Inter subjective reality

[Unbroken]

Wow! I just finished ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Harare. This was a good read. Has anybody else’s read the book? Some key points he made have helped me reframe my understanding of much of the world and specifically my upbringing in the LDS church. He frames things in terms such as objective reality and subjective reality. Objective being things such things as rivers, rocks, and buildings. One of the key constructs we use as “sapiens” is our use of imagined reality. This allows us to organize ourselves to great effect and power. He uses examples such as countries, money, businesses and religion as subjective reality. Money isn’t itself real or inherently valuable. It is the trust and belief in our minds that it is valuable that in fact gives the piece of paper or digits held within a computer value among other people who also believe in its value. He classifies these into a category of inter subjective reality or a collective belief among many people in something that isn’t objectively real, however, it allows us to organize ourselves in large numbers to greatly affect the real world around us. Many attacks on religion or the Mormon church have to do with attacking its objective reality. My short one paragraph explaination of a 400 plus page book on the history of the world doesn’t do it justice. The book succeeded in tearing down and then reconstructing my views of many of our institutions. The views I have of the Mormon church are now different. This book stated many things and organized some of my disparate thoughts about the church and religion in general. A TBM would read the book as anti-Mormon or religion, I thought it the opposite.

[Hagoth]

My short one paragraph explaination of a 400 plus page book on the history of the world doesn’t do it justice.

Well, you did an excellent job of peaking my curiosity. I just added it to my reading list.

[dogbite]

Homo deus by the same author was good too

[Palerider]

Trust is the key issue.

I don't have any problem buying into a subjective reality or one created out of an abstraction as long as it informs all the participants of the reality of it's subjectivity and risk.

It's when someone tries to sell me something as a reality that is in fact a covert unreality with little to no payoff for the investor that you end up with a Ponzi scheme instead of a mutually beneficial economy.

[Reuben]

I've heard of this book before. Now I actually want to read it.

One of the key constructs we use as “sapiens” is our use of imagined reality. This allows us to organize ourselves to great effect and power. He uses examples such as countries, money, businesses and religion as subjective reality. Money isn’t itself real or inherently valuable. It is the trust and belief in our minds that it is valuable that in fact gives the piece of paper or digits held within a computer value among other people who also believe in its value. He classifies these into a category of inter subjective reality or a collective belief among many people in something that isn’t objectively real...

This also goes by the name social construct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism

Does the book talk about other aspects of how we self-organize, such as status, hierarchies, roles, respect, self-categorization, social identity, and mechanisms of belief/attitude transfer? It's crazy how much of this is automatic, such as how cognitive dissonance nudges our attitudes to be more like those of a group.

[Unbroken]

Yes, he goes into almost all of this. He talks about cognitive dissonance as an ability humans have that we can use to our advantage. He gives the example of our country’s belief in freedom and the opposing belief that all men are created equal. This creates tension and conflict as these opposing values compete in our society. If all people are equal, they deserve as much chance at equal opportunity in their lives, those that have more should share with those that don’t have as much to lift them up. The principle of freedom says something along the lines of you are free to succeed or to fail. Society will benefit from all of us working and being rewarded according to our ability, as not all have the same ability. Democrats vs republicans. Freedom and equality oppose each other, justice and mercy oppose each other. All four are not objectively real, they don’t exist in nature, they are imagined within our brains as a social construct, or inter subjective reality. Imaginary beliefs that we hold that cannot both be true. Crazy.

The belief in things that are not real is one of the greatest things that separates us from other animals. This is what allowed a minor foraging, scavenging ape out of Africa with poor strength or physical attributes to overcome/drive to extinction, the other competing human and animal species. Common belief in imaginary things allowed us to organize with others we did not personally know around an imaginary cause. 100 homo sapiens may not be able to defeat 50 larger Neanderthals, but we could organize and come back with 1000 organized warriors and try again to take the territory. He gives the example of a chimpanzee and a banana. You could never talk a chimpanzee into giving you the banana he holds in his hand for the promise of unlimited bananas in chimpanzee heaven when he dies. It would not be comprehended by the chimpanzee what is being asked and promised. The chimpanzee would hold tight to the banana and fight you for it. Homo sapiens may hand over the banana.

Social constructs are everywhere around us, they are all imaginary at their core. I always held, and many members of the church hold, the church to be objectively real, it is simply an imagined reality held by many people, constructed by Joseph Smith.

Harari says they are not lies, they are imaginary.

This spoke to me, Joseph, I suspect, wrote a book and was trying to sell it for a profit. He was a dynamic story teller. When people began to believe the story and the book, he ran with it, people believed he was a prophet. He began to believe he was a prophet. If you and others believe you are a prophet, guess what, you are a prophet. The new inter subjective reality or social construct or imaginary church was born, like so many other imaginary things around us.

The church finds itself at a point where many are adjusting their belief in this inter subjective reality. The flow of information has greatly increased. Information can affect the inter subjective reality. As long as there are people who will sacrifice their time, possessions and all that they have to the church, it will continue to exist. The increasingly strong winds of information could slash at the inter subjective reality, blowing it in a different direction, once that core, widely held belief changes, there may be no going back and the church will be permanently altered in the name of revelation or cease to exist.

[Hagoth]

Another book you might find interesting is Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods by E. Fuller Torrey. He uses evolution and neuroscience to construct a hypothesis of how the development of religion and the ability to believe in god(s) is a byproduct of evolutionary brain development.

[RubinHighlander]

If you and others believe you are a prophet, guess what, you are a prophet.

It's kind of mind boggling that religion and modern economic society is pretty much the same source of faith. If nobody thought the green piece of paper or stock share was worth anything, it all collapses. The world wide land of make believe!