Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

I guess people would be likely to believe, yes.

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

Hi Cerril,

You may have gotten some of the specifics wrong about the Dilema. The sentence for both talking is definitely less than if only one talked. In your analogy, it would be more like 3 years. My professor in Sociology of Social Dilemas was an Axelrod freak, and had us spend over half the class studying this game. I can't believe how much I've forgotten!

I disagree with your solution though, it has always proven to be better to cooperate (not talk) in the long run. It is not in the best interest to talk. With one specific situation, you may chance a harsh outcome, but it is definitely cooperate that is more +EV.

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

Has the "real" message been lost through the millenia? Was there ever a "real" message from God that has not been manipulated by man to serve their purpose at the time?

-----------------------------

if you read the bible it is quite clear that jesus explained to his disciples that he spoke in parables so that most people wouldnt understand it. and theres a similiar passage (which jesus might have referenced im not sure) in the old test.

so there. heh.

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

I think the crusades were a pretty jovial time.

~D

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

"We have become pious again"- so these apostates confess; and some among them are even too cowardly to confess it.
Those I look in the eye, and then I say it to their faces and to their blushing cheeks: You are such as pray again.
But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everybody, but for you and me and whoever else has a conscience in his head too. For *you* it is a disgrace to pray!
You know it well: your cowardly devil within you, who would like to fold his hands and rest his hands in his lap and be more confortable-this cowardly devil urges you "There is a God." With this, however, you belong to the light-shunning kind who cannot rest where there is light: now you must daily bury your head deeper in night and haze.
And verily, you chose the the hour well, for just now the nocturnal birds are flying again. the hour has come for all light-shunning folk, the hour of evening and rest, when they do not rest. I hear and smell it:their hour for chase and procession has come-not indeed for a wild chase, but for a tame, lame, snooping, pussyfooting, prayer-muttering chase=for a chase after soulful sneaks:all the heart's mousetraps have now been set again. And wherever I lift a curtain a little night moth rushes out. Did it perhaps squat there together with another little night moth? For everywhere I smell little hidden communities: and wherever there are closets, there are new canters praying inside and the fog of canters.
They sit together long evenings and say, " Let us become as little children against and say 'dear God!'"-their mounts and stomachs upset by pious confectioners.
Or they spend long evenings watching a cunning, ambushin, cross-marked spider, which preaches cleverness to the other spiders and teaches thus: " Under crosses one can spin well."
Or they spend the day sitting at swamps with fishing rods, thinking themselves profound; but whoever fishes where there are no fish, I would not even call superficial.
... And some of them have even become night watchmen: now they know how to blow horns and to walk about at night and to awaken old things that had long gone to sleep. I heard five saying about old things last night at the garden wall: they came from such old, saddened, dried-up night watchmen.
"For a father, he does not care enough about his children: human fathers do this better."
"He is too old. He does not care about his children at all any more"-thus the other night watchman replied.
"But does he *have* any children? Nobody can prove it, if he does not prove it himself. I have long wished he would for once prove it thoroughly."
"Prove? As if *he* had ever proved anything? Proof is difficult for him; he considers it terribly important that one should have *faith* in him"
"Sure! Sure! Faith makes him blessed. faith in him. that is the way of old people. We are no different ourselves."
Thus the two old night watchmen and scarelights spoke to each other and then tooted sadly on their horns: however, my heart twisted with laughter and wanted to break and did not know whither, and sank into my diaphragm. Verily, this will yet be my death, that I shall suffocate with laughter when I see asses drunk and hear night watchmen thus doubting God. Is not the time long past for all such doubts too?Who may still awakensuch old sleeping, light-shunning things?
For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long ago; and verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They did not end in a 'twilight," though the lie is told. Instead: one day they *laughed* themselves to death. That happened when the most godless word issued from one of the gods themselves-the word: "There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me!" An old grimbeard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And then all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and cried, "Is not just this godlike that there are gods but no God?"
He that has ears to hear, let him hear!

Friedrich Nietzche Thus Spoke Zarathustra 3rd part


peace

john nickle

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

he too comes right out in his books and says that he wrote in metaphors so that most people would not understand him.

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

because his books were not for everyone. Just the intelligent. Those capable of understanding. Those with ears to hear, LISTEN!!!

peace

john nickle

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

Have you just discovered Jack Daniels?

Re: The Prisoner\'s Dilemma and Religion
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Giving up the things of this world to follow Christ doesn't usually make a person happy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes it does.

Justin A

[/ QUOTE ]

It didn't make me happy. Had to stop listening to secular music, stop going to parties, stop chasing girls, stop doing a lot of things that made me happy. The inner-peace and feeling of purpose I've gotton from it has been worth it though.
Ask any of the disciples if giving up everything they ever knew was fun. Or having to suffer excruciating deaths was fun. Ask Paul if being imprisioned on an island was any fun. Not fun and doesn't make you happy but its worth it.

Don\'t Be, Gabe
 

Merely recall the parable of the prodigal son--and that's just within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

John