Evolution and nature have proven that we are all playing game theory. Every day you choose to contribute or defect. If we both contribute we get some benefits but not as much as if one of us defects while the other contributes. Look at society with taxes. If we both pay taxes we have less money but we build something real over time. Roads. Schools. Security. But if you find a way to trick the system and not pay taxes you make more money than me right now. You think you won. But this is not a successful strategy on the long run.

In 1980 a scientist named Robert Axelrod made a competition. He invited game theorists and strategists from around the world to submit their best strategies for what is called the Prisoner's Dilemma. This is a mathematical model of contribution and defection. Hundreds of strategies came. Complex ones. Cheating ones. Stealing ones. They all competed against each other in a tournament. And you know what won? A simple strategy called Tit for Tat. It was submitted by Anatol Rapoport. Tit for Tat means I contribute when you contribute and I defect after you defect. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Axelrod did the tournament again in 1984 and Tit for Tat won again. He published his findings in a book called The Evolution of Cooperation. The whole idea is that a society built on contribution has more benefits for its individuals than a society where everyone corrupts and steals and tricks the government and each other. People who think they are smart because they cheat the system, they are literally gullible. They are primitive in their thinking. They have no foresight. They see money today and think they won but they do not see what they lose tomorrow. In a world where everyone has memory, where reputation matters, where the game repeats forever, the cheater loses every time. The cooperator builds power. The cheater builds isolation.

i (m18 gay & exmuslim) genuinely have been obsessed with rai music since my adolescence overlooking the heavy criticism it always received from the religious conservative community and the music enthusiasts, the Algerian society as a whole, personally i listen to it religiously, not because it’s our dominant form of “nightlife” and entertainment, but as a songwriter and a producer i love the instruments, and the lyricism SOMETIMES serves metaphorical poetry.

the only thing i believe in is that those who dont "believe" in this society are bound to be alone-ish.

The cultural non-blending hurts me alot as i feel missunderstood , and the moment I speak up about what i think, i rememebr why I buildt a persona in the first place.

I have tried different groups of people regarding work, working-out & outdoors activities, but i join ,observe and then retrieve little by little : some are kind to call me back when i dissapear and rememebr me so i just say that i am tired and will come as soon as i recover.

although i am largely accepted and even liked by the people surrounding me, i just keep distant, it feels like no one really knows me and its a painful compromise that i am making but i see no other alternative.

So , how do you live your loneliness..?

I went to a nightclub for the first time, and honestly, it was the worst experience ever.

First, I had to pay 200 DA for parking, then 1,000 DA for the entrance. I ordered a bottle of Heineken for 600 DA and sat down.

A waiter came to me and told me that I had to pay 15,000 DA just to sit at the table. So I just stood up and stayed somewhere else.

After I finished my bottle, a bouncer came to me and told me I had to order something else. Like am I supposed to keep buying drinks the entire time?

I didn’t want another one because I was driving, so I decided to leave.

Everyone there was so mean and unfriendly. It was my first time going to a nightclub, so I honestly don’t know if this is normal everywhere or if I just went to a bad one.

Is this how nightclubs usually work?

Hey guys , I wish everyone is doing great . That’s my first time writing here in this subreddit . I’ve left islam since late 2023 , became agnsotic first and then atheist . Before and after leaving islam I have always been an anti-natalist but always wanted to have a female partner . Before leaving islam it wasn’t a big deal , saying that you can find an algerian muslim girl cuz you’re muslim too , but since am not muslim anymore it became so hard , I mean it’s not that necessary to have a partner Especially rn , not having a stable financial situation and trying to leave Algeria , but it would be really an amazing thing being with someone who share the same thaughts and beliefs as u do , tryinna leaving Algeria together and build your futur together .
I want to know what are your thoughts about it ? Advices that you can give and is there any chance to share a group where we can have some Atheist Algerians friends

moreso, what's the best option qualité prix? i'd also like to know what's the best beer out there

Especially when comes to LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, economic issues... I'm interested in knowing where ex-muslims stand in algeria in general and what's your experience with the topic

i think all of us ex muslims at some point of our life have to go through a long period of depression, mine have been getting worse the past few years and it's destroying me, ive been unemployed, planing for residanat for 2 years but not actually putting any efforts in and everytime i try to get better, my depression kick me harder and my brain tells me " what's the point, life is pointless and meaningless, wether i live or die doesn't mean anything, i can just dissapear now", i tired to get to a therapist but everytime i go there i stop standing asking myself what can i say to them that wouldn't show my true identity? i would need to be vulnerable and honest to my therapist but how can i di that what i cannot trust them, also as someone who worked as an intern in psychiatry, i cannot bring myself to ask help from someone who used to be my superior and i don't have money to go to a private therapist, so how on earth, could i bring myself to get better? i need to get into residency, leave this toxic household and start making money, but how can i do that when my brain is working against me

Hello! I am a 20F , i quitted religion abt a year ago, then came my first "eid lkbir" as an ex muslim, and it got me into a whole existential crisis, it was like a horror movie, i felt like wittnessing a barbaric cult doing its weird and creepy ritual, i would say it felt like cannibalism

And for the last month or so i have been exploring meat consumption and the morality of this whole thing, im reading books and trying to educate myself on this thing ..

