Health and Religion

[CoinCube]

Superrationality is not possible because no two brains are the same.

IQ, emotional development, personal experiences, religious or political indoctrination influences one’s thinking process.  You are a prime example.

With the same input, two “rational” individuals will deduce a diametrically different result.

Freethinking is the best you can do to remove the cultural, political and religious influences.

That is why the actors must be superrational and not rational. Brains can be very different but still superrational. Failure to completely understand the perspective and needs of of others does indeed create inefficiency. This can be mitigated by communication or if that is not possible by best estimates and modeling of perspectives.

Your current "rational" perspective places you at risk for suboptimal outcomes trapping you in non-cooperative scenarios that can be avoided.

Let me give you an example to help demonstrate this. It is called the Platonia Dilemma and was shared originally by Douglas Hofstader in Scientific American June 1983.

"One fine day, out of the blue, you get a letter from S. N. Platonia, well-known Oklahoma oil trillionaire, mentioning that twenty leading rational thinkers have been selected to participate in a little game. “You are one of them!” it says. “Each of you has a chance at winning one billion dollars, put up by the Platonia Institute for the Study of Human Irrationality. Here’s how. If you wish, you may send a telegram with just your name on it to the Platonia Institute in downtown Frogville, Oklahoma (pop. 2). You may reverse the charges. If you reply within 48 hours, the billion is yours - unless there are two or more replies, in which case the prize is awarded to no one. And if no one replies, nothing will be awarded to anyone.”

You have no way of knowing who the other nineteen participants are; indeed, in its letter, the Platonia Institute states that the entire offer will be rescinded if it is detected that any attempt whatsoever has been made by any participant to discover the identity of, or to establish contact with, any other participant. Moreover, it is a condition that the winner (if there is one) must agree in writing not to share the prize money with any other participant at any time in the future. This is to squelch any thoughts of cooperation, either before or after the prize is given out."

The prize is real and the award judges honest and unbribable. What is the rational answer to this riddle af_newbie? What would you do? The superrational answer is quite simple and trivial. I saw it instantly and indeed later in the article Hofstader wrote the exact same solution in his article. Can you see it?  

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment...

Yes he did and I am happy for him. You would not understand because you are lost.

Edit: The solution to the Platonia Dilemma is below.

Solution to the Platonia Dilemma:
(By Douglas Hofstadter)

"And what about the Platonia Dilemma? There, two things are very clear: (1) if you decide not to send a telegram, your chances of winning are zero; (2) if everyone sends a telegram, your chances of winning are zero. If you believe that what you choose will be the same as what everyone else chooses because you are all superrational, then neither of these alternatives is very appealing. With dice, however, a new option presents itself to roll a die with probability p of coming up “good” and then to send in your name if and only if “good” comes up.

Now imagine twenty people all doing this, and figure out what value of p maximizes the likelihood of exactly one person getting the go-ahead. It turns out that it is p=120, or more generally, p=1N where N is the number of participants. In the limit where N approaches infinity, the chance that exactly one person will get the go-ahead is 1e, which is just under 37%. With twenty superrational players all throwing icosahedral dice, the chance that you will come up the big winner is very close to 120e, which is a little below 2%. That’s not at all bad! Certainly it’s a lot better than 0%.

The objection many people raise is: “What if my roll comes up bad? Then why shouldn’t I send in my name anyway? After all, if I fail to, I’ll have no chance whatsoever of winning. I’m no better off than if I had never rolled my die and had just voluntarily withdrawn!” This objection seems overwhelming at first, but actually it is fallacious, being based on a misrepresentation of the meaning of “making a decision”. A genuine decision to abide by the throw of a die means that you really must abide by the throw of the die; if under certain circumstances you ignore the die and do something else, then you never made the decision you claimed to have made. Your decision is revealed by your actions, not by your words before acting!"

If you came up with this solution and would genuinely do it in this situation you are to some degree a superrational thinker.

[BADecker]

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment, we choose what to believe? No shit, does that mean its true tho? Meh same ol philosophical pile of shit with 0 real evidence about anything.

Your stupidity is actually embarrassing. Everybody lives by faith, because nobody knows for a fact that something bad won't happen the next minute. We might have good guestimations. We might even have some good estimations on occasion. But we don't know. We all live by faith, but people like you don't even know what it is that we have faith in.

[af_newbie]

Superrationality is not possible because no two brains are the same.

IQ, emotional development, personal experiences, religious or political indoctrination influences one’s thinking process.  You are a prime example.

With the same input, two “rational” individuals will deduce a diametrically different result.

Freethinking is the best you can do to remove the cultural, political and religious influences.

