I think you wrote before in the Economic Devastation thread about how society is a balance between preventing people from doing actions that opt-out and harm the collective well-being balanced against the society becoming too totalitarian and imploding.
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What high IQ people miss is apparently that God doesn't have to be a factual truth in order for religion to be an optimum strategy for society. Thus they aren't as high IQ as they think they are, haha.
In Justification for New World Order: Part
1,
2,
3,
4 I argued the following.
In human interactions we often face a choice between cooperation (reaching a mutually beneficial exchange) and defection (advancement of ourselves to the detriment of our fellow man).
Collectivism exists because it limits defection especially those forms of defection linked to physical violence. Collectivism is expensive and inefficient. However, the inefficiencies associated with collectivism are less (at least historically) than the inefficiencies that come from the violence and defections that occur in an environment of unrestrained individualism.
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There is no such thing as complete freedom except for the state of nature as described by Hobbs. In every other scenario the best we can achieve is a partial freedom. We agree to some limitations of our freedoms to maximize our ability to prosper and cooperate while minimizing individual freedom to coerce, and defect.
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The evolution of the social contract appears to be a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. I suspect that in the future republics will be consumed by world government, world government will evolve into decentralized government, and decentralized government will finally mature into a shared consensus among individuals with limited or no government.
Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. To borrow from the links in the opening post each iteration increases the amount of entropy the system can sustainably support.
Charlton argues that
religion is the proximate method of Group Selection in humans specifically he argues that religion enhances social cohesion enabling larger and more complex forms of social functioning.
Religion appears to be a primary driver of evolution facilitating our progressive climb to more complex social systems via the stimulation and enforcement of motivation, altruism, and long-termism.
If Individual humans are adapted to live in a context of religion. It is logical absent religion human behavior becomes maladaptive.
Could a shared consensus among individuals ever replace centralized government? Such a society would require a powerful and healthy moral code upheld and enforced by all with both belief and reverence.
Perhaps the very religious have more to teach us then we realize.