Lara_Foster comments on Anthropomorphic Optimism - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2008 08:17PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (51)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Lara_Foster 05 August 2008 12:00:28AM 1 point [-]

All of this reminds me of something I read in Robert Sapolski's book "Monkey Luv" (a really fluffy pop-sci book about baboon society, though Sapolski himself in person is quite amazing), about how human populations under different living conditions had almost predictable (at least in hindsight)explicative religions. People living in rainforests with many different creatures struggling at cross-purposes to survive developed polytheistic religions in which gods routinely fought and destroyed each other for their own goals. Desert dwellers (semites) saw only one great expanse of land, one horizon, one sky, one ecosystem, and so invented monotheism.

I wonder what god(s) we 21st century American rationalists will invent...