coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
Even in Nordic cohorts, there are gains from religious participation in the forms of charitable giving and civic engagement. There is also a twin study showing that prosociality is increased by religiosity in a US sample. It stands to reason that even the Nords benefit from religion. I don’t think we should extrapolate “humanity doesn’t need religion” from “Nords do quite well without religion”, because we ought to be concerned with maximizing the Good, not being comparatively better than peers, and there may be some other factor that leads to Nords having a high floor of prosociality. Perhaps both Nords and Namibians benefit from prosocial rituals, but starting from a different floor of behavior. (In the same way that the East Asian appears to have a low ceiling of violent criminality, while there is still likely some intervention that would either decrease or increase the rate).
Larson and Witham's survey of National Academy of Sciences members found roughly 92% rejected belief in God or a higher power
It makes sense that the cohort who is hyper-selected for rational ability would have some reduction or deficiency in other kinds of social-cognitive processing. I imagine if you surveyed the best artists and musicians, you’d find that they make fewer rational decisions than their STEM peers. Would these scientists cease being rational about science if the state enforced religious belief? Probably not. If these scientists believed that they would be judged by how truthfully they relay findings, would they produce more trustworthy data? Probably. Should we change the fabric of society because of research scientists, who compose like 0.001% of all citizens? Probably not. Consider that there have been losses to the mathematical community due to antisocial behavior, like what caused Grigori Perelman to flee academia from a sense of injustice. This affects the very best at the very top of cutting-edge science.
It really is possible that religious social technology which reduces scientific fraud is the new frontier of science. We have National Academy of Science members causing billions of dollars in lost progress through fraud. The National Academy of Science itself believes that fraud is a serious issue that is increasingly rampant in the field.
Any sufficiently coercive ideology with strong ingroup enforcement produces cooperative, rule-following, trust-generating behavior. That's a point in favor of strong social institutions generally, not religion specifically.
We already have all this external stuff! The peer review process and academic accreditation system have “coercive ideology” and “ingroup enforcement” and “strong social institutions”. The problem is that it’s easy to fake through all this, and there is no supernatural motive to care about honesty. What’s missing is the internal stuff. Western religion does not really do in-group enforcement but is predicated on introducing intrinsic commitments to behavioral proscriptions. The reason you don’t fabricate results isn’t because you’ll get caught (this will only lead to more subtle fabrications), but because behaving honestly is supernaturally pleasant and honorable and supernaturally socially-reinforced through a supernatural peer, while dishonesty is detested as being cataclysmic. “My university mentor would be ashamed if he found out I committed fraud” is much weaker than “my universal mentor who perceives the most subtle movement of my heart as if it were an entire solar system is counting on me to be absurdly trustworthy”. It is really easy to get people to believe the second, if just requires forgetting rationality in favor of a God Delusion.
coffee_enjoyer
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15hr ago
I haven’t noticed any treatment or social movement develop which shows the ability to mitigate social stress and drug use while reducing the risk of early life adversity like religion. And these are the big cofactors for psychosis. So the science-y things which increase wellbeing probably won’t help the demoniac as well as as Jesus.
Science, technology and empiricism also make our lives better without having to believe in false propositions
But there are religious people at the forefront of science and technology. If you want to maximize for science, you need more than rationality. You also need to maximize for (1) social cooperation and trust, (2) honesty, (3) general prosperity, and (4) status-free interest. Atheism is hamful here. Religion is helpful. You want to know that the research you’re reading isn’t wholecloth invented by some status-obsessed person who does not engage in any prosocial ritual. This is necessary for science to progress. Perhaps someone can use AI to check the religious practices of the worst “science defectors” in recent memory; perhaps I am wrong. But religion uniquely reinforces intrinsically honest behavior through the cultivation of unquestioning belief. (Other rituals can plausibly do this, like Maoism, but they do not currently exist). And a fictive belief will always be stronger and recruit more of a person’s interest and commitment than an empirical belief.
