Peterkin

really? I've met Chinese people of quite different temperaments, proclivities, tastes and habits. Even New Yorkers are not all similar. I don't know any fashion models. I just don't see eco-systems can exist in that kind of spatial greyscale, or who provides the stimuli and the programming. nope. Just doesn't work for me. Sorry.

You are wrong in thinking that I am wrong. It has nothing to do with ghosts or woo or any of that nonsense. It's far deeper in human social development, farther back in time, far more basic. Why should i even try? Christianity is such a late-comer to supernatural beliefs, so embedded in the civilized era of human history, was so quickly absorbed into imperil politics that it's almost entirely artificial. How is that relevant to the origins ofr functions of religion? How many religions are you familiar with? And how familiar? Obviously. I submit that you are wading in the baby pool of this subject. A little more reading would help. Are you aware that the majority of 'normal' people subscribe to some religion?

No, it wouldn't. Cold is a sensation, not a personality type. Greed is a trait, which part of a personality. Nobody lives very long in either place. Just as events in the rest of world tend not to be stable and permanent. To each kind of external event, people react in different ways, according to their personality. To each kind of single stimulus, people respond differently. OK. So tell us about the analyst or architect or whoever does this pre-programming, so that people are able to respond to stimuli.

I see. Nothing more than the reasons I enumerated. And no guarantee of getting the desired results. Not a shortcut, just a lot faster than gathering admissible evidence. Unfortunately, if it's not scripted, you cannot be certain of the prisoner's guilt, nor that he has the information you seek. So "beyond reasonable doubt" is in the estimation of the torturer. And the torturer can be any police officer or intelligence agent - not just the smart, tolerant, ethical ones. The odds of getting the desired result diminish in direct proportion to your departure from the script. This is consideration. Because real life is just too unscripted for instant, absolute answers. (Plus, I'm obtuse.)

No, because that's what I said it was used for. Then you said, So I asked: what else? What was I wrong about? And how did that quote apply to what I was wrong about?

to accomplish what, other than 1. preventing a further crime 2. gaining information and 3. extracting a confession?

In the same old same old same old same *sigh* Sanford quote, what is it they are arguably accomplishing in these one-off emergency situations, other than: 1. preventing a further crime (as, eg the murder of a child) 2. gaining information about the prisoner's accomplices (as eg where the other terrorist planted the bomb) and 3. extracting a confession (as eg: ?

Example: you under an avalanche; you at at ice-cream bar. Scared person and greedy person. Of course people respond to their environment, other people and whatever happen to them. How is that a reflection on personality or the meaning of personality or the lack of a personality? BTW, I wouldn't be quite so quick to pronounce on what "nobody understands". I don't begin to scratch a sliver of the surface of all the things all those other people understand. I have only a tentative grasp on what I myself understand.

Oh, I se. Automata, except you can make them cry or goad them to rage. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/tipus-tiger

IOW - there is no such thing as a personality. However, in order for your proposition to be true, there had to be something internal , some entity or mechanism, which was able and willing to respond to external stimuli. If that was so, such an entity or machine might equally well be able and willing to initiate action and elicit a response from the environment. And, of course, there remains the question of who or what did the preprogramming. You might be closest to this school of thought https://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html

Why would you want that? We have plenty of natural human beings. What do we need artificial ones for? It seems to me, robots are made for tasks to which humans are not well suited: hazardous, monotonous, heavy, dirty, uncomfortable work. If the robots learned to hate their jobs as much as humans do, what is their advantage? More to the point, how do you make them carry on?

I think the operative word there is "superficially". Both conditions are more complicated and involuted than a list of symptoms. Also, both conditions have a great deal of variation from patient to patient. Interesting idea. But apparently, on the wrong track. It seems to me that schizophrenia patients are too busy inside their own heads to deal effectively with external reality, including communication from other people. It's not necessarily lack of feeling for others so much as poor quality reception due to emotional static.

http://www.ikonet.com/en/visualdictionary/static/us/hormones

The DNA was always a herring. It takes days or weeks to get the lab results. Much the same with fibers and hairs: laboratory turnaround time precludes the use of physical evidence to prove guilt in time to justify torture. That decision has to be made fast, based on nothing that you can take to court. Except in a carefully scripted thought-experiment, guilt is not established at the outset. The people who torture know this; they're looking for a shortcut to the desired result, whether that's preventing a further crime, gaining information about the prisoner's accomplices or extracting a confession. Police are not always skilled at torture, and have no easy access to trained contractors, the way spy agencies and armies do. That partly accounts for 'accidental' deaths in custody and a high rate of wrongful convictions in the US. In non-modern, non-democratic, non-westernized countries, it's routine operating procedure for prisoners of military action - overt or covert - political dissidents, ethnic minorities, religious nonconformists and other suspected shit-disturbers. All this was covered in the first two pages.

That's rational. But not all cults are religious. It's possible to discuss rationally the nature of cults and their functions in a period of history in a particular society. Everything of which humans are aware and capable has some basis in reality as perceived by humans. An idea in which many humans invest their time and effort - and for which they are willing to risk their life - must be rooted in some aspect of some version of a reality they share. That's worth investigating. That's another assertion worth investigating. No, it isn't. However, if you have no interest in anthropology, sociology or psychology, there is no need for you to participate in those discussions.

Please explain: arbitrary constant on a scale of relativity Neither of those is an ideology. Cause and effect prevail throughout the universe, in all manner of interactions, processes and events. No person, entity or thing has any choice regarding the chain of causation; it proceeds regardless. The concept of good and evil is limited to human philosophies; they figure to some degree and in some form in all human philosophies. Jungles have no laws, except those physics, chemistry and biology. If any societies are organized on the basis of those "themes", please provide examples of each.

done

Thank you.

Sorry! It as the word "experiment" that snagged my attention, not the religious aspect. But now that the poster's identity has been further revealed, I'll not make that mistake again.

Not to eat, but I'm up for chasing the odd one.

What? How? Which church?

Couple of issues: I can't exactly trace the taxonomy of "tree" in Animalia. Trees are various in size and range in lifespan from shorter than a cat's to longer than the rise and fall of human empires. A short fat olive tree may be a 1000 years old, while a tall, majestic Lombardy poplar fizzles out in 15. And you did put humans, who live three times as long as bears, four times as long as a bison and five lifetimes of a musk-ox, far too low on the longevity scale.

This is incorrect. Domestic cats and dog have the same approximate life expectancy: 10-20 years, depending on breed. Bears and giraffes both have an average life expectancy between 20 and 30 years - the giraffe being on the lower side. Humans may live 70-100 years, given hospitable environment. "Fizzling out" is not, AFAIK, a scientific principle. A little more time at the drawing-board may be advisable.

For the mind-set required to initiate deliberate, systemmatic, prolonged infliction of pain on another sentient being? And to declare that ethical? Maybe there is, but it's already here and not in my purview to move.

I didn't feel that altered the little nudge I wanted to give the continuing, popular assumption that torture produces the desired results. This belief has been in effect, repeated in a thousand different contexts and guises, for thousands of years, and authorized by thousands of policy-makers who were all deemed, in their time, to be sane. Does this not cast a doubt on our concept of sanity?