[ExI] Function of religions

[Brent Allsop]

  On 9/27/2010 11:53 AM, Darren Greer wrote:
> Brent wrote:
>
>
> "What, concisely, are all of you experts saying, and what do you agree 
> on?  And how much consensus, is there really, for such?  If we can 
> come up with that, rigorously and definitively, then I think there is 
> hope for the world."
>
> It would be pretty hard to come up with acknowledged experts on moral 
> consensus, since there actually is no moral consensus. This is one of 
> the realities of modern life that religionists lament publicly about 
> the most often. They claim they take their moral guidance from 
> religious texts as "God's Law" because the rest of the world is 
> falling apart because of the lack of moral agreement.....
>
>

You're not familiar with what we're doing with the expert consensus 
survey system being developed at canonizer.com are you.  The system is 
being designed to do just that,  rigorously survey for moral expert and 
scientific consensus in a completely unbiased way.  We let everyone 
determine who they want the experts to be.  Anyone can select (or 
request, soon configure their own) a 'canonizer' algorithm that selects 
the experts any way they want to.

The only problem is getting over the chicken and egg problem, so more 
experts start participating, making things more comprehensive.

We're first focusing on one field as a  proof of concept, which is 
probably one of the most  controversial fields of science out there: The 
theoretical field of the subjective mind.  We're calling this the 
consciousness survey project (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/105 )  
leading experts like Lehar, Hameroff, Chalmers and many others are now 
participating. (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/81 )

Just like you're assuming there is no moral consensus, most people think 
there is no scientific consensus in this field either.  But this 
consensus building system is now building enough comprehensive survey / 
consensus data from enough experts such that it is getting ever more 
difficult to doubt how  much scientific consensus there is  surrounding 
what the experts just recently unanimously decided to call 
"Representational Qualia Theory" (see: 
http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ).  More than half of all experts 
are in this qualophile camp.  No other theory has any supporters, in 
comparison, than one or two individuals.

It appears the only remaining controversy is just what qualia are.  (The 
leading general sub camp theories being Chalmers' most popular 
"Functional Property Dualism" camp, and if you change from the popular 
canonizer algorithm to the "Mind Exert" algorithm, the "Material 
Property Dualism" takes over the lead with the most scientific 
consensus.)  In my opinion, the expert consensus camp is far better than 
the popular consensus camp, which I didn't expect at all when we started 
this project.  Nor did we have any idea there was this much consensus 
for any one theory.

There are lots of topics on moral issues already, and it's only a matter 
of time before we can definitively show everyone what the expert 
consensus agrees is morally right, or just how much diversity of opinion 
there still is on a good many critical things....

I'm in the camp that believes, once we achieve this, rational people 
will finally be able to take away all the immoral power all the bastard 
selfish hierarchical leaders of today's religions are destroying us 
with.  Our morality will finally get out of the primitive dark ages, and 
start accelerating upward as fast as our technology.

 >>>> Call me pessimistic. I'm used to it.

You immoral bastard pessimist, I bet the real experts agree, for good 
reasons, there is always room for lots of hope if we'd just start 
rigorously measuring for such. ;)

Upward,

Brent Allsop