Nexilist Notebook

Archive for October, 2007

Religious types

31st October 2007

I’ve had a long term interest in religion and it is certainly a topic of widespread concern today. A lot of people talk casually about ‘religious people” as if all the different sorts of people who practice one of the world’s many religions could be easily placed in one category with a single set of defining elements. In the interest of broadening the discussion, I would like to talk about at least several different identifiable types of religious people.

1)       The intrinsically religious

There are a lot of people who sincerely believe the precepts of their religion and are comfortable about trying to apply those principles in their daily lives. They want to act in the “proper” way because they have internalized the rules and identify with them. 

2)       The extrinsically religious

There are people who may have some problems with their beliefs but they are motivated to behave in the “proper” way of a particular religion for external reasons. Such things as social contact, sense of purpose, power, money, etc. can motivate some people to follow religious principles

3)       The quest religious

There are those that are involved in religion because they are seeking something greater than themselves, something beyond the normal world of day-to-day life. Depending on the religion, they may want to talk to God or find Nirvana. Apparently, most human brains have the capacity for transcendental experiences. The way such experiences will be interpreted depends upon the cultural framework of the experiencer.

Religious Orientation

Refering to one of my earlier posts, the question of motivational penetration into the “self” can be “unpacked” as the academics say. In “What’s my motivation”, I discussed a model of motivation that contained a range of motivational states between the standard extrinsic and the intrinsic types.

What’s My Motivation

External regulation – strictly based on the desirability of the immediate reward

Introjection – Ego involvement and desire of approval of others

Identification – Conscious valuing of activity, personal endorsement of goals

Integration – Hierarchical synthesis of the goals, congruence with personal goals

Intrinsic Motivation – Interest and enjoyment, inherent satisfaction 

Applying the intermediate states to the discussion of religion, we could talk about 6 types of religious motivation instead of 3. 

4) Introjection religiosity

This type of person is mainly influenced by what other think. They are religious to the extent that they are trying to satisfy someone else. It could be the influence of parents, spouses, siblings, friends, etc. 

5) Identification religiosity – This type of individual believes that religion is a positive force in society and values religious activities.

6) Integrated religiosity – These individuals have brought religion into their lives and are actively trying to live a religious life.

Under the influence of other people, events, the consequences of actions and personal reflection, individuals move back and forth along this continuum. Some are comfortable with where they are and others agonize as they try to move or try to resist moving to a different state.

I think that religions are founded by the quest religious as a result of transcendental experiences. They then share their memories and interpretations of their experiences with others. Some of those others come to believe the new ideas and follow their direction. These become the intrinsically religious. As more join, a mixture of the different motivations states will be found. Eventually the extrinsically religious show up and create the institutions we know as religions.

I also think that it is the extrinsically religion who are more intolerant of other faiths and that try the hardest to impose their religion on others. Unfortunately, the extrinsic type often seek and attain positions of leadership. The quest religious are either cloistered or driven out of established religions because they post a threat to stability. The faith of the intrinsically religious is often exploited.

Religious institutions work hard to move people along the continuum from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. Somethimes the leadership, stacked with the extrinsically religious, drift from the path of the founder. As sincere people below see the hypocrisy, corruption and manipulation of those at the top of the hierarchy, the bolder among them begin to speak out. If problems with leadership cannot be resolved, there can be a schism where part of the congregation leaves and starts a new church.

And round and round it goes….

Posted in Psychology, Religion | 45 Comments »

Is the wind ill or is it feeling better?

18th October 2007

It used to be that when war or natural disaster hit, the stock market would go down in reaction to the news. It appears that a new day has dawned. Things began shifting as billions of dollars were being sprayed around in Iraq to companies like Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, etc. A gold rush began to supply services for reconstruction, logistics, security etc.

Then Katrina hit and the Iraq service suppliers saw that opportunity lay in natural disaster as well as war. Today Wall Street is enamored with the stock of companies that supply services to the US government in support of the Iraq war and are also available to cater natural disasters.

This trend is troubling enough if you can trust the people involve to behave in a rational and ethical fashion. Unfortunately, that seems to be the exception rather than the rule for these companies. What if a company saw an opportunity to increase its business in a war zone or disaster zone if conditions deteriorated for some reason. Would they act to deliberately make matters worse in the name of profit. I am afraid that it seems all to plausible.

