For testing religions for truth. For following a religious path at all. I was just listing some benefits of this.

Do you think people who think more in images than in words are more prone to anxiety, worse attention, but on the other hand, more open to visions and revolutionary ideas? What helps you? For me, it's writing a journal. Tell me what is your voice — MorningStar

Very interesting. As someone who has struggled with anxiety, I would say that whether or not they are more open to visions or revolutionary ideas, they are more likely to conform anyway. I think it is also likely that if people who think more in images (I do both equally) are more prone to anxiety, it’s probably just because their actual thinking contains more terrifying outcomes (as more possible with thinking in images) and so they are more anxious.
I don’t really know though.

but why not select bits and pieces in one's pursuit of truth. — ENOAH

This is an excellent point. I guess the idea here would be to find truths that fit you, not a particular religion?

Religion is like opium. People take it to keep from curling up in a ball on the floor in the face of adversity like the death of a child. The main threat to religion is good healthcare. So if you look out and find people living with little to no safety net, more religion is on the way. — frank

While I agree that this is largely true, stating this is also largely irrelevant to the post because, obviously, if you are convinced religion is just a coping mechanism, the most logical path would be to ignore it, and find other ways to get truth.

However, there are exceptions to this. I believe that even if most religions are baseless and untrue, they have truths in them, if only useful social constructs, or general wisdom. Even the value of a religious community could be an incentive. You could even use it as a lesson in psychology.

Long-lived religious traditions are perhaps the most pronounced form of collective wisdom available to humans — Leontiskos

Very well stated. This seems to align well with most of the points stated in this discussion.

Modern affairs and lived experience are telling me that people are broadly still sheep that need herding. — Lionino

Ok

I like these standards.

The practice is the point, really. The truth is just there to give a basis for the practice. That's why Bhuddhism, Stoicism, etc. all figure in this discussion. — Ludwig V

I agree. This is definitely a lot of the purpose of religion. Most of the “truth” you get is about how to act anyways. The concepts lead to actions, which supposedly lead to some result. Thank you for the clarifications.

. I suspect you'll come to find, e.g., that the ideal Christian is quite different from the ideal Jew and that different religions contain different visions for humanity. — BitconnectCarlos

This is likely true. Maybe the best path is to merge the most valuable ideals. Don’t confine yourself to one set of concepts.

But it also seems to me that we might also find that certain traits of human character might find recognizably similar expression in each religion - or at least those that are big enough to have internal divisions or sects. The most obvious example is fundamentalism, which seems to me to be instantly recognizable in all the major religions — Ludwig V

Exactly.
Thank you all for your thoughts.

Does it matter what the primary function of religious thinking is? For this thought experiment we assume that the subject is intelligent and not subject to such things, (to keep it simple).

So essentially you are saying that even if a state is not democratic, the people living in it are likely advantaged if there is a nearby democratic state, simply due to the necessity of the government to please its citizens in order to avoid revolution?

Instead of a religion, ask if God matters. If we assume God matters, and/or assume we matter to God, then instead of seeking a religion, you seek a saint, or a wise, mystic sage, one who lives a religion. If you find God in that saint, then you might look to the religion that saint practices, and see if you see for yourself why that religion can be lived by that saint, and why that religion might help you become a saint yourself. — Fire Ologist

This is a good idea, I think. It does have a few issues, though. One is that a lot of belief in religions comes from personal experiences, and it might be too easy to write off someone’s religion as ridiculous if you don’t try it first.
Also, it would be inefficient to see multiple people for each (and you might have to do that, as otherwise you would get the wrong impression from someone).

That basically excludes Buddhism, which is not predicated on there being a God. It might be better phrased ‘if there is a higher truth’ or something along those lines — Wayfarer

Thank you so much. This is what I meant, as this is applicable to Buddhism and religions like it as well. Actually, it might be even more applicable to these as they aren’t so burdened by specific stories and rules, and therefore are more likely to have visible truth behind the theological nonsense that plagues every popular religion.

This is likely true to a large extent. I assume for the purposes of this post that there is truth to be found and that the person is willing to find it.

I figure that religion is valuable even if it’s all nonsense because of the values it teaches and the communities of people that follow the values. Surely this must have some value.