I would rather be sane and sad than happy in delusion
But you win no extra points for doing so; all mortal flesh will be turned to dust and forgotten forever.
The wellbeing benefits of religious belief, to the extent they're real, accrue mostly to the believer
It is very beneficial for an atheist to be surrounded by theists who are +1 in the trustworthy, cooperative, industrious, selfless, and rule-following skill tree. In this sense, the atheist is a free-rider, because only the theist is sacrificing some % of his self-concern on the altar of civic beneficence. The atheist gets to self-benefit-maxx while making fun of the silly theist, but he doesn’t thank the theist when the cashier is particularly polite, or when the nurse shows more love when you’re hurt, or when you didn’t get into a car accident by a high driver. The Invisible God brings myriad invisible benefits to those with eyes to see them.
coffee_enjoyer
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17hr ago
If the Christian delusion increases social cooperation and buffers against social stressors, then it decreases the sum total delusion in a civilization and protects against those delusions which are acutely harmful to individual and collective wellbeing. A Noble Lie Delusion, if you will, necessary for any society that is serious about ameliorating suffering, which is the ultimate aim of the medical profession and possibly humanity itself (anything else is just collecting useless information, and there are now video games for that). Maybe one day, in a more enlightened era, doctors will prescribe medicinal midnight masses and meditations on the Love of God to treat the world-weary.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Was exploring Georgian Orthodox music recently.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Well wait, who do we thank for saving Iraq from ISIS? You can’t tank America, because we accidentally created ISIS when we purged the Baathists from all governmental roles; they regrouped under ISIS and comprised most of their leadership. We were on the verge of turning Iraq into a literal super villian tier country through our own retardation, and it was Iran-backed Shia rebels that were instrumental in their defeat on the ground, with American strikes in the air. I wonder if Americans even know that the second biggest terrorist attack in history was against Iran-linked Shias fighting ISIS, essentially their 9/11.
So, unironically, it was “Iran” that changed Iraq for the better, whereas our ineptitude almost turned them into a comically evil nation you’d only see in sepia-filtered TV war movies. You can read how stupid and callous our intervention was in the Paul Bremer emails released the other day.
Israel has not presented one name of a rape victim. None of the hostages that Hamas kept for years have alleged rape (correcting myself: a few accusations from hostages). None of the women who had Hamas members enter their homes and who interacted with them have alleged rape. When an Israeli journalist called every hotline and every hospital to determine whether rapes happened, not only did no one claim to have met a victim, but no one knew anyone who met a victim.
Israelis, in contrast, mass rape Palestinian prisoners. There are actual people coming forward, with documented injuries. The Israeli army’s top lawyer had to leak video evidence of a rape because the Israelis refused to prosecute the Israeli rapists, and for this act she was fired. When they tried to prosecute the Israeli rapists, popular politicians instigated a riot on the prison where the Israeli rapist was kept. The Israelis dropped all the charges against the Israeli rapists just a few hours ago, actually, this despite there being video evidence.
It is insane to me that we are allied with this country.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
There is not evidence of rape, though there is evidence that Israelis rape Palestinian prisoners; negotiations had not broken down according to the Omani mediator; Iran was never hostile to us; the school was no closer to the military target than the soldiers were close to the festival-goers
evil regimes that want to kill us
I do believe there is an evil regime trying to get Americans killed, trying to kill civilians, and trying to make the world less safe. IMO that regime is the Israeli regime. They want us dying like we did in Iraq for them.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Why would it be bad to launch a sneak attack on soldiers at a festival? Remember, you can’t say “because of the civilians present”, because apparently we don’t care about civilians in war. Neither can we use the “fog of war” excuse, because it was our first enty into the war with a target of our choice. And neither can we say “in times of peace”, because we were negotiating with Iran in peace, and were not at war. My point here, of course, is to draw a comparison between the 150 or so we killed (does not deserve empathy?), and whatever happened on October 7th (somehow deserves empathy?).