Case in point. When the US military cracked down on the city of Falluga the trigger was the gory death of four “contractors”. Now we find out that these “contractors” were four Blackwater mercenaries who had been sent out into a dangerous zone without the normal six personnel, with inadequate equipment and maps on short notice. This appears to me to be inviting disaster. And disaster is what they got. The citizens of Falluga suffered horribly, much of the city was destroyed, US troops got killed and Blackwater has made a lot of money in Iraq since because of the deteriorating security conditions in Iraq.

I wonder how this new profit enhancement methodology could be applied to natural disasters??

Naomi Klien has written a book on Disaster Capitalism called the Shock Doctrine the covers some of these topics.

Shock Doctrine

Posted in Current Events | 1 Comment »

Reality 2.1 ??

11th October 2007

About 7 years ago, I was sitting in a movie theater watching a movie called the Thirteenth Floor about some researches who had created a realistic simulated world. They were able to enter it and walk around, interacting with simulated people. Then things started going bad and they found out that they were living in someone else’s simulation.

Simulacron-3

As I watched the movie, I was thinking that it reminded me of a book that I read a long time ago. When the credits rolled, there was the name of the book that I remembered. Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye written in 1964 was one of the first descriptions of what we now know as virtual reality.

The Matrix was also released in 1999.

The Matrix

And, of course, there was the famous “holodeck” on the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation that could let the user enter ficticous  Many other science fiction novels, movies, television shows and cartoons have used the theme of a simulated world so real that the inhabitants don’t realize that it is an illusion.

Holodeck

In 1994, Frank Tipler, an physicist published a book titled “The Physics of Immortality”. His thesis was that at the end of time, an amalgam of biological and artificial intelligences would merge into one super powerful entity who would then simulate all the worlds, ages and entities who had ever existed in the universe.

Tipler and the Omega Point

A trilogy by Frederick Pohl featured two power alien races who were battling each other for control of the universe in order to be the ones who dominated the final fusion they thought was coming at the end of time.

Pohl’s The Far Shore of Time

Ian Banks in the Algebraist suggested that a religion could be created based on the simulation idea that would essentially supercede all other religions because if we were in a simulation then there could be a super powerful being that created and controlled the universe and any particular religion could now be explained scientifically.

Bank’s The Algebraist

Last year, I was surprised to read an article in New Scientist by a philosopher named Nick Bostrom who was seriously proposing that we might be living in some sort of simulation.

Nick Bostrom

He proposed that many technologically sophisticated civilizations in our universe would naturally experiment with simulated worlds. There would be millions or billions of simulations for each “real” world. If it is possible to create self-aware entities in these simulations, then the odds that any particular self-aware entity is “real” are millions or even billions to one. And that includes us.

So, the next question is what do we do about it if we take this idea seriously. Some say that we should just go on living our lives “as if real”. Others say that we should figure out what the purpose of the simulation is and then fulfill it so we don’t get deleted. And some say that we should figure out how to get out of the simulation.

That last idea raises the question of whether or not it would be possible for a simulated entity to escape to a “real” world. Of course, if the ideas in the movies and books at the beginning of this post are a guide, there might be more than one “level” of simulation. In that case, it might be realistic for a simulated entity to move up the chain of simulations.

 Of course, the idea that the world is not “real” is ancient. There was the famous cave analogy of Plato who suggested that what we thought of as the real world was just shadows on a cave wall.

Plato’s Cave

And the Hindus have their Maya, the “veil of illusion”.

Maya and the Veil of Illusion

Sociologists have their “consesus reality”

Consensus Reality

and psychologist have the “brain in a box” problem. They ponder the question of how we could know if we were just a brain in a box with inputs feeding us a simulated world. May be possible but not easy.

The solipsitic philosophy suggest that everything that I think I perceive is just an illusion that I am generating. This idea may seem simple at first but actually creates more questions than it answers.

Solipsism

A weak form of solipsism is certainly true in that our brains generate the illusion of a stable 3 dimensional world from fleeting sense impressions.

So I guess the answer to the question of “Are we living in a simulation” must be YES. However, the more interesting question is “Exactly what kind of simulation is it?

Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, Religion | 1 Comment »