Anime, Lost Dogs, Gordon Bell, Weird Creationists

[tcpip]

Wednesday night went to the Astor Cinema with caseopaya and imajica_lj to see Interstella 5555 an animated musical of the Daft Punk album "Discovery", doubled with Akira. The first film was quite cute, with a bit of self-referential humour, even if their music isn't entirely my style. As for Akira, it mostly has a great story and some very forward-thinking motifs, but I had forgotten how boring the Tetsuo and Kaneda fight scene was. If it had been 1/3 as long, it would have three times as good.

On the way back from the cinema hidden under the bridge of Windsor station we spotted a small terrier, a stray that seemed to have had hurt its back legs. The poor thing was very scruffy with some incredibly matted hair and spending a night under the blaring light and cold concrete of the train station just didn't seem appropriate. So we took the old girl home, snipped some of the worst dreadlocks, gave her some cooked 'roo mince and provided a warmer, softer place to sleep that night. The following morning caseopaya contacted the RSPCA who took her away. I rather suspect if she'd stayed another 24 hours I would have insisted on keeping her. She seemed very grateful for our actions. Anyway, I present you "Digger".



Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend two seminars by one of the pathbreakers in computer science, Gordon Bell. The first was on MyLifeBits an attempt to provide a complete digital record of a person's life, based on the 1940's Memex vision. The second was on the history and operations of the massive Computer History Museum. Chatting over coffee I got him to sign my copy of a PDP-11 core memory maintenance manual (he was responsible for the unibus and general registers architecture). He was so fascinated by the book for a moment I thought he didn't want to give it back!

Afterwards I attended a meeting of the Sea of Faith to hear Rick Barker speak on "The Godly Delusions of Richard Dawkins: The Darwina Codes". The somewhat harsh title contrasted with rather convivial in content and discussed the differenced between "Darwinism" and "scientism" as an ideology versus the actual scientific contributions of Darwin and the facts and theories of the evolution. During the question time after the presentation a woman made the claims that there have been no observed instances of speciation and that there are no intermediate fossils. I suggested to the questioner that this was not the case and that references could be provided, the person got up from their chair, put their hands over their ears and started to make for the door saying 'No, I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!. How the hell are you supposed to reason with such people?

Comments

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

I rather suspect if she'd stayed another 24 hours I would have insisted on keeping her

I did ask if you wanted to, though it is a small flat with two rabbits and two rats already

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I marvel at my self-control :-)

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

Poor wee dog! She looks miserable!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

She looked was a lot happier after a trim and some food.

See that grey-white thing that looks like a fore-leg? That's matted hair.

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

Sounds like someone just dumped her.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I was thinking she had been injured due to her inability to stand up, although she did move around during the night. According to the RSPCA she was old enough to be suffering from sever arthritis.

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

The RSPCA guy said that the owner could have been old as well, and not really able to look after the poor girl... I hate seeing animals in this condition :( I hope they find her a good hope for her last years.

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

Thank-you for looking after the poor lost puppy dog. I hope that my little one never gets lost but if he did, I would hope there would be some-one out there who would look after him & take him to the RSPCA or similar so he could be re-united with us.

Funny, I can hear horrible stories, or see horrible images of people in distress & it doesn't overly effect me. An animal however, has huge impact.

Poor puppy dog, I hope she finds her way home soon.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

caseopaya explained it once on the basis that the individual animal has very limited capacity to look after itself compared to a person who can - at least in theory - draw upon the resources of the community.

I still give priority to people, but I understand the logic.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

The Akira poster, framed, on my wall; a survivor from the days when each of my walls had at least two posters.

I saw two Dawkins-related posts on my Friends list, one after the other, and the most recent was yours, so I couldn't pass up referring to the content of the other.

The excerpt that came with it

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

There is also a late-breaking new development in the controversy, a new theory called Avian Transportation Theory.

Unlike the original Stork Theory, the modern, sophisticated "Avian Transportation Theory" (ATT) merely points out that there are gaps in the orthodox Sex Theory, and that current sonogram imaging is unreliable. Moreover ATT does not specify that babies are necessarily brought by storks but by "large birds unspecified" (although many individual ATT theorists PRIVATELY believe it is a stork).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A great work of ridicule. That cut up of Dawkins in particular is amazing. Although one has raised that the personal attacks used by the militant "New Atheists" ('Ben Stein is an ignorant fool'). Whilst Stein has accused evolutionary theorists of worse (connections with the holocaust?!?) I wonder whether it does well to go down to their level, or whether it is a necessity under the new media.

[zey.livejournal.com]

I haven't come across much of Richard Dawkins work, apart from the documentary "Root of All Evil". While I didn't find much to disagree with, I did feel it was a little too much "preaching to the choir" in how it was presented.

To successfully target and expose fundamentalism, I think there really needs to be more education on both the silliness of the supernatural myth and that this myth can be separated from some of the good things that people still like about their faith: the ethics stuff.