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
There were soldiers throughout the music festival, off-duty Israelis carrying rifles. Why should I care if they miss some soldiers and shoot some civilians? Is that worse than missing a base and hitting a school? Why should an American trust what Israel says about the allegation of rape when (1) they are maximally motivated to exaggerate the event and (2) they have never admitted to killing hundreds of their own civilians in cars with the Hannibal Directive? This is not a trustworthy country.
Are you aware that we don’t have a single name of someone coming forward to allege rape? And that similarly, female hostages have not alleged rape despite being kept among Hamas for years? Or that Israelis rape their Palestinian prisoners?
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Those now shrugging their shoulders at civilian casualties likely did not do the same when Hamas killed some civilians on October 7th. I do wonder how much selective empathy is going on.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Iran’s official policy wrt Israel is that the people who lived in the land before the 1948 ethnic cleansing / terror campaign should decide its future through a democratic referendum, whether they are Jewish or Muslim or Christian. In essence, they want to “bring democracy to the Middle East”, and “not let the terrorists win”, because the Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank do not currently have the right to vote, despite having their sovereignty impeded by Israel, and because they were expelled through genuine terrorism, which enabled the terrorists to “win” Israel.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
In previous conflicts they were not able to reign missiles down on Tel Aviv. Also we had other crazy sand people dying for us. Neither Americans nor Israelis are able to sustain consistently high sand people mortality figures. The key questions of this war IMO are (1) can we actually find all the ballistic missiles and (2) how easy is it to make a TEL. I haven’t found any expert even hazarding a guess on these except to say that making a TEL is pretty trivial stuff.
They're meeting in person, for God's sake
I don’t think anyone has a clear idea what is happening. But we have not announced any new leaders being killed after the “trick your opponent into coming to the negotiation table and then slaughter their family” strategy, right?
Now the former Ayatollah was an old man getting up in the years, dying of cancer and willing to martyr himself. But his wife? His son's wife? All of his subordinates, too?
It’s a good point. The only way this could serve the interests of Iran is if the foundation of their cultural and religious identity revolved around the collective mourning of a massacre which mirrors what happened to Khamenei in important ways. What you don’t want to give Iranians is “a template for the public expression of collective solidarity and moral feeling”. But, like, what’s the probability of that? Thankfully the CIA is advising Trump and not two random real estate developers and a guy with a Kafir tattoo written under his Deus Vult tattoo.
They're going down the entire chain of command, killing anyone who even has a whisper of command authority
Maybe they can, I have no idea, but it’s not a given, as Iran has tons of mountains and Russian / Chinese communication tech.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
No country plans to have their entire leadership killed
Except, you know, Iran. “The regime has in fact already taken preventative measures to ensure its survival in the event of an attack, including by tapping Ali Larijani, a former IRGC commander and the current head of the Supreme National Security Council, to take the lead on contingency planning. Khamenei has also reportedly named successors for himself and his key military and government appointees to enable smooth transfers of power and ensure the regime’s longevity.”
an international pariah
They already were a pariah and cut off from trade. America even managed to persuade India to stop sending them food. That curse happened to become a blessing for them, as they are insulated from the internal consequences of disrupted global trade. What is perhaps not noted here is that the only thing a Sunni hates more than a Shia is an Israeli. The Gulf Arabs are unlikely to go to war with Iran to increase the territorial expansion and power of Israel. Just two weeks ago Huckabee spilled on the beans on the Zionist conspiracy to increase Israeli territory. So for who will Iran be a pariah exactly?
coffee_enjoyer
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4d ago
I did think his “long live Khamenei” effort post was highly unusual…
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
It’s funny because high school is probably the time where a majority of humans have peak emotional experiences, simply due to hormones, which is why popular media often centers on high school (Stranger Things, Euphoria, Harry Potter, the various social life anime and Korean shows).
