We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – Why Ayaan is now a Christian At the time, there were many eminent leaders in the West — politicians, scholars, journalists, and other experts — who insisted that the terrorists were motivated by reasons other than the ones they and their leader Osama Bin Laden had articulated so clearly. So Islam had an alibi.
This excuse-making was not only condescending towards Muslims. It also gave many Westerners a chance to retreat into denial. Blaming the errors of US foreign policy was easier than contemplating the possibility that we were confronted with a religious war. We have seen a similar tendency in the past five weeks, as millions of people sympathetic to the plight of Gazans seek to rationalise the October 7 terrorist attacks as a justified response to the policies of the Israeli government.
– Ayaan Hirsi Ali
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/christmas/2023/11/10/the-padre-sat-through-the-night-with-the-dead-pilot/
Slightly O/T but one day before Remembrance Sunday I thoroughly recommend this excellent article.
IMHO, there is indeed a vacuum in Western philosophy. When people reject religion, there is no fully realized secular philosophy to which I can point. For me, Rand clarified a vast set of issues, but her lack of understanding of human psychology (Brandon notwithstanding) causes folks to recoil from her writings. E.g., the fundamental desire for forgiveness is anathema to her characters. I believe that the attainment of such a philosophy, which embodies both rationality and humanity, is possible. But the lack of it, during a period of advancing secularity, leaves the secular largely adrift in a sea of irrationality and emotional flailing. The existence of Samizdata shows that rational folk can find their way without falling into the various metaphysical pits that litter the landscape. But for a cultural solution, as I tell my religious friends, in the present situation, I think that Christianity may be the West’s only hope.
Judeo-Christianity, and Branden. Sigh…
When one faces evil of overwhelming power, and when one also faces terrible cowardice – the vicious establishment cowardice that seeks to appease evil – and punishes anyone who tells the truth as “ists” and “phobes” (the truth being denounced as a “phobia”), it is incredibly difficult not to despair – and to turn to suicide as the only way to retain a scrap of dignity, and not live in torment and disgrace.
An option that says “do not despair – you are not alone, for I am with you” is very attractive to some of us – we may indeed be weak minded fools clinging to false hope against all-mighty-evil, but we shall have to see.
Perhaps we are “all alone in the dark” the dark being the overwhelming and absolute power of evil – or perhaps we are NOT.
Paul, it may be torment, but it is certainly not your disgrace. You are far from a weak minded fool, as any in this parish can attest. Your dignity is intact, no matter the actions, or lack thereof, of the weak minded fools around us. Together, we are not all alone in the dark, irrespective of the differences we have.
American foreign policy – in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places, was based on the assumption that a small group of people had “misinterpreted” or “distorted and perverted” a peaceful religion, much as the regime that took power in Japan in the late 19th century turned the peaceful nature religion of Shrine Shinto into the aggressive State Shinto with its justification of endless conquest and savage cruelty – after World War II State Shinto was smashed, turned back into Shrine Shinto, just as Italian Fascism and German National Socialism were smashed – because they had shallow roots (only a generation or so), both Germany and Italy had existed long before Fascism and National Socialism.
The trouble with the American, indeed Western, assumption, was-and-is that it was totally wrong – there was no “misinterpretation” other than by Mr Bush, Mr Blair and the various “experts” who advised them. Islam is what it is – the teachings and personal example of Muhammed (which are well known to learned Muslims) – to think in terms of “Islamism” (“Islamism is not Islam” and all the other cliches I heard an ex head of counter terrorism trot out, on GB News, today) is silly. And it does not have shallow roots – it goes back 14 centuries as AHA knows so well. As for people who call themselves Muslims but reject the teachings and personal example of Muhammed – Muhammed himself had a hash name for such people, he called them “hypocrites” and held that they should be killed.
As the basic Western assumption is wrong, the policies based upon this assumption will turn out badly – as they are based upon a false premise. But rather than accept any of this I expect the Western establishment to carry on screaming “Islamophobe!” and punishing (yes punishing) people who try to warn them. At a certain point cowardice turns vicious – the coward dare not fight someone who is the real threat to them and their family, so they turn on other people, people who point out the danger to them, because that is easier – there is no danger in punishing people who are trying to warn you, and it is irritating to be told something that you, secretly, already know – but are ashamed to admit.
As for the marches around the Western world – these are in support of the October 7th attack, the marches are in support of the rape, mutilation and murder.
