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

[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...