You seem to hold to a fairly conventional idea of a god. A single god? Why not 2 or 16? A god who is anthropomorphic and pays attention to us and has 'correct concepts'? Why not an indifferent god such as the one of deism? Why not a cosmic consciousness version of theism, such as held by William James?

What reason do you have for believing in your particular account of god? — Tom Storm

Forgive me for my specific interpretation. I don’t think my view on this (or, if there is a God, the truth of it) actually matters to the post, but I’m willing to share my justification.
Honestly, I just defaulted to a monotheistic human-like God concept because that is the God I believe in, but I agree that an open mind is important when discussing this.

It's simply not practical to think of trying out all the sects of Christianity or any of the others — Ludwig V

This seems like the most important thing to respond to, the idea that it is unreasonable to try out so many sects of religions. I completely agree, and that’s why a main idea of the post is that you would try out the most popular variations, and only dig deeper if you find truth. I assume it doesn’t matter which particular sect, only about particular values or teachings, which is why I suggest a diverse set of religions likely to contain truths.

The most logical path to religion, or God, or the spirits, or whatever mystical thing you're seeking, is a wide berth around churches. Those vast piles of wasted stone, timber and human effort do not contain a deity or a soul. Walk in the woods on a May morning or an orchard in September twilight or across a meadow on a hot, still July afternoon, then rest in the shade of a viburnum. If you're ever going to have a spiritual experience and find some kind of truth, that's where you'll find it. — Vera Mont

Maybe. I guess I would respond to this by saying that this would just be another experiment. Assuming you care about religious truth, values, or community, you would probably also attempt to practice religions (which likely brings to you back to nature anyways).

Thank you guys for your thoughts. It’s a lot to think about.

The comparison to animals is hard to make since we can't prove that they do or do not worship anything. (And if they did, it would be in such a different way than us that we wouldn't even realize it was worship.) This is despite the low probability that animals do worship.

The human urge to explain things with ideas such as a creator could also not have a causal relationship with our sapience. A believer might argue that if there is a creator, people will come up with ideas about a "God", given the anomalies actually caused by one. The human drive to explain things could be unrelated, or contribute a smaller amount to the relevance to the creator concept.

Both believers and non-believers seem to be able to agree that part of what drives religion and the creator concept is this human urge to explain things, whether or not it relates to our uniqueness as a species or our spiritual distinctiveness (the first, however, is more universal, and therefore more prevalent).

As to what a justification is, it's simply a reason given as to why an action performed was right or reasonable from the point of view of the person being justified. It is also sometimes an explanation of a way that it would be permissible from their point of view, implying the true justification but not stating it, usually due to not wanting to state an unprovable claim. The word is sometimes used in other contexts, but this is the most common.

We generally decide that a justification is valid if (provided the above assumption) it makes whatever action morally permissible from the person's point of view, making them justified.

However, due to the nature of many justifications, there is also an element of credibility to this (evidence, reliability, and how realistic the justification is are all factors in its credibility). For example, even if it is true, we might not believe that a man thought that his cat was a bird (and therefore had no problem dropping it off a staircase), but it might be true.
The better justification in this case, though, would be the mental illness the man likely possesses.

Even despite the inefficiencies of charitable organizations (and possible scams), these "immoral" actions are permissible for a few reasons.

1. Greed exists, therefore not everyone would choose this lifestyle. (And many/most people don't feel a moral obligation strong enough actually to do it, even if they are good people.)
2. Even if everyone did, that would likely cause a worse problem as economies no longer function and no one would have valuable money to give.
3. What do you define as necessary? Is the claim that anything you purchase that does not save a life is immoral? Then you could never improve lives, and society would get nowhere, as no money is being spent on actually making progress or consuming things.

If you follow this, you end up in a society where no one has possessions, and everything is shared equally. Unfortunately, without perfect individuals, this doesn't work out because the amount of labor being done in such a society is so much less than in a consumer-based society that less is given out and the lives of people living in it are negatively affected.

Because of the result of this philosophy taken to the extreme, it is concluded that the most reasonable way to save and improve more lives is for those with more unneeded resources to donate because they have less of an effect on the economy by donating a certain sum than the average person. (For example, with $100 less, someone who has fewer resources might buy less, but a rich person is unlikely to, missing the same amount of money.)