The marchers, both Muslim and non Muslim (there are many “Woke” Marxists, atheists, on some of these marches) support the October 7th attack – they support the rapes, mutilations and murders. There is no “knowledge problem” here – the marchers know what was done and they support what was done, and they would like to do these things in all Western countries. They have chosen, freely chosen, evil.
The Western establishment desperately deny this – but they know it to be the truth. That is why they are so scared, terrified, and that is why they “lash out” at (punish) people who try and warn them (because they already know).
However, I repeat my own opinion that the true threat to the West is NOT from Islam, NOT from Muslims- the true threat to the West is from its own internal decay, and Muslim people are NOT responsible for that.
Western civilisation has certain basic principles – and these basic principles are now utterly rejected by the establishment elite and, although to a lesser extent, they are also rejected by most ordinary people.
Hence the West is dying – Islam, Muslims, are NOT to blame.
This is where she lost me:
Who said there is a meaning or purpose to life? The only real purpose is to pass on one’s genes, but beyond that biological imperative, where is it written in stone that there is any real meaning or purpose to this mess? You live, you do and encounter things, you die, fade to black. The energy and chemicals that make up you are recycled. If anyone says differently, demand proof.
Steven R said:
Ah, the nihilist view… Nothing matters, so it doesn’t matter what you do in life, to yourself or others.
The point that this belief system, if it may even be termed such a thing, is based on the same foundations all the other ones are, which is nothing at all, seems to elude its adherents.
I honestly don’t profess to “know” any of these things, being as I am not God himself to pronounce on them. I can’t say He (or, She, or It…) even exists, or that there is some underlying rationale to the cosmos I find myself thinking I inhabit. I am uncertain of everything my highly erratic and unreliable senses report to the tiny mass of gelatin fats and soluble liquids that I do my thinking on…
But, I do know one thing, and that is this: If I live as a self-pleasing nihilist, certain somehow that nothing matters? Then, nothing does matter, to me or anyone else.
If I go down that path, what does that make me other than a collection of chemicals interacting badly with the void? Does that belief comfort me, or induce me to behave as a better human being, a better person? Am I inspired by that belief, to be better, or encouraged to be a self-centered asshole, seeking only my own self-gratification?
I’m afraid that we’ll only know for certain if such a metaphysical question is even answerable when our lives draw to a close and we find out what happens next. Until then, I’m going to have to default to being the best human being I can be, within the understanding I have of such things, and that while the spiritual belief system may be delusional, it is also aspirational, supporting and encouraging me to live a better life.
So, for that point alone? I think that the nihilistic approach laid out in Steven R’s post is incredibly short-sighted and fundamentally erroneous. Terry Pratchett spoke to this point in his fiction, when he said that you have to have at least some irrational beliefs in order to be truly human, because anything else just leads to the mindset typified here, which isn’t at all conducive to leading a life of positivity and good works. If it doesn’t matter, then why bother?
I find most of the “believers” to be rather better neighbors than the nihilists. They’ll at least go through the general motions of being decent human beings more consistently…
Not always, mind you, but sufficient enough unto my needs.
I wouldn’t say I’m a nihilist so much as a doubter. If someone wants me to believe there is more to all of this than an accident of evolution, then I need proof. Until someone provides evidence that there is a reason or purpose or whatnot behind humanity, then I can’t just assume that’s the case any more than I can assume there in one god, no gods, an unlimited number of gods, the Force, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever.
If I have to be pegged as something I’m going with philosophical pessimist and that it would be best for the universe as a whole if humans just stopped reproducing and walked into oblivion on our terms to opt out of a raw deal provided by out huge brains, but that’s not an altogether popular notion, but one I’m good with. In the meantime, I don’t lie, cheat, steal, or kill. I don’t hurt people or take their stuff, I try to be pleasant and helpful and enjoy the little things in life, but at the end of the day I don’t think there is anything more after death than there was before conception.
Either that or I’ll just float in a pool sunning myself while The Dude looks for an ATM.
If you hold to a belief because you think holding that belief makes you a better person, or makes the world a better place, or serves you in some other way, you’re not really a believer.
What do you presume that does make you?
Source of a belief has no bearing on whether or not you believe. If anything, rationally working out where you’re deriving your beliefs from probably makes your belief stronger, as opposed to just having accepted the prescribed writ from someone else who did the same thing you’re mocking.
Are your beliefs more valid because you accepted them second-hand? Without rational thought on the matter?
Mostly, it makes me an atheist. (ETA: Okay, old argument – it makes me an agnostic.)
I’d love it if everyone else in the universe believed in the Christian doctrines that get the shorthand label of Golden Rule. My life would be great if everyone believed they’d avoid hell by treating me as they would like to be treated.
