Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It’s like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn’t have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it’s necessary to spread your belief to others, are ‘somehow’ more spread out than religions who don’t convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It’s funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

What do you mean? Of course they do. It’s not a contradiction, because they are adversaries.

In Germany, whenever the discussion about wether to deliver a specific weapon system or not extends to a “new” weapon system, this usually is an argument against. Hurr durr, it could be used to poke too deep into Russian-held territory, or beware, even strike native Russian soil. Russia might not like that and pull Germany into the war or throw a nuke or whatnot.

The day this country’s tensions between conservatism and liberalism die is the day the USA ceases to exist. That tension is at the core of our republic, literally since its founding, and it’s what makes us great, unlike any other nation on Earth.

That sounds as if this tension was somehow unique to the united states. It’s not, it’s everywhere. Even worse, the US have less of a political spectrum than most other nations, just shy of dictatorships.

An (intuitively) working search would be a great step ahead. It should find and show things if they exist, and only show no results if they do not. That a plethora of external tools exist to meet these basic needs shows both how much this is needed, and how much it is broken.

I also feel I have more luck finding communities if searching for ‘all’, instead of ‘communities’. Don’t make me add cryptic chars to my search to make it work. Do that for me in the background if necessary.

It’s been long since I’ve been using it, but iirc, it’s impossible or painful to search for a specific community in your subscribed list.

One is multiple parallel goals. Makes it hard to stop playing, since there’s always something you just want to finish or do “quickly”.

Say you want to build a house. Chop some trees, make some walls. Oh, need glass for windows. Shovel some sand, make more furnaces, dig a room to put them in - oh, there’s a cave with shiny stuff! Quickly explore a bit. Misstep, fall, zombies, dead. You had not placed a bed yet, so gotta run. Night falls. Dodge spiders and skeletons. Trouble finding new house. There it is! Venture into the cave again to recover your lost equipment. As you come up, a creeper awaitsssss you …

Another mechanism is luck. The world is procedurally generated, and you can craft and create almost anything anywhere. Except for a few things, like spawners. I once was lucky to have two skeleton spawners right next to each other, not far from the surface. In total, I probably spent hours in later worlds to find a similar thing.

The social aspect can also support that you play the game longer or more than you actually would like. Do I lose my “friends” when I stop playing their game?

I don’t think Minecraft does these things in any way maliciously, it’s just a great game. But nevertheless, it has a couple of mechanics which can make it addictive and problematic.

From the title, I had a question and found the answer in the FAQ:

What’s an unconference?

An unconference is a conference in which the participants – rather than the organizers – decide which sessions happen each day and on which topics. In the many years we have been organizing unconferences, we have found that for complex subjects like the Fediverse, attendees get more value (and fun!) out of unconferences than from traditional conferences. Sounds disorganized? It did to us, too, until we actually experienced our first one. So don’t worry, it will be fine :-)

Here are some suggestions for how to prepare for an unconference.

Merz, der Steigbügelhalter der AfD.

Die Rhetorik: Der Staat funktioniert nicht, ist schwach, die da oben betrügen.

Davon profitieren totalitäre Parteien, die einen starken Mann und hartes Durchgreifen versprechen. Ob sie es einhalten oder effektiv umsetzen ist irrelevant.

Es schlägt zudem in die Kerbe von Reichsbürgern, da es die deutsche Demokratie versucht zu delegitimieren.

Auch wenn der Unsinn rasch aufgeklärt wird, bei manchen wird etwas Verunsicherung haften bleiben. Manche werden die Aufklärung nicht mitbekommen. Das so gesäte Mißtrauen führt ironischerweise zu dem Ergebnis, vor dem er (nur angeblich, so blöd ist er nicht) warnt: Damit wird unserer Demokratie großer Schaden zugefügt.

Nice! The market and climate need clear signals like that.

And this is another issue which hinders discoverability. It’s nice there are tools and workarounds but their existence also signals the issue exists.

I didn’t say able to locate I said there being a list.

Are you confusing comments?

I see this in the referred comment:

having the capability to locate

While the word “list” does not appear.

But mostly I think we should try to read the message, not focus on single words.

Interessant, warum?

I think that’s fine. Unless we’re talking about greenhouses or urban indoor gardening, food grows in the environment. If you want to protect the food, you implicitly have to protect the environment, which makes you an environmentalist driven by food. There are lots of hazards which have little to do with climate (or at least which also have other, climate-unrelated causes), which can affect food. Invasive species, plastic, overfertilization, corporations, general socioeconomic disparities, just to name a few.

While continuing to tap new oil fields and failing to make sufficient progress. Also, this one isn’t about climate, but healthy and sustainable food. Connected issues, but still.

All that aside, to come back to the somewhat dodged question, what would make things go faster?

This is not the way to go about that

What is your way to go about that?

If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable? If you know acceptable ways, why aren’t you following through? Honest if-questions, not meant as assumptions.

Healthy and sustainable food seems to be a decent goal. People should be able to get behind this. So if all the disagreement is about the right approach, where are the people with the right approach, and where are all the people voicing their concern about art supporting them?

Please help me out. It feels as if people are more concerned about pieces of art which they may never see, than about healthy food, the climate, or other major issues which affect everyone.

I get why it puts people off, these points exist. I just wonder what the “right” alternative to these “wrong” approaches is, and wether the critics walk the talk.

Adding a comment so people can experiment more in this thread.

Today, it makes more sense than ever. There was the critique answer “Yeah, but you cannot deport a Nazi, because he’s a German citizen!”.

Now that the Nazis were busy making plans how to deport millions of German citizens …

Not saying we should, at least for the sake of the receiving country.

;-]

Exactly this. It’s often about finding the right balance between technically optimal, and socially feasible (lacking the right phrase here).

The nerds brimming with technical expertise often neglect the second point.

Oh - wow! I was about to complain about how https://join-lemmy.org/ is a shining bad example in this regard, talking about server stuff right away and hiding how Lemmy actually looks until page 3, but apparently they changed that and improved it drastically. Cool, good job!

Anyways.

For collaborative projects especially, it is important to strike a balance between tech and social aspects. Making poor tech choices will put people off. But making your project less accessible will also result in less people joining. It’s crucial to find a good balance here. For many coming from the tech side, this usually means making far more concessions to the social side than intuitively feels right.

Not sure what country you had in mind. Some do have a “no negotiation” stance: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/01/we-do-not-negotiate-terrorists-why. I also had the impression it was a widely accepted idea by the general population.

Arguments can be made either way which decision is at their people’s expense.

So I understand your area/bubble never favored “no negotiation”, but then I’m not talking about your area/bubble. My question was about the change in attitude.

Has the general consensus changed about how to deal with hostage takers? I think it was “don’t negotiate with terrorists” not long ago. Very tough for the relatives, but meant to prevent more harm in the future, by spoiling the plans of the terrorists.

When reading reports and comments about the Israeli hostages in Gaza, I get a different impression. Why is that, what is different?
Are there no concerns for encouraging more hostage taking this time?