That is why the actors must be superrational and not rational. Brains can be very different but still superrational. Failure to completely understand the perspective and needs of of others does indeed create inefficiency. This can be mitigated by communication or if that is not possible by best estimates and modeling of perspectives.

Your current "rational" perspective places you at risk for suboptimal outcomes trapping you in non-cooperative scenarios that can be avoided.

Let me give you an example to help demonstrate this. It is called the Platonia Dilemma and was shared originally by Douglas Hofstader in Scientific American June 1983.

"One fine day, out of the blue, you get a letter from S. N. Platonia, well-known Oklahoma oil trillionaire, mentioning that twenty leading rational thinkers have been selected to participate in a little game. “You are one of them!” it says. “Each of you has a chance at winning one billion dollars, put up by the Platonia Institute for the Study of Human Irrationality. Here’s how. If you wish, you may send a telegram with just your name on it to the Platonia Institute in downtown Frogville, Oklahoma (pop. 2). You may reverse the charges. If you reply within 48 hours, the billion is yours - unless there are two or more replies, in which case the prize is awarded to no one. And if no one replies, nothing will be awarded to anyone.”

You have no way of knowing who the other nineteen participants are; indeed, in its letter, the Platonia Institute states that the entire offer will be rescinded if it is detected that any attempt whatsoever has been made by any participant to discover the identity of, or to establish contact with, any other participant. Moreover, it is a condition that the winner (if there is one) must agree in writing not to share the prize money with any other participant at any time in the future. This is to squelch any thoughts of cooperation, either before or after the prize is given out."

The prize is real and the award judges honest and unbribable. What is the rational answer to this riddle af_newbie? What would you do? The superrational answer is quite simple and trivial. I saw it instantly and indeed later in the article Hofstader wrote the exact same solution in his article. Can you see it?  

I posted the superrational solution here: Solution to the Platonia Dilemma

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment...

Yes he did and I am happy for him. You would not understand because you are lost.

I would ignore the letter just like I ignore all the Nigerian lottery emails.

Nobody gives that kind of money. You have to be super gullible not superrational to participate in such a game.

[CoinCube]

I would ignore the letter just like I ignore all the Nigerian lottery emails.

Nobody gives that kind of money. You have to be super gullible not superrational to participate in such a game.

Assume you know with certainty the contest is real the money and giveaway are real and the terms of the contest will be honored. Its been in the news and the judges are third parties. Furthermore the letter can be verified to have come from the contest.

Obviously, no one would respond to a Nigerian lottery email that is not the point of this exercise.  

[af_newbie]

I would ignore the letter just like I ignore all the Nigerian lottery emails.

Nobody gives that kind of money. You have to be super gullible not superrational to participate in such a game.

Assume you know with certainty the contest is real the money and giveaway are real and the terms of the contest will be honored. Its been in the news and the judges are third parties. Furthermore the letter can be verified to have come from the contest.

Obviously, no one would respond to a Nigerian lottery email that is not the point of this exercise.  

Even under these conditions, you have very slim chances of winning.

I would assume more than 5% of people are greedy, even among rational thinkers there will greedy a-holes who would act against their rational thinking, and send the telegraph with their name.

Waste of time either way.  You don’t enter, you lose.  You enter, you almost certainly lose as there will more than one person who sent the telegraph.

Like I said, a waste of my time.

Even in the most communist societies you will find that more than 5% of the population is greedy and would take free stuff without hesitation.

If you send these letters to the very top one percenters, you might change the odds, but with the general population there is no way to win this game, so why bother playing.

[CoinCube]

Even under these conditions, you have very slim chances of winning.

I would assume more than 5% of people are greedy, even among rational thinkers there will greedy a-holes who would act against their rational thinking, and send the telegraph with their name.

Waste of time either way.  You don’t enter, you lose.  You enter, you almost certainly lose as there will more than one person who sent the telegraph.

Like I said, a waste of my time.

Even in the most communist societies you will find that more than 5% of the population is greedy and would take free stuff without hesitation.

If you send these letters to the very top one percenters, you might change the odds, but with the general population there is no way to win this game, so why bother playing.

Indeed your are correct no one will win the contest. But that is not because the game cannot be won but because rational action alone is insufficient to win it. Human beings have great difficulty with superrationality. We need to be selfless which is not something humans are very good at.

It is rational to always try and claim the prize. The cost is near zero and the potential reward very large. You need to be something better then rational to win this particular game. Indeed in the long run for games of this nature everyone must be superrational if you want to win. As you said playing the game with traditional rational actors make cooperation impossible. You can't win.

