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MugaSofer comments on Ritual Report 2012: Life, Death, Light, Darkness, and Love. - Less Wrong
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You're saying that enabling an extremely common feature of human brains through words, music, aesthetically pleasing stimuli and social interaction is making people less sane? To formalize the argument beyond your horrified shriek and my incredulous stare, what's the problem with religion?
It's a superstimulus, and all superstimuli are dangerous? It might be fair to say it's one - religion existed in the ancestral environment, but modern forms are likely optimized beyond that. But superstimuli are everywhere - chocolate and Photoshopped models and FarmVille. Are you generally this panicked about them, and if so why aren't you a Ludddite?
It strongly reinforces ingroup cohesion. Humans need social bonding, but maybe you're complaining that religion does that too quickly and with too little trust testing? Are you this freaked out about sports, politics, or fandoms? Also note that these are yearly rituals, not regular congregations.
It puts people in a more suggestible state. Like... just about everything, according to priming research. At least not more than belonging to a group which will downvote you and call you stupid on the Internet for unpopular beliefs.
No, it seriously puts people in a more suggestible state - it's better modeled as a drug that as a behavior. Yes, and there's another bonding behavior that delivers a lot of oxytocin and endorphins, namely sex. This is a good reason to avoid sex if you're a secret agent man who might let the wrong word slip, but usually dwarfed by the benefits. As mind-altering behaviors go, meditation is freakier - and it turns out to be healthy.
It has a tradition of being used as a vehicle for stupid ideas and violence. We could just, y'know, not do that, but there are also solutions, like Discordianism, which is designed to be impossible to coherently take seriously enough to be a fanatic.
Name three? Note that aesthetic appreciation is only a subcomponent of religious wonder, and that "holy mackerel this is awesome" is a different type.
You make a convincing argument in favor of banning sex. :P
Yes, but people go funny in the head too if sexually frustrated (also religiously frustrated, but more people are susceptible to the former). You could have anonymous wordless one-night-stands to get some of the benefits of partnered sex without it influencing the rest of your life, but you still get frustration from sexual tension between specific people.
Alternately we could take a leaf from bonobos and replace "hello" and "thanks" with sex. If everyone is permanently hovering between afterglow and indiscriminate horniness, nobody has a relative advantage in manipulating or lovebombing (heh) others.
However, most people's solution to the tradeoff between caution ("don't want to ruin our friendship", "don't stick your dick in crazy", and so on) and getting laid doesn't put all the weight on the former.
I meant more in weirdtopian terms than immediate ones. Love as wireheading and so on. It was mostly sarcastic, anyway.
Even more convincing in favour of celibacy, which indeed has a long pedigree in many traditions of enlightenment.
I actually wrote "in favor of celibacy", but decided it wasn't strong enough. Why should I let everyone else get brainwashed and selfishly save only myself?