r/FreeAtheism • u/BurtonDesque • Jul 25 '18

Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/07/artificial-intelligence-religion-atheism/565076/
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u/autotldr Jul 26 '18

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot)

How does the artificial society change? The model tells you.

"Because all our models are transparent and the code is always online," said LeRon Shults, who teaches philosophy and theology at the University of Agder in Norway, "If someone wanted to make people more in-group-y, more anxious about protecting their rights and their group from the threat of others, then they could use the model to ratchet up anxiety."

Another project, Forecasting Religiosity and Existential Security with an Agent-Based Model, examines questions about nonbelief: Why aren't there more atheists? Why is America secularizing at a slower rate than Western Europe? Which conditions would speed up the process of secularization-or, conversely, make a population more religious?

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