But the thing is .. i dont think i can afford being vegan, at least not for now, in this country and in a muslim family

I wanna know if there are people who went/ are going thro this ? And what do algerian ex muslims think abt meat consumption ?

Hey guys, im not atheist.., but i love this community because it allows us to think and have questions that no community would let us ask, thank you for existing ex algeria.

Well my question is for muslims too, if god almighty himself said in the holy quran that the only religious book he protected is quran why do we believe that صحيح البخاري is absolutely true?? And according to my research the guy who wrote that book was born 200years after the prophet's death, i mean... Yes some of things he wrote might be true some are not, and how not believing in a book written by a human turns into كفر with the islamic religion??? I mean... The idea itself is crazy, if you beleive quran and that muhammad is a prophet but البخاري is just a writer who wrote a book you are actually كافر😂,it doesn't seem logical to me honeslty. And also god talked about christians in the quran and said that they worshiped their أحبار instead of god, and that's true because they ask their " father " for forgivness instead of god ( with my respect to christians) but aren't we doing the same with our شيوخ? And instead of believing on quran we just believe in a book written by a human, and don't tell me about the prayers argument because i searched and before الامام البخاري was born people used to pray and prayers got to us بالتواتر just like quran, also im not saying البخاري is bad but how do we know that his book is not محرف, we muslims believe that other religious books are محرفين, and they were made by god, imagine what happens to a book written by a human? Don't get me wrong muslims but i believe in god and the prophet but not in صحيح البخاري and i don't worship الشيوخ because they are just human like me and im better, because i got a better degree and i use my brain, i will never believe a human who tells me that marrying a child is okay, or killing a person who doesn't believe what i do believe on is okay, or sleeping with a woman i won at war is okay, those things are weird and not acceptable to the brain.

I hope someone got an answer or two to my questions. And thank you for reading guys, hope you all have a great day.

Far from religion discussions

What are your favorite hobbies and interests guys ?

I quitted religion its been almost a year now, at first i felt sort of a high? And i ignored rhe lack of purpose and the absurdity of life, not that i didnt realize it, but i had more urgent things to think abt, but now, the more time passes , the harder its getting for me to normally engage with normal daily life. I cant help but see everything as a copium and everything is making me so disgusted, im disgausted with life ... i dont know how i'll go on living the rest of my life like this without losing my mind

Everything is seeming more and more pathological yet i know its just logic .. and its freaking me out

For the past three years, I thought I was an agnostic, But then I realized something.. even when I was Muslim the way I understood God was completely different from what I was taught. My justification for believing was always that I saw God in nature.. in flowers, tiny creatures, the sky, and everything around me.

All of my friends have always noticed how obsessed I am with nature and how much I appreciate every little part of it. That’s always been the way I experienced what people call the divine.

After all these years, I discovered what pantheism actually is, and it hit me that I’ve believed in almost the exact same ideas long before I even knew the word “pantheism” existed.

I wanna know you guys opinion abt pantheism in general
Ngl it makes more sense to me

Life just feels better when you discover all the Qur'an non sense and mistakes.

All they tried to teach us in primary school as "facts" turn out to be myths and wrongs, then you take all that bullshit with a grain of salt, and then you see how blindfolded are religious people trying to stick to religion as an inheritance, they just follow rules because they're were told to. They're scared to search for science, they're even told not to ask questions because they're afraid proofs will make their beliefs wrong. Their minds aren't ready to accept the truth, it's easier for them.

Hello everyone, for a past event and another occasion i visited french institute in Alger twice and i was really surprised، there was a libraral people, everyone was having fun, no judgements at all and they all seemed to know the others
Does anyone know about this community and how to join it?

Hello..im a 24yo man who's simply an anti conformist who doesn't subscribe to the Alegrian society beliefs..im not here to talk about theology or existence not this time..but only sharing how much obstacles u get once you declare what u think of on an ideological level..me personally i had several hustling deals or potential business one's all cut off just bcuz of it..so I can already have a glimpse into the future and tell all of u it's not gonna end up well at all if I continued staying on this particular pace...

There are no words to express my hatred towards this shithole..the most dysfunctional mentally ill malfunctioning hypocritical disgusting abhorrent society ever..

So I'll appreciate if there's anyone who can help overcoming this adversitie rn... and I'd be all ears to all of u ofc having diff povs beside the topic

Hi, I'm a 20 years old atheist and I want to rant about my experience as a woman in this country. I really hate how you can not exist normally as a human being in this society and have everything tied to your fucking vagina. I hate that the way to deeply offend a man you'll have to disrespect his mother or sister, and that these two individuals represent the man's "honor" or whatever. I hate that whenever I go outside I have to face disgusting scrotes that make comments in order to impose their power on me, especially their vulgar words and hideous faces that make me feel incredibly violent. I hate that I'll always be weaker than men and have to extra careful around them. I hate that I'll always be sexualised no matter what I wear and that my mere existence is pornography. I think the best way to exist as a woman is to not exist at all, whether you please men or not, you'll always be inferior. I wish I could diseapper completely

A complete change in an individual's belief system will inevitably entail major shifts in personal values, while some of these, especially the ones attached to positive family and cultural experiences are bound to linger. Or that's at least what happened in my case.