As it is, with a lot of these people, if they lose their faith in the Vengeful God then they lose inhibitions against doing things they know to be wrong: kiddy fiddling, theft, greed, intolerance (which would normally be forbidden under Do Unto Others), etc. There needs to be some sort of easy slot-in replacement ethical structure for them or they'll feel lost (or unduly freed to do terrible things to others).

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

I've somehow dodged almost everything Dawkins has ever done while also knowing who he is and the gist of what he says, but that snippet just seemed bitterly funny is all.

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

I don't think we can reason with people in that position.

Me, I don't even know what to do about those who see an improper teleology in evolution ('striving for the heights with intent', I would call it).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I don't think we can reason with people in that position.

That does seem to be an emerging consensus.

But it fascinates me. Surely they have the neurological ability to engage in at least internal assessment of their beliefs? Or is it (as one person talking to me afterwards suggested) that somemost people simply don't have the cognitive ability? And if they don't, what does that mean for political theory, law etc?

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

A saying I heard on RPGnet: You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A saying I heard on RPGnet: You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into.

*nods* It is very true.

[crankycoyote.livejournal.com]

I recently spent eight hours stuck in a car with one of these people, driving (appropriately enough) across Kansas. She wasn't stupid; quite to the contrary, she appeared capable of intricate reasoning and sophisticated thought when doing so suited her. However, anything that contradicted her belief system was rejected out of hand before it could engage her rational faculties. The primary value in her belief system was pure faith and revelation straight from her god, unpolluted by learned knowledge.

The personal history she related to me over the course of the trip, and the spiritual questing that she seemed to have engaged in before arriving at her belief system indicated to me that she was capable of said internal assessment, but that any external information had been overwhelmed by her internal revelations.

To me, it seemed like the voice of god in her head drowned out everything else, becoming the singular point around which all other information had to be warped to fit.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting insight. Thank you for that.

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

Me, I'm not seeing a lack of cognitive ability so much.

There are none so blind, I guess, and it's fear driving the blindness in cases like your woman above, I expect.

In others still, I suspect a big serving of GroupThink and xenophobia heaped over poor education.

I think the reason we have law in part is that there are various kinds of incompetencies and broken-nesses manifested in the population.

Political theory? I don't know...realising there's a range of ability, maturity, understanding and so on ought obviously to be accomodated, but I don't see it abating the value of progressive ideals generally.

I do see that anarchism and socialism have problems in their unrevised forms.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

(nods) Fear does seem to be a lot of it. Plus fear of acknowledging that fear, fear of people realising they're afraid... What I've never worked out is what they're actually afraid of when you get to the inside of the onion, and why.

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

Their finite existence, I suspect, as I'm certianly very afraid of that...

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

I can understand someone not wanting to hear information that would undermine their fundamental world-view and shake their core beliefs, but what i don't get is why someone with that approach would go to an event where they know that exact sort of debate is going to be put on the table.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I find that part easier; they want to advocate their point view and hopefully gather support for it.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

I guess it must be based on an expectation that the information will support your own viewpoint, and not being prepared for the opposite possibility.

At least this woman's response was honest in the end, essentially admitting that she was only interested in facts if they supported her beliefs. I expect it's a common position, just not many people are as obvious about it.

[amazinggoatgirl.livejournal.com]

You don't understand trolling? Or, if it's not that, trying to appear as though you've given the other side a chance?

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

That i can understand, just not from someone so anxious not to hear information that could challenge her beliefs. I guess she just didn't expect to hear any that would.

[amazinggoatgirl.livejournal.com]

Or didn't realize until then that that was what she was anxious for.

[amazinggoatgirl.livejournal.com]

I'd like to add: I don't think it's just fear of nonexistence, but fear of having to sort out the world independently, both because it's hard and because they could be wrong, with consequences of that ranging from none to extremely severe. Basically, this is fear of thinking about imporatant things all by themselves. So, all information must be filtered and warped to fit the savior. (Savior meaning the psychological comfort, not Jebus.)

And maybe, within a certain set of preferences, it's not sensible to try to figure the world out yourself. It seems to me that there are two basic attitudes toward figuring out what you believe: valuing trying according to a set of values like scientific inquiry, "the journey," if you will, vs. valuing succeeding in finding absolute unchanging truth. Why waste time breaking your head over something you're never going to completely understand? If what you require is the safety of absolutely no doubt, brain-breaking would be a senseless source of misery. Complexity and uncertainty seems to be unacceptable to the 'success people,' but almost required for the 'journey people.' 'Journey people,' on the other hand, seem to find it worth it because of the self-esteem from not succumbing to easy comfort. Heh, it's probably pretty obvious which side I'm on by now...

[horngirl.livejournal.com]

As txxxpxx said, thank you for looking after the little wee dogga. Many wouldn't have been so kind.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, on some things I'm a big softie. :-)

[angel80.livejournal.com]

Poor sad little dog.

[dacian-catamite.livejournal.com]

How do you reason with such people?