But there’s nothing in that chain that moves my mind closer to believing that a god exists. I just hope that others believe that, because their belief benefits me.
The idea that god must exist because my life would be better if he does just doesn’t get any traction in my addled mind.
We invented dancing and kept it going because it is joyful and enhances our days. Same for music and song. So why not for any life-affirming religion such as Christianity?
Precisely.
There’s also the observation to be made that nearly all nihilists end by becoming monsters. If nothing matters, why not give in to the darker urges…?
Hell, even better? Why term them dark, in the first place? Why shouldn’t we all be hedonistic baby-killers?
After all, none of it really matters. It’s all just chemicals dancing in the starlight, yes…?
That’s why we have personal moral bases. It’s possible to adhere to any moral structure without the external enforcement mechanism of a god smiting you for transgressions. My own self-esteem depends on my being a good person. The Golden Rule philosophy is a great philosophy standing alone.
I think that me depending on and living by my own moral beliefs is less nihilist than being good out of a fear of numinous punishment.
Agree, mostly. That’s why, agnostic as I am, I consider religion to have been, on the balance, a very good influence on humanity.
But nothing in that statement leads me to believe there’s a god. It might make me wish there was one, but that’s not a basis to believe.
One more entry into my wall-of-text here, but one that might bring me back on-topic:
Reading Ms. Ali’s essay, I’m struck by one thing.
She started as a fitful Muslim, became more devout, became an atheist, and then became a Christian.
Reading her essay, I see nothing noting any personal revelatory experience that made her belief in a god change. No burning bushes, no signs, no changes in her core moral structure. Nothing about Allah versus Jehovah.
All of the changes seem to have been made with an eye towards how useful her new religious framework would be to her philosophy and life structure. “I need this therefore it’s true.”
Is this really how most people deal with religion? What will serve me best today? To me, that’s not religious belief – it’s practicality combined with a knowingly-faked profession of faith. It’s like there’s a ton of people out there winking at each other as they go to church.
Hell, I could be a Christian if that’s the case. I bet I could get more dates.
The Christian religion itself rejects this reason. The Apostle Paul tells us that if the resurrection isn’t true (which is arguably the fundamental believe of Christianity as opposed to religion in general), then we should, as Frank suggests, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we will die.
I am an atheist, however, as I often say I am not an evangelical atheist. Because atheism in itself doesn’t really have much to offer. Religion offers a lot, purpose to life, community, a guide for life, a certainty of moral values, a hope in death both for those you love and for yourself when that day comes. These are all very powerful things and should not be quickly dismissed. The only problem is that they are mostly a delusion based on what is self evidently not true. But if you want to live that way, I think that is your business. People spend their lives high on dope too and, even if it shortens their lives, they seem to enjoy the ride. In many senses the purpose of religion is to provide a framework to allow people to live this way and be comfortable with the delusion through a shared sense of consensus.
Atheism really just offers one thing — truth. And if truth is your thing you might want to consider it.
@bobby It’s like there’s a ton of people out there winking at each other as they go to church.
You analysis is correct up to this point. However, what this is about is people’s immense capacity for self delusion. People largely believe what they want to believe, or which they consider advantageous to believe not just about religion, but about politics, economics, love and so forth. Most people have little islands of logic in their head connected together with core beliefs that they hold because it makes their life better in some way. I don’t particularly say this pejoratively. Whatever it takes to get through the day, right?
Hell, I could be a Christian if that’s the case. I bet I could get more dates.
Right? And there are few things people are more willing to abandon their core beliefs for, abandon logic itself, when the purpose is getting laid. Though I don't think Christian chicks put out before the third date 😀 Maybe go wicca — I hear those chicks are crazy.
FWIW, on the whole delusion-might-not-be-such-a-bad-idea theme, I am reminded of a debate involving that great raconteur Christopher Hitchens, now dearly departed. He was talking to some catholic priest (probably?) and he was commenting on how they used to go around hospice care wards to talk to terminal patients, telling them that if you believed and take the sacraments, then their eternity would be spent in heaven with Jesus. He commented that this is something we atheists don’t do. Imagine going round the hospice wards talking to believers convincing them that their imminent death was the end, that they’d disappear, their bodies rot, and their lives forgotten. I guess that would be a time to allow the delusion to go unchallenged. Like I say, I’m an atheist, just not an evangelical one.
No, I understand, because I agree. Religion has served mankind mostly well.
But if you can’t all sincerely profess the tip-of-the-pyramid belief – there is a God, and he sounds like James Earl Jones – isn’t it all just a social club for cultivating morals?
