[ExI] ai is the easy road

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 18/10/2026 14:03, Keith Henson wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 17, 2026 at 1:41 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
>     Religions, at least organised ones, seem to have arisen after humans started organising into large groups, and served to form a kind of opposing power structure within the earlier structure of tribal leaders - chieftains - kings, etc. I think you could argue that religions were a consequence, rather than a cause, of large groups of  humans.
>
>
> I don;t agree with the first part, but the second may have merit.


That seems to be contradictory.


>  There's also some evidence that reproduction, not religion, was the driving force behind a lot of the large ancient monuments that we usually assume were religious in nature. 
>
> Possible, Though the largest branch of Christianity has a mostly non reproductive priesthood. 


I don't see the relevance.

>
>     Some people think that they were gathering places for people to party and find mates from different tribes. So sites like stonehenge, etc., might not be evidence of pre-civilisational religion at all.
>
> Again, possible. However, there are places where genetic studies of graves indicates that people imported brides from far away, They may have understood the problems of inbreeding.


You seem to be agreeing. So why the "however"? Don't you mean "and"?

-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein