coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
I don’t think it’s possible to find real data about this, because the only way to determine cheating is for a reasonable observer to watch footage (otherwise, the algorithms would quickly catch them). You can’t generalize that across time for obvious reasons, and you can’t trust a cheater to answer a survey for obvious reasons. The next best evidence is to see what high-reputation people in these niches think about the question, and I’d guess most of them across different games would say cheating is out of control.
In CS2, nearly all of the leaderboard: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6GA4AM1Szxc https://youtube.com/watch?v=m8wsCU0NR38
In Trackmania, nearly all of the leaderboard (I think this is the most competitive racing game): https://youtube.com/watch?v=yDUdGvgmKIw
Chess . com : https://youtube.com/watch?v=SG5PMVyCi8U (though here it is significantly easier, almost trivial, to find and ban cheaters)
There are also many in the speedrunning niche.
I can’t say I understand the conflation of academic and game cheating, either
They are similar from a psychological perspective involving honesty and rewards. You want to win in order to gain status and feel a sense of success. Among males, video game success translates into reputational benefits, bragging rights, plus the basic biological pleasure of defeating an opponent in a bout. This is no different from academic success, except perhaps that the rewards of academic success occur on a longer timeframe, making the rewards of cheating a little less salient.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
The substance of prayer is cultivating a disposition, salience / sensitivity, and object of thanks. I mean I’m sure there are Christians out there praying to win a lottery ticket, but this is not the sophisticated method of prayer. I think most traditional churches would advise that you pray for spiritual benefits and basic needs. You could argue that Christ even advises a person to pray only for the kingdom and righteousness and not even basic needs. However I think there’s room to pray regarding all feasible goal pursuits with undue confidence, because that’s beneficial for a person.
Arrogance and narcissism
Arrogance and narcissism are bad because they are antisocial. If a person believes that a loving God cares about everyone maximally, this would have prosocial behavioral consequences. Calling this narcissistic or arrogant is a category error of sorts. It’s just a mismatch of terminology.
it’s far more invested in preserving its own status and influence than in any genuine truth. Most of the people at its core seem more concerned with hierarchy and control than with the transcendental.
I see a lot wrong with nearly every church so I can’t disagree here. But that doesn’t mean that we should throw out all the developments of Western religion.
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
It would be like saying there’s a sprawling tunnel system beneath Manhattan which America uses as their primary war room. The Pentagon isn’t even in the middle of DC, let alone under the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Orthodoxy (like Catholicism) does not establish the social requirements necessary for true Christian life. A person’s social identity must be governed by their faith in a deeper sense. There needs to be real brotherhood where peers esteem and honor each other for faith, where even small infractions may lead to reprimands (as Christ advises), and where there is an implicit pious competition over faith (wherever men gather with a genuine shared aim, implicit competition exists no matter always, as a feature of human nature and Christ ennobles this fact). They must celebrate Christ as their shared superior peer, not just as a figure in a ritual. A person needs to look forward to sharing their faith and progress like they do today with their grades, deadlifts, cars, haircuts, vacations. But actually, no, 10x more than this — but at the very least you need the social institutions which enable and guide it.
For a long period, churches were able to ignore explicating this social requirement, because —
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Churches had a monopoly on the most compelling art, music, and schools, creating an effortless social draw
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Churches were willing to genuinely condemn and excommunicate members whose behavior was not up to par, forming behavioral-belief enforcement, and if a priest heard you were living an unchristian life or denying dogmas, you would face actual condemnation. This condemnation would have real effects on your social identity: your job prospects, marriage prospects, your ability to make friends or to find occasions for fun
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There was no competing religion or science, in a way we can hardly fathom today, meaning the Christian worldview did not need to be reinforced like it did in the earliest days of the religion. If all the smartest people who know the most are Christian, then it is believed as default. (Today we are competing with a secular culture that doesn’t just promote a more compelling argument, but has significantly better media at their disposal, and your child is pressured into attending their institutions).
The current institution doesn’t work. But what would work is if we look at the church Christ established. How did the first Christians thrive despite more scientifically compelling beliefs and more hedonistic movements?
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Brotherhood was enforced via the agape eucharist. This was an intimate feast with real food and wine, had in honor of Christ every week, where all the brothers enforced each other’s social identity in remembrance of Christ, with peer praise and songs. This is the do this in the Lord’s do this in remembrance of me. (Women were kept submissive so as not to derail the vibe, and chastity was enforced so that men do not compete over women.)
