Just wanted to say congratulations on your job at Kotaku, and on embarking upon a spiritual journey. Such things are almost always grand adventures.

I just had a couple of comments.

- I haven't read Decreation, but the idea of religious ecstasy as a kind of death has certainly been around a long time; but I think in most cases it's based on a misunderstanding. A spiritual life often centres on the death of the ego, which isn't exactly the same as the self. The ego is the set of beliefs we have about ourselves, and which we're afraid to let go of. But when we do, we see that we're capable of much more than we ever dreamed, and we can move on in life without fear, because we're no longer trying to protect this little image we have of who we are.

In a psychological sense, this also has to be related to the idea of "Flow"--which definitely occurs during immersion in a game, or in any activity where your level of skill closely matches the degree of challenge of the situation. But again, that sense of immersion is a lack of self-consciousness; a lack of ego, not an actual death of self.

- You're definitely on to something about not having a figurehead or "face" to your potential new religion. That's how most of the major one's started (although they usually forget why after a while). In the beginnings of Buddhism, the Buddha was never represented visually. Likewise, it's very likely that early Christianity had no specific image or person in the place of Jesus; and it may in fact have its origins in Egyptian mystery cults. It's also the reason that Islam forbids making images of Mohammed. All of these faiths recognized at one time or another that putting a label on something or making an image of it would actually distract people from Divine Truth, which is something much harder to pin down. The first line of the Tao Te Ching is: "The Tao (The Way) that can be named is not the eternal way." In much the same way that the ego distracts a person from their true self, which is something much larger, complex, and open ended; an idol or icon does the same thing to Truth/God.

- I like your idea of a crowd-sourced religion. I had a similar idea a couple of years ago for a wiki-based open-source religion. In practice, I think it would be a huge undertaking, but who knows? Projects of this type it could definitely be worth it. (In fact, at the risk of sounding a little strange, check out something called the Simulation Hypothesis on Wikipedia. The idea is that we may already be living in a simulated reality--such that, effectively, life is already just a giant RPG).

- Religion is not just a set of beliefs. It's also a set of practices which are designed to help people experience the Flow state mentioned above (in all areas of their lives, particularly their social relationships, not just when playing games). It's one thing to say you believe in something. It's another thing entirely to put it into practice.

- However, I don't know if the competitive leaderboard idea is really what you want. The problem with competition is that it creates a state of mind which tends to be counterproductive to producing the attitudes a healthy religion is trying to foster. You want people to do good works because that's what they're naturally inclined to do--you want them to be intrinsically motivated by the act itself, because it's meaningful and socially constructive. What you definitely don't want is people trying to one-up each other, trying to be more moral than the next guy, because they're seeking external rewards of points or tokens or popularity on a social network. In the end, it's your religion, but this is something you need to consider.

- For more information on all of this, check out a guy named Jordan Peterson on YouTube. He's spent a lot of time looking at the psychology of religion and belief, as well as what happens when belief goes wrong (like in the case of Totalitarian regimes like the Nazis, etc.). Here's a couple of links to his videos:

Reality and the Sacred -
[www.youtube.com]

The Necessity of Virtue -
[www.youtube.com]

They're both about an hour long, but I can't recommend them highly enough. He really explains religion... and addresses questions like "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?"

Anyway, best of luck with everything!

And until we live in a society that predominantly feeds people's health & happiness, instead of their fears, that's not likely to change.

[www.livescience.com] #tips

But in the end, they're all D&D. It's like the potato or plain white bread of gaming. Killing cardboard monsters and taking their loot gets pretty damn boring pretty damn fast.

Give me some Dogs in the Vineyard, or Feng Shui, or even Warhammer; anything; Please!

I loves me my Cyberpunk TV. Another Canadian one I liked, but only lasted 1 season was Total Recall. It could be a bit hammy, but I loved the Blade-Runner / noir feel.

As for his ignorance... well, I've been pretty certain of that since he said Philosophy was dead. But he certainly isn't the first high profile scientist to loudly denigrate pursuits he obviously doesn't understand, in the process of exalting his own field of interest.