So how do we make someone superrational where there is always short term profits from defection. The only way I am aware of is to truly and totally ground oneself in the infinite. Anonymint stated it well which is why I quoted his comments on the matter.

We can instead choose to believe in superrational God that loves us and emulate that ideal, thus applying superrational sacrifice to our motivation and decisions. IOW, that everything is motivated by what is best for the other person, not for ourselves. In that case, there are no Prisoner’s dilemmas. The key is recognizing that only selflessness is compatible with unconditional love. And that the choice of a belief (and love) in the unfalsifiable God is a choice that one makes because our existence is but an illusion of our choice in the multiverse. Consciousness is but what we choose it to be. Nihilism will illogically reject this as unfounded, and instead choose no foundation at all, no purpose, no life. Love in the form of selflessness is the only form of life. That is what Jesus came to exemplify. All those who claim that such unfounded belief makes people vulnerable to insane collective actions (e.g. the Inquisition) fail to understand that was a reversion from unconditional love to animalism, Nihilism and Prisoner’s dilemmas, i.e. that was not true Christianity.

Superrationality itself is just a formalization of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. The categorical imperative is in turn is a valiant but incomplete attempt to codify much older wisdom into a logical framework. Matthew 7:12 "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Easy to say very difficult to live by. See: Superrationality and the Infinite for more.
  
You want to win the game you have to change and not just yourself but eventually everyone because winning requires everyone playing to be better then simple rational actors.

[Astargath]

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment, we choose what to believe? No shit, does that mean its true tho? Meh same ol philosophical pile of shit with 0 real evidence about anything.

Your stupidity is actually embarrassing. Everybody lives by faith, because nobody knows for a fact that something bad won't happen the next minute. We might have good guestimations. We might even have some good estimations on occasion. But we don't know. We all live by faith, but people like you don't even know what it is that we have faith in.

Rofl you just proved my point, as you said we might have guestimations and what not but we don't know which is exactly my point, faith does not lead to the truth and you just agreed with me lol.

[af_newbie]

Even under these conditions, you have very slim chances of winning.

I would assume more than 5% of people are greedy, even among rational thinkers there will greedy a-holes who would act against their rational thinking, and send the telegraph with their name.

Waste of time either way.  You don’t enter, you lose.  You enter, you almost certainly lose as there will more than one person who sent the telegraph.

Like I said, a waste of my time.

Even in the most communist societies you will find that more than 5% of the population is greedy and would take free stuff without hesitation.

If you send these letters to the very top one percenters, you might change the odds, but with the general population there is no way to win this game, so why bother playing.

Indeed your are correct no one will win the contest. But that is not because the game cannot be won but because rational action alone is insufficient to win it. Human beings have great difficulty with superrationality. We need to be selfless which is not something humans are very good at.

It is rational to always try and claim the prize. The cost is near zero and the potential reward very large. You need to be something better then rational to win this particular game. Indeed in the long run for games of this nature everyone must be superrational if you want to win. As you said playing the game with traditional rational actors make cooperation impossible. You can't win.

So how do we make someone superrational where there is always short term profits from defection. The only way I am aware of is to truly and totally ground oneself in the infinite. Anonymint stated it well which is why I quoted his comments on the matter.

We can instead choose to believe in superrational God that loves us and emulate that ideal, thus applying superrational sacrifice to our motivation and decisions. IOW, that everything is motivated by what is best for the other person, not for ourselves. In that case, there are no Prisoner’s dilemmas. The key is recognizing that only selflessness is compatible with unconditional love. And that the choice of a belief (and love) in the unfalsifiable God is a choice that one makes because our existence is but an illusion of our choice in the multiverse. Consciousness is but what we choose it to be. Nihilism will illogically reject this as unfounded, and instead choose no foundation at all, no purpose, no life. Love in the form of selflessness is the only form of life. That is what Jesus came to exemplify. All those who claim that such unfounded belief makes people vulnerable to insane collective actions (e.g. the Inquisition) fail to understand that was a reversion from unconditional love to animalism, Nihilism and Prisoner’s dilemmas, i.e. that was not true Christianity.

Superrationality itself is just a formalization of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. The categorical imperative is in turn is a valiant but incomplete attempt to codify much older wisdom into a logical framework. Matthew 7:12 "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Easy to say very difficult to live by. See: Superrationality and the Infinite for more.
  
You want to win the game you have to change and not just yourself but eventually everyone because winning requires everyone playing to be better then simple rational actors.

You don’t need external God to be a good person.

Learn biology, human psychology, do not cause harm to sentient life, eventually you will become selfless.

[CoinCube]

You don’t need external God to be a good person.

