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Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

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Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#31

Post by jandrese »

neaden wrote: post #17
tzs wrote: post #16

> [...] the Oneida Community of New York. Founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848, the Protestant commune believed that Jesus Christ’s power was a form of liquid electricity that could be transmitted to believers through touch. As the most intimate form of touch is sex, the group also believed that, if they had enough of it, they’d create a spiritual battery that would make them immortal and create heaven on earth. So…

There was a Planet Money episode about the Oneida community not long ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/09/532303452/episo... no mention of any electricity related beliefs but they went into the free love aspect.

I liked how pragmatic they were in the end.

"What we're doing is going to be a problem if social conservatives in government notice, but they'll go after the Mormons first."

Later: "They went after the Mormons."

"Ok, it was fun but we gotta shut it down now before the government comes knocking. We can still do the silverware thing though."

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#32

Post by dalbasal »

narrator wrote: post #29
danielvf wrote: post #18

> "So the community encouraged polygamy, orgies and generally engaging in as much sexual activity as possible. Needless to say, the Oneida members were a happy bunch, and the commune lasted more than three decades." Actually, Oneida had a commitmee of elder woman. You applied to the committee to have sex with someone one time, and they could approve or deny you. (This was designed to prevent forming couples, slow dow…

So earlier on HN I was wondering how two willing co-workers could proposition each other for casual sex without creating sexual harassment problems for themselves or the company. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854649 The Oneida cult was basically a business where everyone worked but also had lots of casual sex and they had a solution. Elder women served as the go-between. Men would not ask women directly for…

This is great parody!

People always misunderestimate the difficulty of formalizing things that are easy for people being people to deal with into legible systems that an institution (like law or a company HR team) can deal with. People tend to know what harassment is. There would be some disagreement if you ask a group of people, especially in ambiguous case. People's opinions will be culturally informed, informed by bias...etc. But, groups of people have an instinctive knack for this.

People do not have a knack for creating institutions that can work with this sort of efficiency at determining truth, or justice... Institutions need formal rulesets, absolutes.. like machines made of people.

Anyway, since harassment is very relevant in the context of the quasi-litigative, something like this could actually happen.

The precoital consent form is a cliche already. But, some sort of formalized policy for hitting on co-workers in a harassment-safe way... That could actually happen.

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#34

Post by irrational »

tzs wrote: post #16

> [...] the Oneida Community of New York. Founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848, the Protestant commune believed that Jesus Christ’s power was a form of liquid electricity that could be transmitted to believers through touch. As the most intimate form of touch is sex, the group also believed that, if they had enough of it, they’d create a spiritual battery that would make them immortal and create heaven on earth. So…

Whoa... I'll never look at my spoons the same way again.

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#35

Post by Smaug123 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #27
cr0sh wrote: post #8

I wouldn't be a bit surprised should a serious religion spring up that worships the concept of a GAI, and in fact may as a part of that worship, work toward implementing it. I am really surprised that Mentifex hasn't started such a cult himself already! /or maybe he has, and it's a cult of one member only...?

> I wouldn't be a bit surprised should a serious religion spring up that worships the concept of a GAI, and in fact may as a part of that worship, work toward implementing it. The LessWrong crowd is exactly that. They've got their own saints, demons, eschatological prophecies, and, of course, a money basket where you're encouraged to tithe generously ( https://intelligence.org/donate/ )

I think that's a bit unfair. The LessWrong-o-sphere encourages tithing in the name of effective altruism generally. It's just that MIRI considers itself to be effective for these purposes, and it argues this way (as it is naturally incentivised to do).

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#36

Post by Houshalter »

kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #21
cr0sh wrote: post #8

I wouldn't be a bit surprised should a serious religion spring up that worships the concept of a GAI, and in fact may as a part of that worship, work toward implementing it. I am really surprised that Mentifex hasn't started such a cult himself already! /or maybe he has, and it's a cult of one member only...?

The LessWrong crowd has been called cultish more than once.

Meh, only by people who consider any weird beliefs to be a cult. They are just an online forum and dont have any of the other aspects, like an isolated compound in the woods.

And their beliefs have become a lot more mainstream in the past few years. At one time AI risk was pretty obscure and no one took it seriously. Now there are best selling books on it and its entered popular culture. I see it discussed seriously here all the time. That's all because of Lesswrong and Yudkowsky.

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#37

Post by dgfgfdagasdfgfa »

ch4s3 wrote: post #12
throwaway91111 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A GAI? What is that? Do you mean Gaia?

the gp means General A.I. aka Artificial general intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...

Why not just type general AI?

Also, why would that be a particularly interesting worship object? I'd be curious to read some imaginative sci-fi if anyone can furnish it....

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#38

Post by [deleted] »

dalbasal wrote: post #32
narrator wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So earlier on HN I was wondering how two willing co-workers could proposition each other for casual sex without creating sexual harassment problems for themselves or the company. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14854649 The Oneida cult was basically a business where everyone worked but also had lots of casual sex and they had a solution. Elder women served as the go-between. Men would not ask women directly for…

This is great parody! People always misunderestimate the difficulty of formalizing things that are easy for people being people to deal with into legible systems that an institution (like law or a company HR team) can deal with. People tend to know what harassment is. There would be some disagreement if you ask a group of people, especially in ambiguous case. People's opinions will be culturally informed, informed by…

[deleted]

Re: Forgotten Religions That Worshipped Electricity

#39

Post by shostack »

While I don't know about religion, I personally love to think of electricity as "magic" or "mana" more specifically. It is the magical fuel that powers modern-day magic. We etch arcane runes (circuits), pump mana (electricity) through them, and generate magical results.

Raw mana can also be projected to inflict damage, heal, generate light, heat, etc.

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