Humanitarian technologist & big data wrangler, on a quest for evidence-based policy. Rational optimist, post-statist, contemplative humanist, mystery enthusiast, bardo tourist.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Short answer: Yes! Partially!

    Long answer: Belief is a feature that humans have that can give you confidence both in proven outcomes and in the unknown. It stems from our prefrontal cortex survival capabilities to remember past experiences and simulate future experiences. Aka imagination. We can believe in anything we choose to.

    Yes belief is psychologically comforting. Certainly a lot more than worrying about the unknown. It’s even more comforting if the belief is shared by a social group, reinforcing it to each other.

    Other aspects of religion make life easier too. Rituals, traditions, stories and social ties.

    Those things can help with depression! Depression is a cognitive-affective response to a body that isn’t living the way our bodies were evolved to live. Key factors of that include: Daily socialization, getting the right nutrients, sleeping well, getting enough exercise, getting enough sunlight and having strategies to keep our minds from worrying. Belief can do the last one, as can meditation, or triggering flow states by engaging in activities. Religion can also help with the socializing one.

    Hope this helps!







  • The main problems I have with it now are sometimes there are still issues with loading between browser and apps. Like it might open multiple tabs trying to open an app, and it leaves the app redirect pages open in your tabs list. Additionally, sometimes (like 3% of the time) website scaling doesn’t always work, especially on older sites or those made with janky CMS’s, and I’ve also rarely had problems with some dynamic content like inline forms and graphs.






  • I’m thinking an RPG Maker style game. You play as Morpheus, the god of dreams. Each level is a different person’s dream. When you arrive the dream is a nightmare fueled by past experiences and internal feelings. You have to journey through the dreamscape and find these factors and resolve them to heal the psyche of the dreamer and turn the nightmare into a good dream.

    An example would be a dream where the dreamer is delivering a presentation in front of a classroom naked while the other kids and teacher make fun of them. As that scene plays out, you walk around the school and discover little tidbits about the dreamer. Some of these tidbits are external factors that led to the dream, like memories of people making the dreamer embarrassed for being themselves. You could resolve these by fighting and defeating them in the form of nightmare creatures. And some of the tidbits will be internal factors, like feelings of insecurity and defense mechanisms like reinforcing ideas, that give power to the twisted logic of the dream. These, you have to heal by pointing out the flawed logic and encouraging the dreamer to accept themselves. Once you do everything, you go back to the classroom and find the dreamer giving a TED talk to an enraptured and admiring crowd.