The vast majority of intelligent agents we know (they’re all people), if given a choice between killing everyone while feeling maximum bliss, or not killing everyone and living our regular non maximum bliss lives would choose the latter.
I'm not sure if I understand what makes this assumption so obvious. It seems intractable to actually know, since anyone who would choose the former would have every reason to lie if you asked them. It's also very easy to decieve yourself into thinking you'd do the thing that lets you feel better about yourself when it's ...
I think it's interesting to consider how those trends might correlate with rising numbers of people identifying as non-religious.
Regardless of whether changes in religion caused an increase in depression, I think it's certainly possible that it influenced how people might have felt writing about their life and experience.
Speaking as someone raised in a fundamentally religious setting, there's often a certain kind of guilt ... (read more)