But my vague sense is that people mostly want frisbee and tea. I guess this isn't that surprising either, there's some kind of horror that's related to a nerd staring at the media that is actually popular and realizing "it's not bad [by nerd standards] by mistake. The people really did want Transformers 3."
I did not understand this. Could I get you to please explain it again?
(It is worth noting that I am a nerd who enjoyed Transformers 3...)
the amount of awe I feel going into European churches feels like some evidence against this.
This sounds to me like selection bias. Most people did not build churches. And I suspect you do not feel awestruck in every church. I suspect that you remember the new most awesome ones, built by exceptional people who felt exceptionally religious.
It really seems like these rituals, the architecture, all of it, was built to instill the sort of existential intensity that taking God seriously requires, and I have to imagine that this was at least somewhat real for most people?
It may have been built for that purpose. This does not mean that most people felt the existential intensity. It is conceivable that many people felt "wow, the church sure is rich and powerful; I'd better obey" whereas many others felt nothing and stayed quiet about it.
Contemplation of the vastness of everything we know about, of the tremendous unplumbed chasm of the unknown, of the vertigo-inducing forever of infinity, of the mystery of why there is anything at all or any subjectivity with which to try to confront it… any of these things can induce a shudder of humble awe in the most dyed-in-the-wool atheist.
Not me. At least, not reliably. When I contemplate the vastness of the universe I feel at most a very mild curiosity. When I contemplate philosophical problems such as "why there is anything at all" I mostly feel a mild frustration. Definitely not a shudder of awe.
I would think that some kind of "yay field" plays a part in addiction. Even very mild addictions. I feel a "yay field" each time I go to eat a cookie or a bowl of ice cream or the like.
I often use mystical language with phenomenal empiricism in mind.
Could you please give some examples of this?
I am interested in evidence that there are large parts of society that have benefitted from mysticism in the way they benefited from quantitative reasoning (in the domain of getting things done, not in the domain of feeling good), or at least individuals who seem to have performed impressive feats I clearly care about.
Does "being happier" count as a feat that you care about?
The point, if you like, is that if you’re asked to explain some “woo” or “mysticism” or whatever, and you find yourself sounding like Morpheus sounds in the movie, you’re doing it wrong.
In my opinion this is true about most mentors in fiction. The mentoring we see on screen tends to be shitty mentoring, presumably because the writers or bosses believe that showing actual mentoring will lead to a less dramatic story.
So mentors in fiction should not be used as role models.
(Scott Alexander had a blog post where he mentioned that the thing that got him to stop believing in history cranks was reading many different history cranks who all had very convincing but mutually exclusive theories of history. Kind of like that - if you can play with many different ways of seeing the world and noticing how they all seem convincing, then they may all become less convincing as a result.)
You might be thinking of this post about learned epistemic helplessness: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/
There is this video: https://youtu.be/OfgVQKy0lIQ on why Asian parents don't say "I love you" to their kids, and it analyzes how the same word in different languages has different meaning.
As I see it, the video is compatible with my claim. Aini argues that "I love you" is a useful emotional signal in many situations, which I agree with in my OP.
Aini also argues around 19-21 minutes in for clearer communication. Her example is that saying "I love you" is in some situations clearer communication than giving someone a platter of fruit. I agree, and I further argue that there are situations where it is better to be even clearer than that.
Is there any place in your sequence where you define what you mean by God? I have tried to read closely every time you mention the term, and I still do not understand what the term is supposed to refer to.