Learn biology, human psychology, do not cause harm to sentient life, eventually you will become selfless.

A selfless individual will choose the winning solution to the Platonia delemma.
Will your “good person”? The more selfless the population the greater the potential payoff for a cheat.

This is especially true as the potential rewards for cheating climb.

You assume that if we learn biology, human psychology, and try not to cause harm to sentient life, we will become selfless. The latter does not follow from the former. To be truly selfless we must ground our identity in something other then ourselves or our posterity. We must live for something other then ourselves. The broader that choice of purpose is the better. God is the broadest possible choice and the only one that allows for the formation of true selflessness.

I do not expect us to see eye to eye on this issue. However, once you understand this point you understand why acceptance and faith in God is more important to salvation then prior sins and good deeds.

[af_newbie]

You don’t need external God to be a good person.

Learn biology, human psychology, do not cause harm to sentient life, eventually you will become selfless.

A selfless individual will choose the winning solution to the Platonia delemma.
Will your “good person” The more selfless the population the greater the potential payoff for a cheat.

This is especially true as the potential rewards for cheating climb.

You assume that if we learn biology, human psychology, and try not to cause harm to sentient life, we will become selflessness. The latter does not follow from the former. To be truly selfless we must ground our identity in something other then ourselves or our posterity. We must live for something other then ourselves. The broader that choice of purpose is the better. God is the broadest possible choice and the only one that allows for the formation of true selfishness.

I do not expect us to see eye to eye on this issue. However, once you understand this point you understand why acceptance and faith in God is more important to salvation then prior sins and good deeds.

Being selfless means you care more about others than yourself. The change can only come from within. Study Eastern philosophies, learn more about human animals.

I am afraid your Bronze Age, psychopathic maniac will not help you to achieve any form of enlightenment.

[CoinCube]

Being selfless means you care more about others than yourself. The change can only come from within. Study Eastern philosophies, learn more about human animals.

I am afraid your Bronze Age, psychopathic maniac will not help you to achieve any form of enlightenment.

I agree that change can only come from within.
We clearly disagree about God.

Have a nice afternoon af_newbie

[TheCoinGrabber]

I think one reason the irreligious have less children is they don't want to risk having children that they'd later find out they can't raise, especially since they don't believe there is a god to help them through it all. They are also more likely to be pro-abortion and birth control.

With regards to "overall" health, I think it boils down to the social network. Religion provide an extra set of network in addition to friends made from school, work, etc. There's more people to hold you accountable when you say stuff like "I'm gonna quit smoking". Also some religions have dietary restrictions (for example banning alcohol or coffee) and some traditionally have fasting periods (Ramadan, Lent, "vegan Fridays") whose effects might add up in the long run.

[angel55]

Being selfless means you care more about others than yourself. The change can only come from within. Study Eastern philosophies, learn more about human animals.

I am afraid your Bronze Age, psychopathic maniac will not help you to achieve any form of enlightenment.

I agree that change can only come from within.
We clearly disagree about God.

Have a nice afternoon af_newbie

But is there really such thing as a selfless act because you are helping others to feel better about yourself?  So isn't it ultimately about yourself.

[CoinCube]

But is there really such thing as a selfless act because you are helping others to feel better about yourself?  So isn't it ultimately about yourself.

Motivation matters.

Helping others to feel better about yourself is indeed not a selfless act.
Helping others because they are fellow children of God and that is just what you do is.

[CoinCube]

I think one reason the irreligious have less children is they don't want to risk having children that they'd later find out they can't raise, especially since they don't believe there is a god to help them through it all. They are also more likely to be pro-abortion and birth control.

With regards to "overall" health, I think it boils down to the social network. Religion provide an extra set of network in addition to friends made from school, work, etc. There's more people to hold you accountable when you say stuff like "I'm gonna quit smoking". Also some religions have dietary restrictions (for example banning alcohol or coffee) and some traditionally have fasting periods (Ramadan, Lent, "vegan Fridays") whose effects might add up in the long run.

All correct points but I would suggest that you need to go beyond this analysis and look into what is it about the social network that promotes health. Clearly their can be unhealthy social networks that make their participants worse off. It depends on what the purpose and ultimate function of the network is.

Networks that promote cooperation towards a positive end are best. Networks the maximize cooperation and minimize defection are best.  

So what organizing frameworks achieves these goals? I have my own views on the matter as i have highlighted immediately above.

[BADecker]

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment, we choose what to believe? No shit, does that mean its true tho? Meh same ol philosophical pile of shit with 0 real evidence about anything.