This doesn't work perfectly though, especially since oftentimes those with large amounts of money are also the people least likely to donate, all else being equal (including resources, the variable I talk about is their psychology). This is the benefit of having non-consumer organizations such as churches or non-profits that not only donate and improve general well-being by themselves but also provide a way for people to promote these causes.

Person A cannot be the person who always lies. — Michael

I think this is what was trying to say. That A is lying, but doesn’t always lie (because B always lies). A only sometimes lies, and has the capacity to tell the truth.

If the statement that B sometimes tells the truth could also mean that they always tell the truth (sometimes be a subset of always) then there are multiple solutions.
Otherwise, B cannot only tell the truth sometimes because that would make both A and C liars. This makes B the liar, because they stated that they sometimes told the truth.

Therefore, A must sometimes tell the truth but isn’t in this situation, because A cannot be the truth teller, having lied. This makes C the truth teller.

A=can both lie and tell the truth
B=liar
C=truth teller

At what point do you declare my predictive powers eliminate your free will? How many trials must there be and would a single variance re-establish my free will? — Hanover

This is a good point. An infinite amount would not limit free will. Free will is only limited if the person does not have complete control over the choices they can make.

If I accurately predict the outcome of 50 coin tosses, does that necessarilymake the coin toss outcomes not random? — Hanover

And to this point, they would still be random. What does finding out the outcome earlier have to do with the randomness of the trial?

A few issues with this.
One, if an app such as the oracle were to exist, it would only show possibilities in which the thwarted cannot thwart the future, so it may actually work in that case. Obviously, this is impossible if the thwarted is effective, so the thwarter would just not do anything because the oracle could never show a possibility.

While both working is a paradox and a result of impossible apps, I would still ask, how does the oracle conclude the thwarter has free will? There is a distinction between sentient individuals and programmed applications, even if both are able to respond and make decisions. The thwarter does not have free will because its choices are limited. It can only choose to respond in a set of ways, there are some things it cannot choose to do, unlike a sentient entity, which can essentially choose to do anything.

Does anyone? — Vera Mont

Good point.

The evidence is so overwhelmingly on the side of freedom of will (it is the basis of all law, qua responsibility for actions, which is the foundation of civilization) that the burden of proof is certainly on the side of the unfree.... — Pantagruel

I tend to agree with this. The determinism argument is significantly less useful as a concept actually utilized than the idea that everyone has agency.

Conversely, you can prove the existence of free will by proving that it is impossible to construct such app. Hence, the existence of free will is a mathematical problem. It is effectively about an incompleteness proof. — Tarskian

That is exactly what I would say, but not for that reason. I agree with this point completely, and since I have mentioned the difficulties of defining free will, I will define a lack of free will instead.

In my mind, a lack of free will would look like having that app, and knowing those things, you are incapable of changing the outcome. So, the app is not a factor, because you are not able to respond to it. I would argue that a lack of free will means not that your choices are essentially determined by outside factors (which is arguably inevitable whether or not free will exists) but actually the opposite, the inability to respond to or make different choices when new information (or anything that should influence you) is revealed.

So, yes, this app's existence would mean a lack of free will, because if the app existed it would cause a continuous change in the future (meaning it would be impossible to show only one outcome because the outcome displayed would change the real future once someone sees it) assuming that there is free will. Without free will, you would see the outcome and be powerless to stop it, making the same choices you would have made without seeing it.

The only other possibility here is that you see the outcome, and are influenced by it to take actions that assure that outcome. This raises a problem, (unless that thing would have been the future anyway) that the app doesn't actually show the future, but instead the only possibility that would happen if it was shown (and it has to be the only one, because if not what would the app show?). Then I would argue that it is the app that has free will, not you (if it chooses what outcome to show).

This is not a contradiction but an expansion of your idea.

I take it you're a compatibilist? — flannel jesus

Maybe a little bit? I sort of believe in causal (or soft or whatever) determinism, but whether everything is causal (which it seems to be) is not actually as significant of a question as the others in the free will discussion.

that their actions are the consequence of things like "physics" happening - things which their will has no control over. — flannel jesus

This idea is interesting to me because if having the ability to react and be influenced (and having your choices be influenced) by stimuli seems to be the only way you could have free will. I understand why some people think that but it seems to be a question of whether you have will, not whether it is free.

