Thanks for the feedback. Should i delete this post? Or just move it?
FWIW, the front page doesn't really make it clear that 'culture war' stuff ought to be present only in the CW thread.
My own interpretation: human superorganisms have a lifecycle, and the kali yuga describes it.
I think a root cause here is that there is, indeed, a real thing called 'good', and it its core, it's the entropy-maximizing direction through the game called "physics". Organisms increase the total entropy of the universe faster, by decreasing the entropy locally (i.e. inside of their bodies). Humans, being elaborately evovled organisms, are really good at following that entropy gradient in part because we have can exert fine-grained control of our environments, and thus can reduce the entropy not just inside our bodies, but in our physical surroundings. The net result of this entropy reduction is EVEN FASTER entropy generation. The terms humans use to describe things as 'good' and 'bad' refer to our computational approximations of the true entropy maximizing step, because we mistake our approximations of good for good itself. (see: the finger pointing at the moon, the tree of knowledge of good and evil).
Our moral consciences help us sense and intuit the 'good' direction, but we continuously go astray from that direction because we end up conceptualizing it, and do so incorrectly. Correctly computing the 'good' direction requires essentially computing the entire tree of all possible future states of the world; i.e. infinite knowledge and computing power. But, being fearful and unwilling to trust our bodies to accurately compute the 'good' choice, and unwilling to trust others to do the same, we develop conceptualizations of the good, i.e. myths about how to live. Our conceptualizations of 'good' are, in a sense, computer programs. The programs are written in the 'narrative myth' executable format, run on the mental hardware of story telling primates. The stories about what 'good' is make the primates behave in certain ways that somewhat approximate the 'good' direction, at the time and place the stories were created.
Over time, however, the environment of the primates evolves and changes. The original stories no longer fit well with the environment. Lots of people convince themselves that good and bad are meaningless, rather than merely 'very hard to compute in all purposes but not too hard to intuit in most real life situations you find yourself in'. The story-telling primates executing the older versions of the stories often seem hilariously out of touch with reality. On top of this, the stupid-horse phenomenon means that poor approximations of the original myths are simpler to spread, and still kind of work, so they outcompete the more complex approximations of Good that work better but require more intelligence to understand and operate.
So lots of people convince themselves that good and bad don't exist, the complex stories die off, the stupid horse versions become more dominant, and a feedback loop ensues until dramatic, horrific consequences convince people that good and bad are, indeed, a thing. The seeds of the new golden age are planted in the minds of idealistic young people who grow up in Kali Yuga, sensing something wasn't right, and spent their adolescence searching for answers to the questions that are considered 'big and important' for most of history, and 'naive and stupid' for the periods right before the collapse.
I see this too and it's interesting to me from a cultural perspective. It's like, among the 'less wrong' crowd, religious people (i count myself as one) see ourselves as something of a persecuted minority who now has license to lash out at the main group.
Although, in this case, i think the Fruck is mocking people who say our ancestors were stupid, not antheists themselves. The author says there are 'benefits to atheism' but doesn't say what they are.
I couldn't bring myself to do this either.
This is the approach I've ended up taking: I'm honest with them.
My daughter asks, "Is god real?" I say, 'I don't really know. I can't see him or touch him or feel him. At times, i really do have my doubts. But this is true of lots of other things besides God; most things that are remotely complicated or bigger than me in size is something i basically have to take on trust. I've never seen Uranus, for example, but i trust that it's there. I've never seen the united nations, only pictures or photos or videos of it. The way we find out what is true is by experimenting and seeing what happens, trusting ourselves, and finding other people we trust to tell us about the experiments they did. I do know for sure, though, what kind of man I want to be. I also know, through my own experiments, that the more i pray, the more i go to church, the more it try to act as if God is real, the less anxious i feel, the less selfish i am, the more patient i am, and the more able i am to be patient and loving towards Mommy and you kids. I don't know any other experiment that helps me be those things."
There are times i'm really tempted to just fudge it, go all the way, say i'm certain. But I keep thinking, if any of this is true, i show more adoration for God by saying, "you are some property of reality, i know that for sure, having the right attitude towards you helps me to act better, i know that for sure, you are the wisdom inherent in all of nature and the beauty of mathematical truth, i know that for sure as well, but i don't really know what you are, if you're a preson or just some abstract tautological principle. I don't know which of man's attempts to reach you are accurate and which are wrong. I don't know what you want from me, if anything. But i'll keep striving to better understand you and live in a way that feels in alignment with that understanding, because nothing else i've tried seems effective."
This personal attempts are my evidence, by the way. At first i had very little faith. I had the peterson style view but couldn't' bring myself to play along. I studied major world religions, trying to understand them as maps of some territory including psychology and sociology. It wasn't until i felt consumed by anxiety and stressed, unable to sleep, that i started trying to 'fudge it' by thinking about my ancestors with reverence, and trying to imagine how the distant future felt about me; i felt as if i was loved by beings so far in the future that they were almost God-like in their intelligence, capabilities, and awareness. This feeling really did help.
I also noticed that my faith in bitcoin seemed to help me relax. "I dont' care what stupid thing happened in the news today, i'm confident bitcoin will be far higher in the future." ended up being a really useful thing to think. This gave me more evidence of the utility of faith. So the I sent to work trying to figure out a deeper way of articulating a faith rooted in physics. I think i've gotten a pretty decent solution that seems to line up with very recent 'far from equilibrium physics' as well as ancient religions.
Hope this is helpful for you :)
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