Your stupidity is actually embarrassing. Everybody lives by faith, because nobody knows for a fact that something bad won't happen the next minute. We might have good guestimations. We might even have some good estimations on occasion. But we don't know. We all live by faith, but people like you don't even know what it is that we have faith in.

Rofl you just proved my point, as you said we might have guestimations and what not but we don't know which is exactly my point, faith does not lead to the truth and you just agreed with me lol.

I went way farther with your point than you said. The point of my point was to show you that everything that you suggested is the standard way that life works, not something that is unique to anybody or any group. You and I live by faith all the time. The difference is that I know wherein my faith is placed. Yours has a lot of holes in it, showing not that you don't have faith. But that you don't know the source of your own faith.

[Astargath]

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment, we choose what to believe? No shit, does that mean its true tho? Meh same ol philosophical pile of shit with 0 real evidence about anything.

Your stupidity is actually embarrassing. Everybody lives by faith, because nobody knows for a fact that something bad won't happen the next minute. We might have good guestimations. We might even have some good estimations on occasion. But we don't know. We all live by faith, but people like you don't even know what it is that we have faith in.

Rofl you just proved my point, as you said we might have guestimations and what not but we don't know which is exactly my point, faith does not lead to the truth and you just agreed with me lol.

I went way farther with your point than you said. The point of my point was to show you that everything that you suggested is the standard way that life works, not something that is unique to anybody or any group. You and I live by faith all the time. The difference is that I know wherein my faith is placed. Yours has a lot of holes in it, showing not that you don't have faith. But that you don't know the source of your own faith.

Knowing where your faith is doesn't make it real. You place your faith in the bible and others in other religions, again, faith is not discovering the truth, which is what really matters.

[BADecker]

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment, we choose what to believe? No shit, does that mean its true tho? Meh same ol philosophical pile of shit with 0 real evidence about anything.

Your stupidity is actually embarrassing. Everybody lives by faith, because nobody knows for a fact that something bad won't happen the next minute. We might have good guestimations. We might even have some good estimations on occasion. But we don't know. We all live by faith, but people like you don't even know what it is that we have faith in.

Rofl you just proved my point, as you said we might have guestimations and what not but we don't know which is exactly my point, faith does not lead to the truth and you just agreed with me lol.

I went way farther with your point than you said. The point of my point was to show you that everything that you suggested is the standard way that life works, not something that is unique to anybody or any group. You and I live by faith all the time. The difference is that I know wherein my faith is placed. Yours has a lot of holes in it, showing not that you don't have faith. But that you don't know the source of your own faith.

Knowing where your faith is doesn't make it real. You place your faith in the bible and others in other religions, again, faith is not discovering the truth, which is what really matters.

That's what I have been trying to tell you. Faith in God is the thing that shows truth that is most important. Faith is science shows some truth, but there is a whole lot of falsehood in science... like, science theory... like, Big Bang and Evolution Theories.

[Astargath]

I actually expected something nice, instead its the same bullshit, essentially he found out what, faith? Lol, how the fuck is that an eureka moment, we choose what to believe? No shit, does that mean its true tho? Meh same ol philosophical pile of shit with 0 real evidence about anything.

Your stupidity is actually embarrassing. Everybody lives by faith, because nobody knows for a fact that something bad won't happen the next minute. We might have good guestimations. We might even have some good estimations on occasion. But we don't know. We all live by faith, but people like you don't even know what it is that we have faith in.

Rofl you just proved my point, as you said we might have guestimations and what not but we don't know which is exactly my point, faith does not lead to the truth and you just agreed with me lol.

I went way farther with your point than you said. The point of my point was to show you that everything that you suggested is the standard way that life works, not something that is unique to anybody or any group. You and I live by faith all the time. The difference is that I know wherein my faith is placed. Yours has a lot of holes in it, showing not that you don't have faith. But that you don't know the source of your own faith.

Knowing where your faith is doesn't make it real. You place your faith in the bible and others in other religions, again, faith is not discovering the truth, which is what really matters.

That's what I have been trying to tell you. Faith in God is the thing that shows truth that is most important. Faith is science shows some truth, but there is a whole lot of falsehood in science... like, science theory... like, Big Bang and Evolution Theories.

Some falsehood is far better than 100% invented stuff, dont you think?

[BADecker]

Some falsehood is far better than 100% invented stuff, dont you think?

All you are saying is falsehood and 100% falsehood. Religion is simply the thing that people do to comfort themselves because the future is scary otherwise. Science is the thing that people do to change their future. Science theory is the thing that people believe in when they can't find the answers in science.

In other words, science theory believed in is religion. Religion without science theory covers far more aspects of life, and is way more reliable.