My go-to argument for the free will question is this:
Yes, you do have free will.
Also yes, your choices are determined by your brain-state and many factors. How could they not be? To call these your "will" is not completely accurate. I would argue that your will is the power you possess to make choices. Even if everything is deterministic, that doesn't mean you don't have the power to make choices, so you have will. Whether your will is free is another question, one that is more involved in this argument.

I would ask someone who believes you don't have free will "What is stopping your will from being free? What is stopping you from making the choices you want to make? The fact that many factors determine the choice you will end up making?"

If this isn't free will, I don't know what is. What would free will look like then?

If you believe we don't have free will (whether or not everything is predetermined, which is also a scientific question) and can't define what free will is, then what is your argument?

Consider this as spoken to an arbitrary person who believes there is no free will.

As to the idea that God gives purpose, this might be true, but if there is a God then I believe (assuming God gives life purpose) that the purpose (obtained through faith and belief) ends up actually being faith and belief in a number of religions. Personally I choose to believe that life must have multiple purposes/meanings, just as life has much diversity in experiences and possibilities.

I am religious, but don’t actually believe that this means that a eventually just world is determined even if everything happens for a reason.

By my logic, people are different, and a truly benevolent God would have to make different people experience different trials for as many people as possible to be saved. Nowhere in there is a guarantee that everyone will receive the same treatment or rewards. Evidence seems to suggest that people do experience “unfair” situations in this life, and a benevolent God would make sure that all people who meet certain qualifiers (or not, there might be none depending on your religious beliefs) would grant infinite happiness to all (within the power of such a being).

If there is not a benevolent God, the conclusion is the same as you would reach as if there was no higher power. If the universe doesn’t care about you, why would everything be fair?

The only situation I see in which everything ends up being fair is if there is no benevolent God (in which case everyone has different but all overwhelmingly good possible outcomes which are theoretically within their power to reach), but instead a force of karma (this could also be a fairness oriented higher power. This seems less likely to me.

Death is not bad, it’s neutral. What would be bad is either someone dying that has a bad effect on the living, or the way the dead person having experienced some other thing along with dying (pain, regret etc.)

Personally I think atheism is logical but practicing atheism isn’t. Not because it offers the benefits of having believed in a particular religion if they end up being right but because so much of religion is based off of personal experience, so it’s good to try some out just in case you end up converted. (As long as you keep a skeptical but fair view, you shouldn’t need to worry about being tricked.)

As for the argument that it’s just a waste of time because there are so many religions and you will likely never find the right one, you can group them. If there really is a God, probably a lot of different religions would be based (unknowingly) oh the same entity. And if so many religions have truth, does it really matter that much which one you believe in as long as you get the basics right?

Specific religions are only necessary (in my opinion) if you are seeking out truth, but if you just want to be “saved”, categories should do just fine.

Yeah, mostly. There is other stuff in the post, but credence is accurate. Not like the view of one particular unknown probability but how you consider occurrences (where you know the chance) when there are multiple times they could occur or multiple things that could happen.

The idea of connections making up everything (like some sort of code that determines what particles are where) is attractive to me because every particle with mass must be made up of others unless mass is a trait like location and could be coded for by these connections. Otherwise you just infinitely divide particles. It’s not a flawless idea, but seems close to the truth to me.

I do believe in a God, but your point doesn’t hold so much weight because OF COURSE It doesn’t have solar system is unusual. Otherwise, we couldn’t have ended up here. Every solar system that has intelligent life has to be unusual, so what makes ours special?

Maybe it is special, but without these qualities it isn’t, so the same argument could be made of any solar system containing intelligent life.
It’s possible I explained this poorly, so this might be a bit confusing.

Pretty close on what I was trying to say. Think of this as more of an add-on, not a correction. It's better to have individual and perfect knowledge of all the probabilities, but since we often can't (or are too lazy to) we could (and do) group them into categories, based on the result of the occurrence actually happening, and we can also not consider rare things that happen that aren't significant as not truly rare based on the assumption that many other rare things that would have had the same effect could have happened but didn't. This obviously doesn't work for all situations, though.