Tripoli and Mexico were not interventions into foreign affairs as they secured the wellbeing of Americans exclusively. The lyrics are “we fight our country's battles […] to keep our honor clean”. Not, “we fight Israel’s battles and lose all our honor by killing 100 children in the first salvo, while also killing a Muslim leader in their holy month backhandedly while lying about negotiations, all while harming our own interests among Arab allies in the region”. Our plan going into Tripoli was to secure a deal to benefit Americans, not trying to kill everyone in the government and military and hoping for the best. Leave such dishonor to Israel. In any case this is a 1930s authorization, not really traditional enough for me.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
If you told the founders that we were entering a needless war of foreign intervention 6000 miles away in Persia, they would consider their constitution a failure, and may be partial to my helpful revision.
coffee_enjoyer
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5d ago
The best salesmen in the world are at the intelligence agencies because they have access to psychological research that has never been published, and because such a job is more rewarding than working at Coca Cola. McDonald’s does not have a team focused specifically on targetting you, as an individual, using all your data, with access to your friend while you’re in a golf-induced trance state. If they did then you would prostrate before the Big Arch and salivate upon hearing “I’m lovin’ it”.
You failed to read. This part is NLP:
Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country's intelligence community. "They'll tell me things our own government won't tell me," he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action
The part you selected is only Trump being lied to, as our own intelligence does not agree with what Netanyahu said, and Israel has previously lied to get us into war. A fool would trust their intel without vetting.
assess military intelligence
Its not American military intel, its whatever Netanyahu said.
The people who manipulated Trump into starting the war are the “traitors” in my book, though this isn’t the legal definition. Lindsey Graham shouldn’t be coached by Mossad on how to neurolinguistically program Trump’s 80yo mind into joining a war. That’s the most insane thing I have ever read. It is baffling that this happened. And I don’t trust “confirmed bachelor” Lindsey Graham in Tel Aviv in the Epstein era at all:
To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country's intelligence community. "They'll tell me things our own government won't tell me," he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead, Graham said.
A law should be passed to deport people who do this to Mogadishu along with their nearest kin, extending even to second cousins, along with banning any of their interns of assistants from working in government. Imagine the best salesmen in the world working for years to figure out how to sell you something, and they are able to use a friend of yours to do so. They have an infinite budget and have collated tens of thousands of hours of your speeches and conversations to determine priming words and anchoring words according to your facial expressions and vocal tenor. Oh, and you’re 80 years old and easily impressionable. This is the capability of Mossad, plus infinitely more.
we call it all off now, Iran will probably finish arming themselves and nuke a civilian population, likely Israel
I would sooner support America formally declaring war on Israel than believe this, or support someone who believes this. This is not the assessment of the American intelligence community. This is an Israeli talking point.
coffee_enjoyer
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6d ago
There have been cases of the chant being used about potatoes and traffic. After 9/11, when Khamenei condemned the terror attacks, large crowds of Iranians held vigils, and some chanted “death to terrorism”. This is not the behavior of a nation that actually wants death inflicted upon a country.
We are not going to nuke their cities and raze their crops and exterminate civilians wholesale (which their government would certainly do to us if they had the capability).
Well, by the same token, Netanyahu calls Iran “Amalek”, which in the traditional telling, must be fully destroyed along with “all that they have […] both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey”. Do Israelis take this commandment literally? No; every Israeli cleric will explain that Amalek is a symbolic representation of evil. But if you’re Iran, you know what they’ve done to Gaza, and Iraq, and Syria, and Libya… so even a symbolic transliteration is not reassuring.
coffee_enjoyer
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7d ago
My memory is hazy but I do think we had to memorize at least some of the table.
Kushner is shaping Trump’s behavior as you would a child or a dog. “Command the Marines over, that will scare Iran into capitulation. What, they didn’t capitulate? They don’t respect you at all! Get the marines on the boat, that will make them surrender. It didn’t work? Then we have to launch one tiny landing, otherwise America appears weak. You know Kharg Island doesn’t even count as Iran...”
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