More like I'm faced with realities when other people see magic. When the WiFi signal is spotty, the reality of the situation forces me to understand at least the basics of how it works and how the signal is getting blocked. When my database is acting slow, I can't just say "well the moon is half so..." I have to instrument and figure out what's happening and fix it. That at least pulls away a lot of the mystery.
When you're responsible for something you have to understand it better (or at least get good at making justifications). All people do this, they just typically aren't responsible for keeping an object or program working.
I don't see why you would have a superior mental model about subjects you are not intimately familiar with the details of.
I don't recall making the claim of having a superior mental model. I make the claim that STEM workers cannot rely solely on mystical thinking, we have to apply the scientific method to perform our jobs. This gives us a tool at our disposal to pull back the mysteries in other areas of our lives. Flaky toasters, keyboard keys that stop working, the way light effects our bedtime routines. We don't need to rely on confirmation bias, we can apply the scientific method. Of course anyone can, but we're often forced to do it for hours a day, so we get a lot of practice disregarding our natural instincts in favor of observation and record keeping.
Hmm, well you effectively said you "see the world as it is" and that would typically be understood to be a claim that you have a superior mental model, I think.
What is life for if not for striving towards enjoyment and entertainment? Surely everything we work for as individuals is at least for some kind of happiness in the end?
Of course, here my thesis is that love and family fall into these things as I am fortunate enough to have an enjoyable and entertaining family :)
For me at least the metaphor of Disneyland seems apt!
I'm not sure what the meaning of "I believe god exists and he has a plan" is, if the plan is beyond our understanding. What do people actually believe? Sure, the words will be "I believe in god", but what are the consequences of this belief?
If anything can happen inside this incomprehensible plan, what is different from there being no plan? If you don't believe anything concrete about the plan, if there is nothing that is impossible because it would be against the plan, then isn't everything just as it would be if there was no plan and no god?
One issue is that it lets go of benevolence. Which works but raises the question of why we'd want to worship such an entity, and what does morality even mean anymore if it's supposedly based on an entity whose reasoning is inscrutable.
There's also that power removes excuses. Eg, Christof resorts to methods like "killing" Truman's father because it's all he can do to maintain the illusion. But if Christof had a whole planet to work with that'd instantly stop being a morally grey thing and just be plain evil. An actual god effectively has no excuses, because there are no limits forcing any kind of compromise.
The question also sneaks in the presupposition that suffering is anathema, or that suffering is never acceptable or worthwhile. Anyone who has been a part of a sports team (especially one that was successful) can attest to the fact that short-term suffering and sacrifice can lead to long-term success or joy.
There are many episodes in my life that were horribly difficult while I was going through them, but later on, I see how they have changed the course of my life and have benefited me deeply, in a way I couldn't foresee while going through the struggle.
The "problem of evil" also assumes that a world filled with automatons with no choice to do anything except submit to God's will is somehow superior to a world where anyone can choose to follow the Way of Life while surrounded by those who either haven't chosen yet, or have made the choice not to walk that path.
Suffering is an anathema, and only acceptable when necessary because no better ways are available. Deities can't avail themselves of such methods.
Eg, sawing somebody's leg off without anesthesia was the best we had before anesthetics. Today it'd be outright barbaric outside of extenuating circumstances like anesthetics being unavailable in some sort of emergency.
Whenever we get to the point where we can fully and painlessly fix up somebody's leg by using some sort of scifi device, then cutting it off even with modern anesthetics will become morally unacceptable as well.
The more ability, the less justifiable suffering becomes.
I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience. Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well. Also, what about parenting? Telling your child to pull the weeds feels like an enormous burden of suffering when you are the 12-year-old child who has to go out in the summer sun to pull weeds, but for the parent, the view is quite different. The garden produces food for the family, and the child learns to do things they don't want to do or don't like to do.
Your statement "Suffering is anathema..." is Enlightenment thinking that has had a devastating effect on the physical and mental health of the cultures that have adopted it.
> I don't agree with your assertion that suffering is anathema. Learning to accept and endure difficulty or pain or discomfort increases one's resilience.
Resilience is only necessary if there's some purpose to it.
> Soldiers are trained into this mindset and can accomplish much more as a result. Athletes train this way as well.
Right, as a means to an end, for lack of a better solution. If we could accomplish those goals without suffering, we would. Suffering is a last resort, not good in itself. It's a compromise. An all-powerful entity doesn't need any, thus loses any justification to resort to it.
I'm pretty much thinking of the definition from the 1913 edition of Websters: "Suf"fer*ing, n. The bearing of pain, inconvenience, or loss; pain endured; distress, loss, or injury incurred; as, sufferings by pain or sorrow; sufferings by want or by wrongs."
That's how Lovecraft started. And before, Nietzche/Shopenhauer. More than "god", it's the absurd of the universe, and existential terror. There's no God, and we are like ants for the vast and huge universe. We should grow up from Gods beings created from the Neolithic (the Abrahamics religions are just metaphors on cults around Sun and grain harvesting), and to create something else akin to modern urban cities and not old villages around the primary sector for economics.
For instance, transhumanism. No, we don't need to create a religion, but set a good chunk of facts and laws to govern ourselves. The American and French revolutions were a good step on that against the Old Regime around the mentioned Neolithic.
Not necessarily, incredibly large amounts of money pharmaceutical companies spend is actually spent on advertising their products to maintain their cash flow. Examples can be found online but this source [1], which is obviously biased, shows the statistics for the biggest companies in a nice list.
The (hundreds of) millions spent on bonuses are nothing compared to the billions spent on making sure your doctor recommends UmbrellaCorp PainAWay™ over a generic brand that will cost you a tenth of the price [2]. That includes not just TV ads, but also buying conference tickets and free lunches for doctors; anything to make sure they get the upper hand.
[2]: It should be noted that some generics can work less effectively or cause additional side effects in some people, but for many types of medication the difference is minimal and sometimes the big-brand products even come with more side effects than their competitors' product
