How does “religious people make me unhappy” motivate anything useful? And to whom is it sending this “honest signal”? What mode of thinking is being changed?
In other words, how is being unhappy about the mere existence of religious people actually useful to the specific person who stated that?
At the moment, what you’ve said could equally apply to death being a good thing, because it motivates us to not waste time, and because it kills off the less intelligent. In other words, it sounds like a way to justify continued belief in the usefulness of your own unhappiness.
How does “religious people make me unhappy” motivate anything useful? And to whom is it sending this “honest signal”? What mode of thinking is being changed?
I don’t know. That wasn’t the question I answered.
At the moment, what you’ve said could equally apply to death being a good thing, because it motivates us to not waste time, and because it kills off the less intelligent.
No it doesn’t, that’s absurd.
In other words, it sounds like a way to justify continued belief in the usefulness of your own unhappiness.
No. It is several examples of how being unhappy about a fact can provide benefit to people. If unhappiness was a strictly detrimental phenonemon then we would not have evolved to experience it in such depth.
But it was the question I asked, in context. The “mere fact” referred to in my question was the existence of religious people—it was not an abstract question to be applied to any random “mere fact”.
No it doesn’t, that’s absurd.
Right—because that’s exactly what happens when you take a point out of context, treat it as an abstraction, and then reapply it to some other specific fact than the one it was relevant to.
If unhappiness was a strictly detrimental phenonemon then we would not have evolved to experience it in such depth.
Detrimental to whom, relative to what purpose? Evolution doesn’t have our personal goals or fulfillment in mind—just reproductive success. It’s merely a happy accident that some of the characteristics useful for one, are also useful for the other.
How does “religious people make me unhappy” motivate anything useful? And to whom is it sending this “honest signal”? What mode of thinking is being changed?
In other words, how is being unhappy about the mere existence of religious people actually useful to the specific person who stated that?
At the moment, what you’ve said could equally apply to death being a good thing, because it motivates us to not waste time, and because it kills off the less intelligent. In other words, it sounds like a way to justify continued belief in the usefulness of your own unhappiness.
I don’t know. That wasn’t the question I answered.
No it doesn’t, that’s absurd.
No. It is several examples of how being unhappy about a fact can provide benefit to people. If unhappiness was a strictly detrimental phenonemon then we would not have evolved to experience it in such depth.
But it was the question I asked, in context. The “mere fact” referred to in my question was the existence of religious people—it was not an abstract question to be applied to any random “mere fact”.
Right—because that’s exactly what happens when you take a point out of context, treat it as an abstraction, and then reapply it to some other specific fact than the one it was relevant to.
Detrimental to whom, relative to what purpose? Evolution doesn’t have our personal goals or fulfillment in mind—just reproductive success. It’s merely a happy accident that some of the characteristics useful for one, are also useful for the other.