
I often wonder about the alternate reality where Scientology wasn't horribly mismanaged and took over most institutions. Companies would have mandatory auditing sessions and tech conferences would start and end with a Dianetics lecture. People objecting would still be called bigots.
aaa
11mo ago
Looks good. A cursory look around on google maps says that it fits with the surrounding esthetics. What would you build if you had the money of Bill Gates? I've never understood people that like neoclassical buildings in the US, to me they all look phoney, poseur, out of place, lacking in originality.
aaa
1yr ago
According to Paul Hazard's history of european ideas intellectual began moving away from latin and greek at the end of the 1600s and therefore it is a precursor of the enlightenment rather than a consequence.
aaa
1yr ago
I think the problem is giving a precise and self contained definition of 'supernatural™', that anyone acting in good faith can apply objectively and determine whether a belief is supernatural or not. I think this is what you are saying, that it doesn't matter if scientologists believe that thetans are natural, if they apply your definition in good faith they will find out that they are indeed supernatural™.
You don't really give this definition of supernatural™ but you make a few examples:
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faith in something that appears absurd to others
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an absurd belief
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The supernatural is inexplicable to science
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looks crazy to the non believer
Examples (1), (2) and (4) are obviously not objective, belief in HBD appears absurd to some and vice versa and etc. Number (3) is more compelling however I have a few questions: are all unproven physical theories religion? Was relativity a religion before it was proven? In other words is the supernatural time dependent (things that were supernatural beliefs today will not be supernatural tomorrow and vice versa in light of new evidence) or is it time invariant and a lot of scientific "knowledge" is just religion?
aaa
1yr ago
The supernatural is that which humans are incapable of explaining with reason and science
Fair enough but that would mean that anything that has a natural theology isn't a religion, for example Heaven's Gate, Scientology and Catholicism.
What do you think is the difference between ideology and religion?
It's probably just a difference in intensity rather than in quality.
aaa
1yr ago
What is the difference between supernatural and natural. Given some phenomenon X how do you classify it as natural or supernatural, under the assumption that you believe X to be truly occuring?
IMO when you talk about certain things being supernatural you are already at least halfway to the position of the non-believer. In many formulations gender is a metaphysical object.
aaa
1yr ago
Interestingly minnesota prohibits drinking to minors of 21 and piercings and tattoos to minors of 18, without the consent of a parent or guardian.
aaa
1yr ago
This is basically the whole explanation. I'd add that if you are male and have a bit of a hystrionic personality going trans will give you a big visibility boost both in getting your blog promoted and in getting talking spots in the conference circle where the demand for women has vastly outpaced supply. There's a couple of transwomen who regularly get on the front page of lobste.rs despite plastering their website with furry fetish art, no other demographic could ever get away with that (and people who took objection to that were banned).
aaa
1yr ago
Gluten sensitivity is characterized by a testable and obvious change
I've met a few people that claim to have gluten allergy and consume a gluten free diet (which they claim makes them feel better) but never were tested for it. It could be that a significant percentage of gluten allergies are psychosomatic.
Herniated discs, however, seem indefensible to me. I've never met anyone that claimed to have a herniated disc on a hunch.
aaa
1yr ago
I think that explanation is probably wrong. It is happening in the US but declining birthrates is a global phenomenon and it's happening in countries that don't do the kind of price discrimination the US does in healthcare and education.
aaa
1yr ago
It's much easier to distill booze on a farm in the middle of nowhere than it is to synthesize Progesterone
People would just fall back to other forms of contraception.
aaa
1yr ago
I think it's because Dylan Mulvaney is famous for this https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQ-yzbzqH4U and nobody finds him to be an appealing icon.
aaa
1yr ago
Schooling is part of the problem but really this isn't monocausal. If you want the monocausal explanation then it's "children cost too much", people retort that economic incentives don't work, so it can't be an economic problem but they just don't understand the sheer magnitude of the problem. In a preindustrial society, the kind of society with high birth rates, children are a source of wealth: you can put them to work around the house and in the field as young as 5 years old, it's basically free labor.
In our contemporary, industrialized, societies everything conspires to make children expensive: you don't live around an extended family that can help with child care, women's time is more valuable than ever, housing is expensive, putting them to work is prohibited by the law, not having children is easier than ever, culture doesn't value childrearing and, yes, the problem with education means both that the fertility window is smaller and that raising a child is more expensive.
There are two ways to solve this problem, either make children cheap again or just pay for their current cost. I don't think making children cheap is even remotely possible at this point. Half of the factors at play in making them expensive are huge coordination problems (you can't individually opt out of education, everyone else has to) and the other half are deeply unpopular positions that noone will seriously advocate for and stand no chance of ever gaining any approval, like "women should be property", "you must never leave your parent's home" and "we should allow a certain amount of child slavery to exist".
Economic incentives would probably work, since the problem is mostly economic, but you have to essentially pay for it as much as you do for any other white collar job. It would cost a lot of money, which is why it isn't happening and the problem will not be solved.
aaa
1yr ago
Last year Netflix published the Graham Hancock archeology documentary. The year before that they published Buck Breaking.
aaa
1yr ago
we know what happens when you have multiple generations of brother-sister incest, and it's not pretty
The idea that extreme inbreeding will invariably produce horrible deformities is a myth. The island of Pingelap was repopulated starting from a population bottleneck of 20, most of which belonged to the royal family. Despite this, and despite the fact that the population does suffer from a rare genetic disorder (achromatopsia) they look normal.
It's so depressing to me when I see this happen: "I used to enjoy X but now that I espouse ideology A I see how misguided my enjoyment was and can no longer experience it". Their brain has literally been attacked by a parasite that is eating away their personality, how sad. Like a psychological version of Alzheimer. I hope it never happens to me.
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