I love when I read stories like this. Sometimes I feel so hopeless over how toxic and awful the internet can be, but then moments like this remind me that there are lots of good communities still out there. o7
A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
81–90 of 113 posts
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
We promote and justify all kinds of actions and attitudes that are not immediately beneficial, like eating properly and exercising. For the religious person, a virtuous life is in itself a reward.
That’s orthogonal to Pascal’s wager. Various religions all have tangible costs and rewards. Pascal’s wager is essentially trying to decide how valuable the rewards after death offered by each religion are when you can’t verify if they exist. My point is the availability heuristic makes biases people to overestimate how likely each religion is to be true. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic ) The…
or rather, you need to investigate for yourself if a religion makes sense before you decide to follow it.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
You presume that by believing in a God you're not living life in the best way you can, but is there really an objective (non-religious) "best way" to live life? I would assume that for the average religious person, the way they live their life feels just about right (barring any intrinsic human shortcomings).
If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. So, the actual counter argument to Pascal’s wager is this. If there are some true god(s) that care they might have an actual objective scale, but as it’s unknowable any sacrifices for a specific religion are unwise. In other words we don’t know if the…
i suppose pascals wager suggests to blindly pick any religion over not picking one. right, that makes no sense. how would you know if you picked the right one.
the only way to solve this is to investigate all religions and decide which one is the most likely (if any) and then go with that (or none at all)
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also Pascal wager is wrong because it assumes that believing in god is free or almost free, but if there's no god then the only thing you have is your life and by believing in god you are giving up the only opportunity to live your life the best way you can. Instead you taint everything you got with twisted and wicked thoughts like the one user 'sdegutis' presented: "Kid should suffer more before he died. Because sup…
Whatever anyone thinks of sdegutis's comment (and I didn't like it much either), what they actually wrote bears no resemblance to the "twisted and wicked thoughts" that you made up and put in their mouth. From the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I understand your point but what I wrote is the strongest possible interpretation of his comment that is possible for an atheist like me.
That's exactly what he said for me. That the terminally ill child should avoid distractions that lessen his suffering just to have time to reflect on his short and troubled life because death might not be the end and there might be some consequences after that which is completely supernatural reason flying in the face of all available evidence.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. So, the actual counter argument to Pascal’s wager is this. If there are some true god(s) that care they might have an actual objective scale, but as it’s unknowable any sacrifices for a specific religion are unwise. In other words we don’t know if the…
i suppose pascals wager suggests to blindly pick any religion over not picking one. right, that makes no sense. how would you know if you picked the right one. the only way to solve this is to investigate all religions and decide which one is the most likely (if any) and then go with that (or none at all)
> how would you know if you picked the right one.
Especially important part because picking the wrong one might end in infinite suffering.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. So, the actual counter argument to Pascal’s wager is this. If there are some true god(s) that care they might have an actual objective scale, but as it’s unknowable any sacrifices for a specific religion are unwise. In other words we don’t know if the…
If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. let me rephrase that: If following civil laws has zero downsides in life, then they need no justification. However, the act of trying to justify certain laws suggests that they are not inherently optimal life with zero downsides does not exist. we nee…
> and as an individual everyone needs to investigate for themselves which religion (if any) to follow
I disagree. Nobody needs to investigate any religions. There's no knowledge based reason to do that. You might want to join religion for the community but even then there rarely any investigation necessary. It's sufficient to just follow their practices.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. let me rephrase that: If following civil laws has zero downsides in life, then they need no justification. However, the act of trying to justify certain laws suggests that they are not inherently optimal life with zero downsides does not exist. we nee…
> and as an individual everyone needs to investigate for themselves which religion (if any) to follow I disagree. Nobody needs to investigate any religions. There's no knowledge based reason to do that. You might want to join religion for the community but even then there rarely any investigation necessary. It's sufficient to just follow their practices.
It's sufficient to just follow their practices
if you just want to join a community, and don't actually care what the community stands for, sure.
but we are discussing pascal's wager.
if god exists, you want to do what god asks for. that requires that you investigate what god is really asking for. joining a random community and just following their practices will help you do that. you have to investigate and figure out whether these practices make any sense.
you may or may not find an answer. either way it's up to you to keep searching (maybe there is a better answer).
sure, you can take pascals wager on blind faith. but that would be a pure gamble. i prefer to make an educated guess. and that requires investigation.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
You presume that by believing in a God you're not living life in the best way you can, but is there really an objective (non-religious) "best way" to live life? I would assume that for the average religious person, the way they live their life feels just about right (barring any intrinsic human shortcomings).
The best way to live your life is highly subjective and personal. By allowing people to instruct you on how to live your life based not on knowledge but on centuries old guesses almost inevitably prevents you from having best possible life regardless of what it might mean for you. Relying on old guesses instead of knowledge gives you objectively worse results in any kind of activity. It's not a stretch to assume it a…
indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense. independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#89I couldn’t find it inspiring, only heartbreaking and anger-inducing. It makes me so geared up to think how shitty the world is to some people who have done nothing to deserve it and so generous to some who have done everything to not deserve it. Just one more reminder of how the world really feels like one wretchedly sick joke concocted in the mind of a wretchedly sick fuck.
We can help find cures for future generations, I bet reading this might make someone want to go in that field. Every year people improve lives via new drugs.
Re: A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also Pascal wager is wrong because it assumes that believing in god is free or almost free, but if there's no god then the only thing you have is your life and by believing in god you are giving up the only opportunity to live your life the best way you can. Instead you taint everything you got with twisted and wicked thoughts like the one user 'sdegutis' presented: "Kid should suffer more before he died. Because sup…
I am of the opinion that Pascal's wager is mostly wrong because it's a false dilemma. For each diety/religion R that you're considering, simply construct a diety that will punish you for believing in R and reward you otherwise. Alternatively, construct dieties that reward you for atheism. The point is that it's not a 2x2 matrix of (Atheism, Theism) x (God is real, God is not real).
that assumes that the deity of each religion is distinct from the others. this is not necessarily the case.