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Lumifer comments on Engineering Religion - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: KevinGrant 07 December 2015 01:34PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 09 December 2015 03:31:53PM 2 points [-]

the purposes served by religions are better served by what other social constructs?

The secular parallel to religion is called an ideology.

What does "better" mean?

Comment author: MrMind 10 December 2015 08:15:33AM -1 points [-]

I guess it depends on the purpose. If I was designing a new religion, I could ask: a religion spreads through such and such mechanism, how we could design a faster spreader?
I'm not pointing at any particular direction, I was just saying that it's a better question than simply analyzing the state of the art, so to speak.

Comment author: Lumifer 10 December 2015 04:27:09PM 1 point [-]

it's a better question than simply analyzing the state of the art

Yes, I agree. But still, the answer very much depends on the specific criterion you're interested in. Social constructs that are extra virulent (spread fast) will be different from social constructs that are, say, extra robust (survive long).