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Comment by _game_of_life | Hacker News Reader

I forget, is your quote attributable to Michael Scott or Wayne Gretsky?

You assume I've neither read the article or researched demonology. I have.

All of the neopagan bullshit and demonic sigils can be traced back to obvious frauds starting in the 19th century, when occultist grifting was in vogue.

This is a simplistic article on an already childish subject.

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As technologists, we play in complicated contructed worlds, with rules and rituals, and obscure variations and debatably non-stochastic processes, created by other people all day long (and sometimes all night).

You don't have to believe in demons (or third normal form, or agile) for the body of knowledge to be interesting.

Some people take it pretty seriously, and some people do it for fun. Like LARPing.

Why all the anger? I may read on different philosophies and religions that I do not fully or partially agree with, practice or believe in, yet I may find useful life lessons in each, or drive pleasure just from the act of reading. I do not regard any of them as "bullshit" just because I do not understand or share their opinions.

You seem pretty caught up in your own emotions on this topic and are missing my point entirely. These stories and ideas still came from human minds, and that's the part that interests me even if I think the claims are fraudulent.

One could argue that the mere existence of a concept or an idea in someone's mind makes it real, especially so if that concept or idea has real, observable side effects for others in the "real" world. Heck, isn't this why we read science fiction or play board games? They create a mental image, the image is real in our minds.

Neat but it's still a simplistic article and pretty much everything "comes from human minds."

My emotions are disdain and disbelief that people still gobble up this horseshit. Nothing wrong with that. Do you believe yourself to not have any emotions and are an arbiter of truth and perfect logic?

Please.

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