Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It’s like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn’t have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it’s necessary to spread your belief to others, are ‘somehow’ more spread out than religions who don’t convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It’s funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

Adding a comment so people can experiment more in this thread.

How reductionist. You ignored that you have a brain, too. This comment section discusses the topic if you’re unaware of reasons.

I feel like I’m pretending to know what I’m doing.

I guess that explains the observation. As kids, we’re fooled by the pretenders. So we grow up with this expectation.

I feel the most consequent stance is to demand all the things. Not to reject all the things except for the one pure solution.

As long as ICE vehicles are still sold, even make up the most of the sales, supporting EVs is moving in the right direction. At the same time, even better solutions can be demanded and supported.

They eliminate a part of the emissions, since one big engine (like a power plant) can be run more efficiently than many small engines (in individual vehicles).

Similarly, transporting electricity through wires creates less emissions than transporting fuel with trucks. Both serve the purpose of refueling other vehicles.

Even coal powered EVs are better than gasoline cars.

If you are not in charge, replace the “You” with whoever is in charge. When you said “I won’t give it up” it seemed you had some control.

If that wording makes a difference, these people should not be in charge of what energy enters their home, or not be in charge period.

Also TIL, the attempt to rename it is not new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas#Name

You can install your own panels and turbines and storage, or do it together with some neighbors or the city.

Independence is possible with renewables, but not so with fossil fuels.

Yes, I feel you.

And yes, that’s how it is. It’s an insanely complex industry if you really want to understand how things work.

Which you don’t need to get things done.

Which you still can if you really want, if you’re willing to invest the time and energy to study it thoroughly for many years if not decades.

But even then, chances are you’ll be touching libraries, concepts or technologies which you did not study in-depth yet. I think you need to be both aware and tolerant of limited knowledge, and willing to learn continuously.

For those who don’t know what Firefish is: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Firefish%3F

Thanks, nice to know. Also subbed to [email protected], didn’t know that exists.

There is no fundamental difference between between:

• People cant be together because of their sign and
• People cant be together because of their skin color

The difference is, people cannot choose their skin color, but they can choose which ideas to follow.

True atheism is just not believing in god(s). That’s it. Nothing more.

It’s an umbrella term. Different versions of atheism exist. They’re all atheism because they’re all about not believing in god(s).

Each can still have their own emphasis or extras. You’re obviously still an atheist if you don’t believe in god(s), and think that this would be an extremely stupid thing to do. For example, consider this venn diagram:

Explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism

This implies that there are forms of atheism which are no belief, and other forms of atheism which are a belief.

I agree about your general observation, and am myself guilty of that. Many comments of our crowd lack the intellectual depth and honesty they would need to be in a position to make such statements. One should also ponder over the question wether this approach works as intended, and even if, wether it’s a good thing to do so.

I guess you meant to respond to another comment, since OP does not claim the Bible was the problem.

But yours appears as a top-level comment to me.

Is there a turing test for art, and what’s the detection quota?

I think any clear definition will either positively identify lots of AI works as art (along collections of random junk), or deny the qualifier to lots of supposed artworks from human artists.

Coming from theater, I agree it is about “conveying a meaning beneath the surface”. Having studied computer science, I note that is very much not in a strict sense, but very vague. It seems to be a feature, not a bug, that everyone in the audience can see something different.

I think you can pretty much present random nonsense, and someone will still find it brilliant and inspiring, and a lot more people will tell you what patterns they saw, and of what it reminded them. The meaning is created in the minds of the observers, even if the creator explicitly did not put another, or any, meaning into the “art”.

I guess a good part also comes from learned experiences. Having a body, growing up, feeling pain, being mortal.

And yes, the brain is an incredibly complex system not only of neurons, but also transmitters, receptors, a whole truckload of biochemistry.

But in the end, both are just matter in patterns, excitation in coordination. The effort to simulate is substantial, but I don’t see how that would NEVER succeed, if someone with the capabilities insisted on it. However, it might be fully sufficient for the task (whatever that is, probably porn) to simulate 95% or so, technically still not the real deal.

“Monad” is a shorter term though. “Structured data type” reads almost as bulky as “Curve of constant normal intersection points”.

Thanks again, though just for the record, that didn’t help either. It’s alright, I’m used to the Thunderbird lags. Let’s stop here :)

No single human activity has a bigger impact on the planet than the production of food

A provocative claim which is not supported by the link. It goes on to talk about other thing, which cannot show the claim is true, if it is. For example, while the following sentence might be true, it does not show wether the initial claim was true:

The production of animal-based foods—particularly beef—is responsible for about half of the food system’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

Because both talk about different things. I couldn’t find that July 5, 2022, Boston Globe article to check.

The production of food (even in the most sustainable ways) probably still is a good bet, simply because it requires so much land, and more.

Though not sure how it fares against “trade”, or the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.