[ExI] [Extropolis] Religion
Keith Henson
hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Sat Aug 10 16:44:42 UTC 2024
On Sat, Aug 10, 2024 at 2:10 AM efc--- via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 9 Aug 2024, Keith Henson wrote:
>
snip
> > Hmm. I know of an issue perhaps. Cheap/excess renewable energy can
> > be used to heat coal in steam and make low-cost hydrogen. The
> > byproduct CO2 can be sequestered.
>
> Well, if it is revolutionary, possible to commercialize and backed by some
> university, it might be possible. But the green field is very busy and
> many are playing on it.
Not revolutionary, the process was used to make gas in the early days
of the Industrial Revolution. The new part is from using excess
renewable power to heat the coal in steam.
A ton of coal ($20 at the mine mouth) makes .4 tons of hydrogen and
releases no CO2. Is there a market for $50/ton hydrogen?
> > But it would probably not make the kind of splash you could get out of
> > alien structures causing the light dips at Tabby's Star.
>
> If this was confirmed with hard evidence from a big name, I think this
> would be a no-brainer. The challenge though, is to connect it with my
> customers products and services. ;)
You know of the habitable zone around stars. There is also the
computational zone, which is much further out, in the solar system
(low temperature, faster, lower error computation). If you want a lot
of computation, the best place seems to be where the Tabby's Star
aliens apparently put a data center more than 400 times the area of
the Earth. No idea of who this might be sold to.,
> My most recent success was bouncing against Russian IT attacks arguing
> that security needs to be solved in a decentralized fashion, by also
> educating the population.
>
> I actually received a reply from the CEO of a medium sized IT-security
> consulting company who said (publucly) that my article was rubbish, and
> that the problem would be solved by trusting our brightest and the best in
> the form of our elected politicians and CEOs and business leaders.
>
> I always wondered if he had big public consulting contracts. ;)
The trouble is that code is expensive to right but nearly zero to
reproduce. This makes operations like CroudStrike profitable where 30
or 40 companies would not be.
I don't have a solution.
Keith
> > Keith
> >
> >>> Keith
> >>>
> >>>> I wasn't aware of this until I went pretty deeply on the I Ching and the various flavors of it, including a Daoist one. As an aside, I have found the I Ching extremely valuable even as an atheist, and would recommend exploring it to anyone with even a passing curiosity about it.
> >>>>
> >>>> Philip K. Dick was also influenced heavily by it.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2024 at 1:12 PM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Well, I think western philosophy is widely spiritual, it's just not an organized religion, though very many philosophers have been religious.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Daoism had its prophet in Laozi. Confucianism to me is not mystic, it's mostly an oeconomic system with already-extant chinese nature religion attached.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think nature religions are not from prophets but from small mystical experiences that come from a totally different way of thinking. When you're completely immersed in nature, you think with nature. This can happen to anyone experiencing natural glory, but when it is constant, the mysticism piles up
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Aug 8, 2024 at 4:50 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Wed, 7 Aug 2024, Will Steinberg via extropy-chat wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Mysticism is the basis of religion. All religion starts with a ‘prophet’ type who realizes some kind of deep truth about reality or
> >>>>>>> society. This truth is so compelling to people that they continue to listen and they spread the word. I can’t just say that a magic
> >>>>>>> unicorn controls the world by pissing on a magic globe and make a movement—maybe a small cult of idiots. But powerful religions are
> >>>>>>> based on powerful truths. As I mentioned, monotheism had incredible power based on the simple truth “everything looks different but
> >>>>>>> it’s actually all one thing”. Animism before that was based on the simple truth “different natural objects [gods] are different and
> >>>>>>> have consistent patterns/behavior”.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Mysticism I think fits nicely with monotheism due to its "unifying"
> >>>>>> experience. I was thinking about mentioning it, but then I thought, what
> >>>>>> about if we go further back? As you say, spirits, animism etc. Do you
> >>>>>> still think those come from mystic experiences, or from accidents like "I
> >>>>>> pet this rock, and I caught 2 fish today, why is that?".
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I think it is very uncontroversial to say that "modern" religions tend to
> >>>>>> come from mysticism, but what about nature religions? Then you have
> >>>>>> of course the grey areas of Daoism and Confucianism, which to me (but I'm
> >>>>>> definitely not an expert on religion) seem to sit uncomfortably in the
> >>>>>> line between philosophy and religion (daoism). I could accept that
> >>>>>> Confucianism is leaning more towards philosophy, but I think they have
> >>>>>> some kind of ancestor worship, don't they?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 3:46 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> > There are alot of additional directions I could go in as to why early, primitive religions exist in terms of explaining
> >>>>>>> and
> >>>>>>> > controlling your environment (or rather the appearance of control) but I think the crux of my answer is in my argument
> >>>>>>> above.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I agree. My bet would be that the origin is safety/control and
> >>>>>>> explanation. Eventually it led to science, and hence the antagonism
> >>>>>>> between religion and science. Religion feels threatened.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I'd also add that it's a nice tool to control society and
> >>>>>>> ensure a homogeneous culture and cooperation.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> But within the phenomenon of religion, you also have the mystics, which
> >>>>>>> I think started with the above, but found their way to an incredibly
> >>>>>>> strong internal experience, which kind of lessened the need for safety
> >>>>>>> and explanation for them, but they have always been a tiny minority so
> >>>>>>> perhaps not so relevant for the original question.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> > Memento mori.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 7:58 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>> > The interesting question is why do humans have religions at all? I
> >>>>>>> > make a case that it is a side effect of selection for war.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > Religion is a class of mutually exclusive memes. I.e., it is seldom
> >>>>>>> > that a given person has more than one of them, so you don't expect
> >>>>>>> > someone who identifies as a Catholic to also be a Methodist. This
> >>>>>>> > brings you to the interesting conclusion that communism is a religion
> >>>>>>> > since being one makes it unlikely to have any of the common religious
> >>>>>>> > memes.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > This classification does not help with the question of why humans have
> >>>>>>> > (or are infested) with such memes. From how common this is, religious
> >>>>>>> > memes (or something related) must have been important to survival in
> >>>>>>> > the Stone Age.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > Religious memes seem to be descended from xenophobic memes.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > Xenophobic memes are the first step in the path to war. I think
> >>>>>>> > genetic selection for war is the origin of susceptibility to religious
> >>>>>>> > memes.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > Keith
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> > --
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> >>>>>>> > To view this discussion on the web visit
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAPiwVB790bABKY%2BQYyAeQZQyJ4erjK3_B%2BVpdpaoycen3ZX5ZA%40mail.gmail.com.
> >>>>>>> >
> >>>>>>> >
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