Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I mean, I might just agree. Why shouldn’t we motivationmax? If we admit all three characters are making leaps then we might as well judge which one has the superior leap. Which athlete is motivated to leap the highest? Now we just have to ask who has the most satisfying “why”. Is it the person who believes humanity should be maximized as an article of faith, or a person who believes there is a greatest possible being to conceive who has decided that humanity ought to be maximized as an article of faith and who judged you. Which one is, well, better for maximizing humanity? I vote against the mere “humanity maximizer” because there is no judgement apart from social standard and self-guilt, which is inferior to judgment from the perfect being.
There is no real judgment from the perfect being here, though. What we're looking at is anticipated judgment from an imagined perfect being, which is not the real thing.
At this point you might as well skip the middleman of convincing yourself that there is a God and he will judge you even though he does love you because he sacrificed himself to himself and still remained alive etc etc... There is too much doublethink overhead to be reliable. Speaking of athletes, they go for every advantage they can get away with and I haven't ever heard of religion being recommended as doping. Instead what gets emphasized is Willpower. Internal motivation and internal judgement. As long as you're hacking your reward function, why bother building up fragile constructions of divinity rather than hardcode "do good thing = good"?
Contrary to the Bible hiding from God is a lot easier than hiding from yourself, and judgment is quite immediate instead of being promised ~60 years later.
If you’re anticipating the judgment of an imagined perfect Being, that is phenomenologically the same as anticipating the judgment of a perfect being. Provided that you actually buy into it, of course.
Re: athletics, there’s probably nothing more “animalistically” motivating than college athletics. As in, the motivations are very primitive. Money, women, war. It’s the least civilized thing we still do in civilization. The problem is that the rest of civilized life actually requires effort in motivation. Certainly morality requires this. It also happens to be the case that student athletes are more religious than non-athletes. Probably because the stress reduction of belief allows more focus on the sport.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link