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A norm of esteeming each other’s faith was enforced as the prevailing mode of conversation: “Let love be genuine… love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit.” “Timothy has proved himself, worthy as a son with his father”. "I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice.” "I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love and the faith you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all God’s people." "It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth”. This is all throughout the epistles: men and women are esteemed for their faithfulness and obedience to righteousness. We first see this habit of esteem in Jesus, who honors and praises John publicly.
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On the other hand, a culture condemning defectors, even by name to the entire church, as Paul does on different occasions in the epistles.
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A culture of condemning all distractions, like Tertullian does against the theater and the “spectacles”. Can you imagine there are churches where people talk proudly about having seen Hamilton? Or going to a basketball game? Yeah, you would have been disciplined in the early church for that.
Essentially, all of the normal wholesome motivations of man are Christened. They are “baptized” within the social immersion of the Church, the prototype of which is the Ark (“by which a few, namely 8, are saved”.)
Modern churches are like the “we are one big family” pep rallies that corporate retail makes you do. It doesn’t matter how often it’s repeated, you’re not a family, because such feelings aren’t formed that way. Because brotherhood doesn’t come from sitting in a building listening to someone or watching something happen. That’s one step above watching TV. Christ wasn’t redefining the nature of brotherhood when he commanded brotherly love, He was saying, “all this stuff I’m saying? If it doesn’t exist in a zealous brotherhood it’s all for nothing.”
I’m sure there are some brotherhoods that develop incidentally within a modern church ecosystem, where a small group of zealous men genuinely try to keep aflame the Holy Spirit through frequent meetings. But I think this is probably rare in the wild and I almost never hear about it. I have seen some on Discord, but of course, that’s not any better. And if these brotherhoods do develop within the ecosystem, almost all the gain occurs outside the church. Maybe you’ll hear some wisdom in the church and hear a good song and that’s beneficial, but the “real presence” will not be in the church rituals, so it’s effectively worthless.
Maybe a scenario would have been better to sum up my babbling. Imagine it’s war and you’re in the trenches. You’ve gotten word that your death is near-assured within the month. In the trench with you are two other Christians, brothers in arms, as well as a small hymnal (powerful melodies) and a reasonable amount of wine. If all three of you wanted to secure the salvation of your souls before death, what would you do? Imagine the gains that you would have in that month with nothing but the bare minimum: a sincere brotherhood, some songs, some wine, and the certainty of death. Wouldn’t it exceed anything you could gain in a modern church over an entire lifespan?
coffee_enjoyer
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19d ago
No, they have America and European powers protecting them from many of the projectiles while also feeding intel on Iran
coffee_enjoyer
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19d ago
The superior communities may be the result of the psychological changes brought about from belief in a life to come, with all of its contingent reinforcements and punishments
coffee_enjoyer
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26d ago
Just speculating, but provided that you already appreciate drawings and can distinguish between better and worse drawings, it should simply be a matter of
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imitate technique 1
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recreate technique 1 in varied contexts and applications
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recreate technique 1 in novel scenarios once general applications have been mastered
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be able to assess your ability to perform technique 1 by imagining it as someone else’s work
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do the same for techniques 2-9999
I don’t actually think there is a relationship between “visual reality” and drawing, because the most prized drawings in different cultures do not depict reality but instead “signal” what the mind considers significant information according to the culture. Even the “realistic” renaissance drawings are only emphasizing particular aspects
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Like so —
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up… may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
Finally: all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing
Christians should have the easiest time doing this, because that’s the whole message of Christ. The gospel traces the start of a Brotherhood while the Epistles outline its governance. If no one can do it, it means they have to learn and revere Christ who did it, and then encourage each other in Christ, and then select the most Christlike to head the group, and so on. And that’s precisely what we see in the first Christian church. They are learning, encouraging, criticizing, expanding. You get the sense that the brotherhood was based exclusively in positive reinforcement and perhaps some “training”, and only reserving punishment for the very damaging things. If this is so, then status is mostly positive sum.
In the first Pagan letter about the “contagion” of Christianity, we see that some modest oaths were involved —
They were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to do some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food — but ordinary and innocent food.
There would obviously be sin present at the table but sin already exists wherever friend groups and social networks congregate. Every college has a dozen fraternities nominally dedicated to some trite values but really dedicated to Bacchus, and people enjoy this greatly even though there’s drama and occasional fighting. If Christians can’t do a greater job of uniting men together when all the men revere Christ, then religion itself is a failed project. But this isn’t so. I think it would be quite feasible especially with good selection filters and rules in place.
