[Bnichs]

>If our institutions can communicate their work better, supernatural beliefs will dry up a bit. We’ve seen this historically.

I feel like this article misses the reason why people distrust institutions. Being "kicked out of the tent" is no doubt part of it, but it's more that the institutions themselves have stopped trying to communicate in good faith.

In the past 50 or so years we've seen almost every institution (in USA at least) get caught in a massive scheme of lying and manipulation. The church was caught harboring pedophiles, the education system told us trades were bad and we needed to spend $100k+ to have a good job, the Healthcare system leveraged our own wellbeing against their profits, the government sided with insurance companies, banks, etc over its own people at every turn then proceeded to lie us into war after war after war, and all the the while the news has been proven to support almost every lie happily if the ad dollars go their way. Not a single institution hasn't failed us.

Asking why people distrust institutions is the wrong question. Any partner that lied to you that much would never be trusted again, distrust is a defense mechanism that comes from years of betrayal. But still there's some implication that we should still trust them, despite the lies, and along with it a sense that distrusting them makes you crazy (paranormal/alien beliefs are a good example). This problem does not originate from the people, it's the result of a world where truth only gets in the way of profits and power and actual people are the lowest priority.

[lloda2]

The church, the education system, the healthcare system, the government, and the banks, are all actual people. You guys are doing this to yourselves in an effort to scam each other.

[_DeadFred_]

A couple years back I was at a really really low point in life, I wanted someone to talk to. Not like counseling or anything, literally just someone to talk to one time over a cup of coffee, because it's not great to go without talking to people at all. I reached out to the churches from my small town to the nearest city. In addition I reached out to the above organizations, asking 'Is there anyone they can connect me with to get a cup of coffee and talk for like an hour at their convenience'. Most useful response I got was for paid christian phone counseling services and asking for my insurance provider information to see if it would cover it. No bible thumper preacher offered to talk, no Catholic priest, no one. I always kind of thought one trait of those groups was their willingness to talk to people.

This is not how society was the majority of my life. Something is very wrong, and very broken.

So I just searched if there was anything to connect and found this. The modern state of our society. I hate it:

https://priestchat.com/

From the front page: Is there an AI behind the priests on this platform?

No, our priests are real people who are here to offer you spiritual guidance and support.

https://priestchat.com/en/legal/terms-of-service TOS: The Service provided by PriestChat.com is a platform facilitating simulated and purely fictional exchanges which are intended exclusively for entertainment and novelty purposes.

14. AI Disclosure Nature of AI-Generated Content: All interactions, responses, suggestions, or communications made available through the Service may be partially or wholly generated by AI-based processes. These processes leverage algorithmic models, machine learning techniques, and potentially third-party computational platforms.se to any Content provided through the Service. Etc. etc.

[jsbisviewtiful]

Your perspective on religious institutions is very different than mine and I'm very curious how that came to be and how much different your experience was than mine. I'm in my thirties and since I was very young I've known *not* to trust most religious institutions and --being raised on Sesame Street and Mr Rogers-- instinctively was not fond of the people in them. Most church goers I would meet were usually not friendly to others who were different than them and were seemingly interested in their own "salvation" before others. Leadership was mainly interested in power/money and would be aghast if anyone dared question anything about the church - even something as stupid as a talking snake. Oh and Pikachu, Harry Potter, music and asking questions were all a ticket to eternal damnation even though you are loved. 25+ years later, I'm not at all surprised about the catholic church's rampant sexual exploitation of children or christians' downright hatred of others and complete lack of Jesus's teachings. Even the rise of christo nationalism and fascism in the US seemed like an inevitability. Seeing a church organization lie about a for-profit chat bot seems on-brand and has seemed on-brand for as long as I've been an inquisitive child.

[AnimalMuppet]

> being raised on Mr Rogers

Mr Rogers was an ordained minister. Within his denomination, his ministry assignment - his congregation - was television.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

The purpose of a system is what it does. In the US, 'the system' makes money for some at the expense of others. If rational thinking supported this system, it would be rewarded more. The fact that conspiratorial and supernatural thinking is on the rise suggest that it better aligns with the purpose of 'the system' - i.e. the transfer of money from the many to the few.

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

[sorcerer-mar]

Nah, you're exhibiting the fundamental problem which is effectively conspiratorial thinking. Not in the UFO sense, and I don't mean it disparagingly at all -- I mean literally ascribing behavior to some type of superstructure that doesn't really exist.

"The healthcare system" is not one thing that "says" stuff. For every component of the education system that was trying to eliminate trades, there were others trying to combat it, and neither side was merely the decision of any conscious agent that could be said to be deciding or "saying" anything. All of the outcomes and the things these systems "say" are emergent phenomena from a confluence of countless forces. Sometimes they yield bad outcomes!