However, I don't think Hawking is alone among men (nerd men or otherwise) for finding women mysterious. Any man who says he truly understands women is either a liar, or selling something.

It's true what you say though: Growing up I definitely did have a bit of an attitude toward "meaningless" social norms. I had a heck of a time in Junior high school when everybody was assigned a team in the house league and expected to support that team and foam at the mouth at pep rallies. Nothing could be more stupid, as far as I'm concerned, than pledging one's allegiance to a randomly assigned word.

It's also true that "normal" folks often don't know how to handle things either--it could be that I just worry about it more than most people. Either way though, it has been a big problem, and so I'm looking forward to proper testing when it comes.

In answer to your questions, sometimes the innuendo is something I purposefully ignore, but not usually. More often then not I miss it when there's a subtext between other people, and when it's aimed at me I just can't tolerate it.

Veiled insults make me really uncomfortable. Usually I just try to find the quickest escape to the situation. That's also what happens when a pretty girl says something suggestive and I can't quite believe it or respond to it... so needless to say, a number of wonderful opportunities have flown right over my head over the years. I definitely like to think before I act, and that quality doesn't lend itself very well to romance.

The XKCD comic is bang on--or it was, back when I was in university and high school.

As for sensory overstimulation, that's definitely an issue. Strong emotional displays in others typically intimidate me; especially anger or fear. Sadness not as much. I'm going to find out if I'm an HSP, too, as I can definitely relate to the description you linked.

But even unemotional chaos really gets to me. Too much noise or activity in a room confuses and tires me. It wasn't always as bad as it is now, but I went through a serious depression a few years ago--and since then it's been pretty major. Although it's possible it always bothered me and I just didn't realize it. And in many ways I've always tended to jump at the unexpected, shy away from the unknown, and panic when important plans change.

It's a bit weird though--for inconsequential things, I just relax and go with the flow. Also, I'm terribly disorganized myself. As long as I'm the one who made my desk a mess, I can deal with it (although I still don't like it). When I was a kid, I could have LEGO bricks scattered all over the floor, piles of toys all around... and yet I could always tell if a single one was out of place. My siblings stayed out of my room, because I would always know if one of them had been in there.

In any case, thank you for what you've said. Aspie or not, it's definitely good to have a community, even an unofficial one. It's one of the reasons I come to io9, and it's great to be able to relate to people with similar circumstances and interests. Best of luck in your travels :)

I will try and remember to look you up in May; but unfortunately my memory for that kind of thing isn't very good. Ask me about various bits of SF trivia and I'm golden, but I frequently have to write myself little notes to remember to take out the garbage or go to the bank.

I think Chip Overclock summed it up well (in an earlier thread) when he said it's sort of a spectrum thing... that is, everybody falls somewhere on the scale of autistic, just in some cases it's severe, and in others it's barely there at all or even nonexistent. So it seems reasonable that a person could have some traits resembling an Asperger's person, but not all.

It might be similar to something like depression--everybody feels sad and even depressed at times, but there's a threshold for when it becomes an actual disorder that might need to be treated or dealt with in a unique way.

The thing I find is: I'm not insensitive to people's emotions... Quite often I pick up far too strongly on people's emotions, and I find it crippling. I don't know how to react; and I so I freeze, or I panic and find myself gulping for air.

Other times, I am indeed quite blind to the subtleties of a situation. I have real problems with innuendo. Sometimes I miss it entirely, and other times I see it but don't know how to react--so I react to the literal meaning of a statement and pretend there was no subtext.

And, I often feel somewhat baffled by my own emotions. The obvious ones are not a problem, but often something will be bothering me and I won't realize it until I really feel wretched.

I don't know if this resonates with anybody else out there who may actually have Asperger's or something else, but I'd be interested to find out what other people think about this sort of thing.

I have an opportunity to be tested sometime in the next several months, which I'm going to take. Still, the waiting is a bit frustrating.