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

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?