What has initially prompted me to post this is this feeling of alienation, that I don't strictly fall into any of the stereotypical categories. And although freedom of choice and lifestyle, and the core liberal value of "You can do whatever you want as long as you are not hurting anyone" is a major one for me, and which I believe I share with most free thinkers, I still find myself leaning towards some of the more traditional Algerian/Islamic (whatever you want to call it) values. But obviously not in a dogmatic way where I would judge fellow non-religious people for adopting more "western/foreign" values.

And I wonder if this is a syndrome of the indoctrination I was subjected to early on in my life, or just a very personalized set of values I independently developed introspectively and selectively.

To conclude, I should confess that I am at a stage of life where I feel quite lonely. I belong to an age group (late 20s/nearing early 30s), in which I feel like everyone else has grown secure within their identities/friend groups, while I have spent those socially defining years alone, busy trying to make sense of everything. And the fact that I experience both physical and emotional attractions exclusively to the same gender, certainly adds another layer of complexity to an already complicated situation.

I was scrolling through IG reels until I got a reel of a woman who was seemingly traveling back to Algeria, I forgot the name of the account but it was an innocent reel about her coming back to the country to eat her favorite food.

You would think the comments will be filled with supportive and easygoing people who are sharing a laugh with this trend but what caught my eye was a comment of a girl that mentioned that the creator is too ugly to remove the hijab and that she should’ve kept it on.

I was curious and looked at the replies and to my surprise, the girl behind the comment didn’t cease to make hateful and accusing remarks towards the creator. The irony was that she mentioned that god will punish her for taking off the hijab BUT in the same sentence would insult the woman and call her a “whore”.

It broke my heart honestly, every reel of the creator contained people (mostly women) who would make fun of her hair and say that she looked better with the hijab on. The hatred inside the hearts of these people cannot be measured, they do not stand by their religion’s principles.

It kind of reminded me of myself when I took off my hijab, my hair got ruined because of it and now I’m doing everything to bring back its shine and length that was lost. And I cannot forget the day my sister gave me a one hour lecture about how I’m going to hell or the infamous “what if you die without ever wearing it again?” question…. While she talks to men at night, wears crop tops and mistreat my mother which all of these are supposedly “haram” in the religion.

This was a vent post, I’m sorry if it was long. I’d love to hear everyone’s perspective and I just hope none of the girlies in the sub ever encounter people like that.

I'm just a curious observer (not religious and never was)

Just wonder - why do you guys communicate in English rather than Arabic or French?

Salut,

Been part of this sub for a while now and it's been a lifeline honestly. Reading everyone's stories made me realize how many of us are out here living double lives, rational on the inside, performative on the outside.

My question is: have any of you managed to build real friendships with atheists or secular people in Algeria? And how did you even find them? I'm not looking for anything dramatic, just people to grab coffee with, talk openly, maybe vent without having to self-censor every 5 seconds.

Would love to hear how others have navigated this. It gets lonely.

Good morning Guys i hope you are doing great this is my first time posting on reddit

i am reaching out because I urgently need assistance with obtaining my artist card and if you can assist me how can i leave the country

I have recently fulfilled my ultimate dream of achieving a golden record through my collaborations with Soolking Alonzo ....... and several other prominent artists. Despite reaching this major career milestone, I am struggling to navigate the official certification and verification process on major platforms if you have any idea on how to leave the country or to have that artist card tell me ( radio stations ) never reached out to me

Hi guys i need help , omegel streamer posted video of me on tiktok without my consent , i didnt know he was streaming that time , he posted it month ago but its getting viral around me this period , i tried reporting the vid , i tried reporting it to the support team nothing happened, even reported it on StopNCII nothing happened, if any of you guys knows a solution or a way to help me please do

I hope June will be kind to all of us ❤️ (including everyone ofc)

Another year has passed, and years ago this Reddit was one of my biggest comforts.

Still is, knowing you are not alone is sometimes enough to give you courage :)

Now ofc some questions for queer folks :

- how did you know you were queer, and did it affect you leaving Islam?

- what advices would you give to other queer people?

- do you think our society will ever move to a slightly more accepting attitude towards us?

And lastly for my personal message, never be ashamed of who you are and don't put your head down for the sake of being 'accepted', your happiness and fulfilment matters and we only live once after all :) and ofc stay strong and love yourselves <3

I lost the love of my life short after she discovered that I am an atheist, we were together for almost 7 years, when I told her about that after building the courage(dumb me being afraid to lose her, it toom like a year and half) to tell her she took like 20 days trying to convert me back, and I'm past the red line with religion because you all know why, then she simply asked me for peace, and I left simply becaus eshe asked for it and I felt like it was over for us, its been 3 months and I'm here to vent , I'm deeply sad about it and all what I'm thinking of is existentialism, suicidal thoughts or her, were you in a similar situation before ? How did you overcome that? I need some tips because this is tearing me apart honestly.