Sounds familiar, but no. Probably knew at some point. Is Bayesian Probability where you estimate the probability of a hypothesis being true, or am I just mixing things up?

But then again, if higher education were such a fantastic starting point, then why do so many of its graduates end up slinging coffee at Starbucks? The proof is always in the pudding, isn't it? — Tarskian

Maybe true, but it could also be that most people aren’t interested in the jobs that education helps with attaining, and so for the majority it is not that helpful. What would you propose?

There simply is no job where you have to manually compute math results. These students do not learn how to build such software. They also do not learn how to use such software. Instead, they learn how to fail at being themselves the software. — Tarskian

The students aren’t learning how to do math themselves, but how math works. (Which you need to know to know how you increasingly complex science and math work.) While you may need to know how to make software to make a software that does math, you also need to know how to do math, and knowing how to do math is more helpful towards making a software than the other way around.

There are also ways people can learn to make software within public education programs too, they just aren’t ass common (by all means, we should have more though).

That's just another scam. The government spends money on "scientific research". Next, when there is scientific progress somewhere, the government is quick to claim credit for it, and then wants some more money for "scientific research". — Tarskian

There’s scams everywhere. Just because the government wastes money on this doesn’t mean we don’t need scientists to actually make progress.

You cannot make progress inside the system, because that will almost always be shut down. Every innovation is in one way or another a threat to existing interests. That is why all progress is made outside the system — Tarskian

Just because making progress in the system is hard doesn’t mean it doesn’t give students opportunities. I wasn’t talking at all about innovation in the part you responded to.

totally agree
I made the points in the post because I was mostly referring to times when there are an innumerable (not too big, it would just take a lot of effort) amount of occurrences that could lead to the same result. These ideas are meant to cope with that.

No, it doesn't. For example, if you want to figure out how to write a mobile app, no school will ever help you. — Tarskian

I said it was an attempt, not that it was completely successful. Also, teaching someone how to make an app wouldn’t be the same as teaching them how apps work. I wasn’t saying that it teaches general information about everything, that’s obviously not true, but instead that it teaches a set of basics that people think are necessary.

I would say that the only way to get people started in their career is a specialized path for every student. It is possible and it is being done already. — Tarskian

I’m not talking about programs that teach more specialized subjects, but instead specialized paths built into public education systems. Totally agree with this though, just not that some organization could create separate paths for every student in a largeish country.

Not having any starting point at all, is not the solution either. — Tarskian

True. I was mainly talking about public education systems, and how they usually don’t have that many options to fully commit to a certain path because younger students aren’t trusted to make good decisions for themselves. The “starting point” would be higher education.

Baseline generalities do not prepare for anything at all. We already know that. That is why youth unemployment is a reality nowadays. — Tarskian

Maybe. I was mainly saying the baseline education
was necessary for students who wish to go into jobs that have to do with them. Kind of like a way of introducing a lot of jobs that need to be done, but otherwise might not. (Like math related ones.)
Are you saying we need to shift the baseline to something more applicable for the majority of students’ likely future careers, or just get rid of baseline education altogether?

No, current education is pretty much a complete failure. I am surprised that any graduate finds any job at all. — Tarskian

This is very pessimistic. As long as there are experts who were able to make progress because of their education (talking mostly about experimental fields of science here), progressing the species (or fulfilling roles like doctors) the education system has not failed completely. While it’s stir that this doesn’t happen to the majority of people, how else do you propose we teach the people who end up being the ones who play important roles in the success of humans as a species?
They may come up anyway, but this education system probably either helps them learn about such subjects or helps more students to explore possibilities that they might not have without education.

No, because Starbucks et alii do not require it. The cash till can perfectly handle all arithmetic. The cash till is a computer. — Tarskian

Not for the people using the computer, but for the people designing new, better computers, eventually making life better for the average worker by automating more things/making current systems work more efficiently.

Yeah, pretty much. The idea is that there are more unaccounted possibilities in either a category that is similarly rare, has the same effect, or cause the same reaction.

