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Comment by sageikosa | Hacker News Reader

Sociologically, I would agree that religion is powerful stuff. I don't think it is the basis for all culture, if by culture you mean the sum total of experience one is capable of experiencing with minimal effort.

However, just like one can experience religion without knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, one can experience technology without understanding even the most basic layer below the UX level. In both cases, the uncurious have a world-view unfettered by the constrictions of cause and effect; so technology can seem like magic, and those outside the officially sanctioned boundaries are both wise and "unsanctioned", and thus witches.

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I've long come to the conclusion that religion is a bootstrapping mechanism: it was something we needed in the past in order to jump over a threshold, and for the last thousand years or two, it's been obsolete and holding us back instead.

This is what I am trying to say, but a good point to the parent commenter. To clarify I would say that I was referring to how we got to where we are today. The current power structure of our society. As I said even without direct participation in religion there is a power structure evident in society vis a vis a teacher and a pupil, a slave and a master, a husband and a wife, to name a few controversial examples.

Not all of these are bad inherently, but some things about the world are changing. A hacker wields mystical power of mythical proportions that literally(don't we hate that word) scares the bejeesus out of the Power Elite. They respond with prejudice and who can blame them. Those in power will never willingly give it up.

Ethical or white hat hacking is just a foreign concept. They only see potential abuses, and threats to their power.

> As I said even without direct participation in religion there is a power structure evident in society vis a vis a teacher and a pupil, a slave and a master, a husband and a wife, to name a few controversial examples.

Don't forget white man and black man, cisgendered and trans, hetero and homosexual, sexual and asexual. I'm guessing you stand on the side of the powerful in at least one of these.

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