[extropy-chat] Uses of Religion

[Robert Bradbury]

On 9/30/06, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
>
> (This is brutally simplified, obviously; at some tipping point, the
> demographics
> doubtless shift so that bright members of underclasses will be coopted or
> bull their way in to the higher levels of opportunity--but I doubt that such
> entrists or their children and grandchildren will retain their "faith" for
> long, except as a sentimental affectation or manipulative tool, in a modern
> and postmodern economy.)


A better question might be to ask *when* the underclass has no means for
survival?   There is a tipping point which takes place when a significant
fraction of what humans do, particularly the "followers" inclined to
believe, can be done more efficiently by robots with low levels of human
intelligence.  Witness the replacement of automobile assembly line workers
with robots or one can anticipate long haul truck drivers with truck driving
software, etc.  Robots and software don't typically require belief systems
with respect to the "whys" and "hows" and they don't have to be capable of
self-replication.

So the question might be whether the singularity will constitute a selection
filter against large scale religious meme sets because it will involve
selection against survival of the children in which those meme sets are
replicated.  Paradoxically, I'm led to the conclusion that my incompletely
thought out support for The Hunger Project (or any charity promoting human
survival without education in unbiased belief systems) in previous decades
may not have been good because it would likely have enabled a greater
replication opportunities for faulty (irrational) meme sets.

Robert
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