While it is true that most things that are taught to students are completely unnecessary for them to know, schools don’t always attempt to teach a student everything they will ever learn in a particular topic. Education is an attempt to teach students the basics of how things work so that the student can continue in many paths, expanding on their knowledge until they can offer new, helpful insights and be productive members of society.

While math knowledge isn’t important for people who won’t use it, and people who will use it probably still don’t need the knowledge (although it is helpful to have a baseline knowledge in case common tools fail to perform a specific task), it is really for the people making the tools. While most people will not use it, the people that will make a huge impact, and progress as a species depends of some group knowing these things.

You might ask “why teach everyone, then?” It is true that this is inefficient, and if it was feasible to offer students only the education they need, I’m sure we would.

This idea has failed because of two problems.
One: the resources required. You can’t have a specialized path for every student, so you end up grouping students in large groups based on what you think they will end up doing, which we already do, to an extent.
Two: It’s hard to know what a person will do, and you can’t have everyone decide at an early age, when education starts. Therefore, it’s necessary to teach a baseline in many topics and then later allow options for specialized learning.
Current education does this fine.
I’m sure there could be more efficient ways to do this, but there always are.

This is a side topic to the main post, so I’ll summarize the relevant point here: the knowledge of basic math must be taught to make students, to assure that the people who would make advancements in fields that require math have basic knowledge to build upon in order to eventually make contributions.

If we have an infinite amount of time ahead of us, I can assume that there is no need to worry or be scared. If we are condemned to have no power during this period, then we essentially do not exist (I will also respond to that side), and if we have any power, then we would eventually gain more and more, until we are able to do whatever we want, including a release from an infinite existence.

Speculation aside, if we have nothing after this life, it doesn’t matter anyway, and is nothing to be afraid of (since nothing can happen to something that doesn’t exist).

What we should be afraid of is the state of the world after we leave it, and the possibility that our impact is one that leads more people to lives without fulfillment, (since fulfillment in this life is the only thing that matters if there is no life after).

This existence based on the fulfillment of others is particularly altruistic and unnecessary, but it is still possible to reach self-fulfillment while increasing the contentment of others (IN their lives, it of course doesn’t matter what you think of your life after you have lived it if you don’t exist after your death).

I’ll just give my take on the OP instead of the replies because I don’t have the willpower to read them all.

Guidance through such a virtual world might be helpful, and yet there is no trace of anyone 'programming' or 'guiding' us anywhere. — jasonm

This, to me, holds little weight. Such programmers might simply want to see what the subject does without interference. The simulation might just be so good we can’t find any evidence that we are in it.

If it's just a simulation, does it matter if the laws of physics are perfectly consistent? — jasonm

It does, as inconsistencies would be evidence of the simulation that the creators might not want to have. A better question is “Why include inconsistencies?”
There also might be inconsistencies, and we are just too unobservant to realize.

Again, if you are there, leave us with some trace of your existence through 'miracles' and other types of anomalies that our world does not seem to have. — jasonm

Again, assuming the programmers want you to know they are there. That might ruin the simulation, it seems more likely to me that they would not do that.

Also, there are many who say miracles do happen anyway (my position on this not being important to the subject). It’s interesting to consider the simulation argument as an explanation for these occurrences. One might argue that these things are direct intervention by the programmers (or observers, at least), and so they don’t follow the normal rules.

Third: what type of computing power would be required to 'house' this virtual universe? — jasonm

In the real world (hypothetical) computing might work differently, so this isn’t really a main point. And even if the rules are the same (which would likely be because the programmers modeled the universe they created off of their own reality), who’s to say that the entire universe is simulated? It might be just enough to create a believable reality for the subject, which would require significantly less computing power.

Nevertheless, I think the best answer comes from Occam's Razor: "Explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more." — jasonm

The Occam’s Razor argument is, I think, one of the most valuable arguments relating to the simulation question. I would agree that, while possible, the probability of this being a simulation is highly unlikely.

I think it is also true that from anyone's perspective, they are at the center of any hypothetical simulation. (Unless you guys experience something very different.) Pointless to affirm this, of course.

This all begs the question: why make the person in the simulation famous? (assuming the creators have some control). I think it would probably be more useful to put the simulated mind in positions where they make important decisions, but are not necessarily famous, assuming that the creators of a hypothetical simulation want to learn something about the subject.