A heavy, blunt object helps me, I find. Luckily, I always carry my wit (ba-dum-ching)

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

How the hell are you supposed to reason with such people?

I don't and can't - but if they appear in debates, they make great case studies for the rest of the audience.

[mireille21.livejournal.com]

Ah, you named her she's yours! Will the RSPCA contact you back if her owners aren't found? I ended up with more than one pet that way, and never regretted it. :) Even a cat we didn't name for a week in case someone came and claimed him.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh. Naming her was a danger wasn't it?

I'll give the RSPCA a few more days and then I'll contact them... Not sure if we can fit even a little dog in our flat with all the other fur babies..

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

"I suggested to the questioner that this was not the case and that references could be provided, the person got up from their chair, put their hands over their ears and started to make for the door saying 'No, I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!. How the hell are you supposed to reason with such people?"
Seriously???? I somehow suspect that you're joking to some degree, but I don't get it - did she really say that??

Anyways, I respect Dawkins as a scientist and his theories are interesting, but his view of the human mind is far too mechanistic (plus his insistence that anti-theology has any real import compared to other social movements is a disturbingly narrow-minded approach to social change).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Nope I'm not joking. She really said that. Word for word, I swear.

I agree with that Dawkins' theory of the human mind is incredibly mechanistic. For Dawkins it would seem that moral decisions are evolved, rather than developed.

re: the blue piller

[decrypt-era.livejournal.com]

No, I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!

Although this sort of thing does leave me gasping,
it does have, at least, the virtue of honesty.
The bulk of th population tend to employ more sophisticated methods of anti-communication,
leading to countless wasted hours chasing the tantalising hope
that at some point information might be exchanged.

Over the years, i'v reached the conclusion
that you can't tell a person anything
which they don't already get, in some sense.
That is, you can help them become aware of something buried in their subconscious,
you can give them words to express something they've felt but couldn't explain,
you can reassure them that other ppl have thought what they're thinking,
those sort of things, but
you cannot communicate to them something outside their world-view,
it simply does not exist for them.
You can connect the dots, but you can't make the dots.

My tactic these days is to simply ask people questions about what they think,
so that hopefully they'l meet their own inconsistencies,
and evolve their own answers to these problems.
It still gets a fairly anti-communicative response,
people still believe i'm trying to convince them of something,
have some agenda up my sleeve or whatnot,
but it's th best i'v come up with so far.

Re: re: the blue piller

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Over the years, i'v reached the conclusion
that you can't tell a person anything
which they don't already get, in some sense.

Well, if one doesn't approach an issue with the intention to learn, teach and reach consensus with their alter they are doomed from the start.

Re: the blue piller

[decrypt-era.livejournal.com]

I agree, i'm very fond of ideas like mutual information exchange and consensus,
but most people i meet don't seem aware of these possibilities.
I'm afraid that 6000 years of authority has left the bulk of our species
acting as passive information receptors nearly all of the time.
So, if to hear and understand is to comply,
then being asked to conceive of an idea one doesn't agree with is threatening,
and the reaction will be defensive,
as if the intruding notion were an infection.

Perhaps i'm being naive to hope that communication isn't doomed in this condition,
that people can sometimes simply choose to wake up of their own accord,
perhaps in response to my requests,
but without fearing that i somehow made them do it,
and confident in th knowledge that they can always make of my ideas what they will.

Re: the blue piller

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The nightmare of people being terrified (passive-aggressive) in being found out as wrong or ignorant weighs heavily upon those minds. Not only this, but many engage in discussion with the purpose to bully and berate their opposition. I readily admit to having done this myself.

Re: the blue piller

[decrypt-era.livejournal.com]

I'd say this is a key factor in a person i'd describe as aware -
are they willing to examine themselves for the flaws they see in others?
Waking up isn't a once only event, i reckon,
you can continue to wake up again and again.
The only kind of leadership i'll accept is by example.
I'm often gobsmacked by the unrelenting stupidity of my species,
but i also hafta admit to being th biggest fool i know.
I guess if i work on that, i'm doin my part to improve the human race, eh?

[devilgirly.livejournal.com]

I love you guys for taking the puppy dog home.

I've done the same more than once - but I always give the dog (plus the largest donation of dog food I can afford) to a non-kill shelter if I can't re-home it myself. The RSPCA are a wonderful wonderful organisation but they are unfortunately still a kill shelter (and one of the dogs I re-homed years ago was a wolf-dog hybrid which have quite an underground popularity but are decidely illegal - but personally I'm willing to go outside the law when puppy dogs are involved!)

Have you had any updates on whether Digger's been re-homed yet? *fingers crossed* :) x

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I haven't checked myself on Digger's status... My main concern is that she was old and possibly with a broken hip or similar.

[devilgirly.livejournal.com]

:( Oh I hope they fixed her up for re-homing. Surely even if she did have a broken bone they wouldn't give up on her. Poor l'il Digger.