I agree that, because nothing like this exists, it’s good to do the next best thing. But just from historical study + psychology, nothing going to be effective like this.
are you going to
I am going go continue reading and longing. Maybe one day a compelling substack post.
coffee_enjoyer
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25d ago
It’s said that the reason Northern European Ashkenazim often have light eyes and light skin is because these genes were selected for over ~1000 years. Doesn’t this mean that the health consequences of inadequate vitamin D are more serious than commonly considered? Given that the predominant darker skin tones must have been significantly selected against. And doesn’t this poke a hole in the theory that pale skin was sexually selected, given that Ashkenazim marriage patterns were mostly predicated on business ties and rabbinical performance, rather than an individual’s own tastes?
coffee_enjoyer
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23d ago
I think there is still value to this sort of “illogical prayer”. Imagine you want to run a marathon. If you’re constrained to logic, then you can pray for the spirit (mood / feeling / aim) to practice every day; the praying would help to increase salience and craving for the activity. But you can also enter into the post-logical realm: you can believe that God guarantees that you will complete a marathon, and actually changes reality provided that you practice. And now you have no wavering or double-mindedness about your practice and pursuit. There’s now no room for doubt about whether you obtain it, it’s just a matter of when. It’s hard to convey this beneficial goal certainty without eschewing logic, but you see it in a lot of high-level performers across domains, eg Magnus Carlsen saying that the optimal mindset for chess is “between delusional and confident”. It seems essential for the instrumentalization of cognition toward a goal.
Humans need to be certain that they will accomplish a goal and “God will make it so” is no less delusional than “I simply believe it” or “if you believe you will achieve” (at the very least, religious language is more poetic). But the utility of prayer is more clear when you factor in more variables: someone is more likely to take the time to pray when they believe (when they know) that they will be heard, answered, and gifted something materially. It’s easier on the mind and increases interest. “My act of praying gives myself a spirit” turns a person into an actor playing a part. “My loving Father is eager to give me my request and only asks for prayer and practice, that I prove my interest and allegiance” turns someone into a social animal, a human. It’s simpler, there’s no pretending. And it activates much more cognition and interest, because every time you pray you are speaking to the maker of all things and the ruler of time. That dogma itself will make the content of your prayer more striking in your mind, increasing the chance of it occurring.
As for the problem of evil, my view is firmly in the minority but I believe in a sovereign force of evil which evades the problem completely. From the Wisdom of Solomon:
God did not make death. For he fashioned all things that they might have being, and the creatures of the world are wholesome […] It was the wicked who with hands and words invited death, considered it a friend, and pined for it, and made a covenant with it […] God formed us to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made us. But by the envy* of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are allied with him experience it.
I read this as a sovereign force of evil always existing, later in the form of the devil, who unleashed death when our archetypal ancestors disobeyed the Good in paradise. The evil in the world is both due to evil as a force and mankind’s own alliance with it (Adam isn’t just “first human”, but we all existed in Adam and we inherit his temperament etc). This is very satisfying. God has ultimate control over everything in the end, and ultimate control over the Good, but there currently and forever was a sovereign evil force. Every attempt to make God all-powerful including over evil is ultimately making Him less moral and less loving.
coffee_enjoyer
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24d ago
From a non-Mormon perspective, the sophisticated argument for prayer is that it changes a person’s disposition or spirit, and that this is what it means to receive something from God. This would have especially strong results where the desired object is itself a change of disposition, eg the addiction OP mentions. How could prayer help or cure addiction? Addiction entails the pursuit of pleasure where pleasure goes against one’s own social, prosocial, identity-determined goals. God solidifies a person’s social identity in ways impossible to accomplish with secular language or materialist understanding alone, for a variety of psychological reasons. Prayer works to recollect and elaborate upon social identity. It makes prosocial decisions salient and forefront, and even existentially significant. It involves an omnipresent social superior, social confident, and social lover. Many more things can be said about this. But there’s a reason even Huberman the neuroscientist prays every day.
The statistical evidence that prayer works is that religious people, especially those who pray to a loving God, have greater wellbeing and are protected against addiction. Really, all that we want at the end of the day is greater wellbeing. So it works in toto. If establishing prayer in your life is more conducive to your happiness than otherwise, then it is established that prayer works and ought to be done, as any reasonable organism seeks greater wellbeing.