But that doesn't mean you can just toss out the system, largely because unless you alter the larger dynamics that produced that system, any replacement will just come to mimic the prior one. The individuals involved hardly matter.

[Bnichs]

A system that naturally occurs as a result of the context like you describe sure sounds like a superstructure. Which in our case is a government that allows anyone with the money to steer the ship while actual people have little power to change anything. And when you put enough of those people with money in a room with people who take money and give them laws, it absolutely results in a single unified direction for that system. Of course there are disenters, but they are ineffective compared to those with actual power.

[sorcerer-mar]

Yes, it is a superstructure but not one that "says" things and "makes decisions" in the way people imagine.

> it absolutely results in a single unified direction for that system.

Like below, you must live in an alternate timeline. There are lots of people who chose to "go their own way."

[variadix]

The institutions have failed to follow their own (supposed) standards, and failed to purge bad actors that subverted or abandoned those standards. Yes, ultimately it is the people at those institutions that have failed not the institution in the abstract, but their failure to be accountable triggers the only response the public has: to distrust or abandon existing institutions and seek or create new ones.

[sorcerer-mar]

Do you have some examples of these standards, bad actors, and failures to meet and purge them respectively?

[add-sub-mul-div]

It's not a consipracy theory that the Catholic church harbored pedophiles, it's fact. Yes, there are many good people within the institution who are horrified by this. Not all participated in the conspiracy, and "conspiracy" might not be the right word. But the fact remains, this was the net behavior of the institution.

[sorcerer-mar]

I totally agree, the Catholic church is actually quite monolithic/coherent/directly culpable for output behavior.

That's why I didn't list it in my response, though I think there's even a meaningful difference between "the church" (a super heterogenous type of organization) and "the Catholic church" (a single, highly centralized organization).

[mike_hearn]

The health care system is heavily subject to licensing of various kinds, and academia is heavily defined by grant funding. If just a tiny handful of people in the government decide the healthcare system will say X, then it will say X.

[sorcerer-mar]

As a case in point, GP refers to "the Healthcare system leveraged our own wellbeing against their profits"

That would point toward the business interests of actual provider organizations (like hospitals) or insurers, who have different incentives from each other and very different incentives from individual healthcare providers, who also have very different interests (and are very different people on a variety of dimensions) from those in academia who are "heavily defined by grant funding."

Perhaps you could share a concrete example of what you mean, because right now we're talking about 4 or 5 completely distinct, individually gigantic industries that all interact to produce "the healthcare system" and its behaviors.

[mike_hearn]

The industries don't matter. They are all subject to very broad and powerful government licensing rules that can overrule their own opinions at any time.

For example, during COVID there were doctors who lost their license to practice because they disagreed with the government stance on vaccines. Therefore, the remaining doctors spoke with one voice. The government used them as sock puppets, in effect. Whether you agree with this policy or not, it is an example in which the healthcare system became one system that "said" things in concert.

[sorcerer-mar]

No, they aren't "all" subject to licensing rules. That's why the specific industries do matter.

Can you share some examples of these doctors? AFAIK the only doctors who lost their licenses are those who created fake medical documentation or who shared verifiably false medical information. Not for "disagreeing" with the government stance on vaccines.

I don't know if you lived in a different timeline than me, but I remember a lively debate throughout the entirety of COVID. Consensus (and evidence) was overwhelmingly on one side, sure, similar to how consensus is that you should go to the hospital if you get a heart attack. And yeah, if a doctor advises someone against that despite strong clinical evidence that the patient is best served by going to the hospital, they'll jeopardize their license.

[Bnichs]

The problem is that when the government itself spreads verifiably false information, there are no reprocussions like there are for the individual who does it. Just like when an individual steals money they tend to face consequences, banks who do the same thing on a much more massive scale face nothing.

[mike_hearn]

I'm not going to get into the weeds about COVID because you said:

> the things these systems "say" are emergent phenomena ... Consensus was overwhelmingly on one side ... [those who disagree] jeopardize their license

Rephrased, it's not happening and it's good that it's happening.

Pick your side: either you want agreement in the healthcare system to be trusted because it's the result of many independent decisions pointing in the same direction, or you want a system that punishes dissent. You can't try to claim the benefits of the first whilst cheering on the second.

[jaybrendansmith]

Everyone needs to simply go to a pharmacy or a doctor's office outside the US one time. If everybody did that, the US Healthcare system would be doused with gasoline, lit on fire, and be burned like the trash that it is.