> I think any human who confuses smooth talking with making sense will be ruthlessly exploited in relatively near future
Versus the last thousand years?
Just wait until you learn about organized religion it’ll blow your mind.
Versus the last thousand years?
Just wait until you learn about organized religion it’ll blow your mind.
That gets super complicated, because arguably religion is less about its content, and more about the community. The hunger for connection isn't going away.
In a sense, religion is the perfect intersubjective phenomenon - the actual beliefs don't objectively matter and can be arbitrary[0], what's important is that everyone in your community subscribes to the same arbitrary set of beliefs. Traditions and proclamations are effective proxies for community cohesion.
(Arguably, national propaganda is the same story, just played on fast-forward.)
Point being, religion is much more than being smooth talked into believing nonsense. It digs roots deep into how humans form societies.
--
[0] - Mostly. Some beliefs are more sticky or self-reinforcing in the real world than others. Religious beliefs undergo natural selection too.
All memes do - that's why their name is based on genes. What's interesting is discovering clusters of memes that are self-reinforcing and are passed down consistently, without deviating too much from the original (while still allowing changes), over a long period of time. (EDIT: it's like finding a spaceship or oscillator in Conway's Game of Life) Arguably, religions built around such clusters have an easier time getting adherents and can get resurrected tens or hundreds of years after being nominally defeated or purged. So I don't think the "actual beliefs (mostly) don't objectively matter" characterization is warranted. I think they do matter a lot from the evolutionary standpoint; not so much for any of the current adherents, but for their grandchildren and later descendants.
To what extent the memetic content carries the institution versus how much an established institution contributes to propagating the content is unclear to me. There's definitely a relationship there, a complex interplay between vested interests, provided services, and people's needs and expectations. As you said, religion is much more than just a set of "nonsense" people get talked into. This makes it hard to discern the real utility of any particular nonsense for ensuring the religion survival.
Possibly relevant:
LLMs confabulate not hallucinate
https://www.beren.io/2023-03-19-LLMs-confabulate-not-halluci...
But creating a new cult (let's call them all "cults") is rare. It takes a person with a unique combination of skills and talents, I bet most of us can't start a religion or succeed at selling snake oil at will. But with help of LLMs...