Regarding disasters —
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
Unsophisticated shepherds dealing with unsophisticated dangerous feral sheep have often claimed that natural disasters are allowed by God or are the punishment of God. This is to promote society-wide prosocial behavior in an efficient way. But it is not the case.
How many people are mired in addiction that try everything, including prayer, and never make it out
Many, but they die in hope and conversation with their perfect Love One. The alternative is less prayer is unlikely to be more conducive to success and wellbeing. But the advice should never be “only pray” — of course you do everything else, but you also pray.
tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks ford a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
coffee_enjoyer
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25d ago
I know about the DNA research but the average Hasidic Jew still looks more pale than the average Italian (Hasidim being a good example of “pure Ashkenazim”)
There is some good here. But the problem with over-prioritizing symbolism is that it weakens the power of the original meaning. For instance, making “Lord” into only an imagined presence we speak to weakens the significance of talking to your Lord. In antiquity, talking to your Lord was a big deal — the Lord controlled your entire realm, not to mention your destiny. For Christians, Lord was the established authority with maximum culturally-informed value judgments which were deeply internalized (to describe it as scientifically as possible). If the Lord is defined as a presence we imagine, and this presence is only an abstractly conceptualized ground of being, then we have lost considerable motivation to pray or act righteously. We are just playing pretend — and perhaps we always are — but the pretend isn’t even dramatic. The dramatic pull is gone. The totalizing, moralizing vibe is gone. And it risks becoming woefully subjective, and it also risks toppling like the Tower of Babel — we can’t build upon the rock of Christ if each person’s Christ is different.
I mean imagine you’re at some mystical Christian gathering, and you’re crying because the weight of your sin is too strong and you don’t want to betray your savior — how can the “mystic” answer? “Whoa, you’re taking this imagined presence thing really seriously…” Or who is going to donate their wealth over an “imagined presence”? It lacks force.
What I think is a better solution here, is not to say “Lord is imagined”, but to say that these words are the only way we can access reality — particularly a socialized, moral, emotional reality. By socialized, I mean both “discussing complex spiritual reality within a shared language and framework” and “with the cooperative presuppositions which answer myriad collective action concerns”. These words act as an interface by which we access the divine. On the human-level, then, you really do have a Lord with whom all the poetic elaborations of creation and judgment are solidly true. On the material-level, there is no Lord. Is this such a difficult leap to make? I don’t think so; after all, the Christian must believe that the bread (material) becomes the flesh and blood of the Lord (spiritual) within a shared social ecosystem designed toward moral reinforcement.
Now, a pious Christian does use imagination in prayer: perhaps they kneel, perhaps they look up, perhaps they repeat some words which cement His dominion over all things (the earth is God’s footstool). But they use imagination only to elaborate and feel the beliefs or dogmas that they hold. They are hallowing the name of God and bidding the Kingdom come. They do this because they believe the consequences are important. If everything is symbols all the way down, then what is the importance of it all? You need something which roots the urgency and significance of the quest. Otherwise you’re just satisfying your own limited ego or whim, you’re not actually involved in making the world better or anything good. Why not just play Dungeons & Dragons, or WoW? Why not just talk to ChatGPT? So any religious quest needs to be rooted in a totalizing importance. And there are actually decent ways to combine it with secular importance, but traditionally what religion does is get you into an environment where they can propagandize their root concerns to you: the wrath of God is coming, we slew God’s Son; God’s Son came to forgive us and save us from evil; there is an eternal punishment and an eternal abode for the righteous. Etc. Maybe they have the children sing about the earth burning in smoke. Maybe you are peer-evaluated by your perceived faith and banished for your doubt.
A purely symbolic religion will not get martyrdom like this:
I like Jonathan Pageau but his writings suffer this same problem. A person just isn’t moved by knowing symbols, or poems, or anything clever. If you have 1000 symbols versus 1 “this man died to save the world and now waits for you”, you are going to be changed from the simple non-symbolic thing. And I enjoyed Jordan Peterson’s thoughts on the Old Testament, but again this has the same problem — JBP can’t even admit to being a Christian in an argument with a teenager. And lastly, around Christ’s time you had the Alexandrian school of Philo, and they also doubted the real body of Christ, and they wrote thousands of pages allegorizing the Old Testament with symbols. And it’s a pleasant read, but it’s worthless and doesn’t actually do anything.
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