(And, maybe the answer to that is, yeah, but what’s wrong with cultivating morals? I’d say, only that you can usually opt out of a social club, but you don’t want to be a lapsed Muslim.)
Yeah, but I hate cats. Wiccans are fun, but they have lots of cats.
bobby b
But if you can’t all sincerely profess the tip-of-the-pyramid belief – there is a God, and he sounds like James Earl Jones – isn’t it all just a social club for cultivating morals?
I think a bit more than that. You have to believe in God if you plan to spend eternity in his house. But I know a lot of Christians and they sincerely do believe in God, and as a general rule they’d rather not explain why or hear reasons why not. They are happy in their little bubble, and hope that, when the grim reaper calls they will believe strong enough to get through the process with some sort of comfort or joy.
Yeah, but I hate cats. Wiccans are fun, but they have lots of cats.
Are you saying there are lots of pussies? I’m not sure what the problem is. (I fully expect to get banned from this blog for this — it’s been nice knowing you all 😀)
Strikes me as rather odd and inconsistent how the nihilists who are over here in one thread mocking believers (in anything…) are at the same time over in another thread saying that there’s a “moral imperative” to demonstrate “restraint” and “make peace” with regards to other nihilists that have gone on killing sprees.
Or, perhaps it isn’t so odd: Like calls to like, and defends its own.
I find it rather strange that on the one hand, nothing at all matters, and on the other, it’s ohsoveryimportant to be “humane” to nihilistic murderers that kill small children in their beds and rape pregnant women to death.
I think your “value systems” are, in truth, non-existent, and that you’re demonstrating precisely why we should place zero value on people with your deranged systems of thought. You can’t even recognize the hypocrisy inherent to your stated positions in separate threads.
It does become quite apparent where your true sympathies lie, however; you’re on the side of the killers, whether you’re willing to acknowledge that sad fact or not. You think your positions moral and righteous, but those positions are actually quite monstrous and anti-human.
You want more death, more killing, more nihilism, and you demonstrate that by arguing for leniency and mercy on the sort of sick creatures that delight in killing the helpless. In the name of a peace they’ll never allow, short of the grave for all those Jews daring to live and prosper in Israel.
No bloody wonder that Western civilization is dying, with people like you in it. I have to wonder what the hell I was thinking, ever bothering to defend your sick ilk. I’m rather sickened by all the good men I trained and led to do just that, and who died in that cause. You manifestly do not deserve the sacrifice they made.
I will repeat an argument I made once before, about how God MUST exist.
A) The Universe is fine-tuned. If any of the numbers that make up the Universe were even slightly different (gravity was weaker or stronger, for example), then life (as we know it) would be impossible. So God created the Universe as it is.
B) Scientists speculate that we live in a multiverse, where all combinations of laws are expressed in an infinite variety- gravity would be one of those variables. We live in one of the few universes that is just right. If you believe this, then you cannot deny that one of these universes could become a living entity. God arises from chaos, in the same way that life randomly arises here on Earth.
C) Physicists believe that no-one can prove that any thing exists if it is not observed- it becomes a cloud of possibilities. So what holds things together? If God is always watching, then God is the one keeping it real.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes:
She later writes:
I would contend that if she had studied Russell’s biography she’d have found evidence for the Chesterton quote, because Russell was capable of believing anything.
@Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray
A) The Universe is fine-tuned. If any of the numbers that make up the Universe were even slightly different (gravity was weaker or stronger, for example), then life (as we know it) would be impossible. So God created the Universe as it is.
So your argument is: science can’t fully explain something therefore God must have done it? Religionists have been making that argument since the beginning of the enlightenment, and each time science explains something the back off on that and go for something else science can’t explain. God makes the sun rise in the east!! Whoops, not he doesn’t. God brings the rain and sunshine for our crops!! Whoops, no he doesn’t. God made every creature to fit perfectly into its place!! Whoops no he doesn’t. This is the story of science and religion, and the so called “fine tuning” problem is just another such thing.
B) Scientists speculate that we live in a multiverse, where all combinations of laws are expressed in an infinite variety- gravity would be one of those variables.
So you are providing on of the possible scientific explanations to your first point that you claimed had no explanation? FWIW, the many worlds explanation of quantum mechanics is certainly not widely accepted, there are quite a few others. However, it is such a cool concept with lots of fun possibilities and options for cool movies and TV shows that is seems the most popular with the general public.
You might want to search on YT for lectures by Sean Carroll on the subject of fine tuning. He is actually a real physicist and talks a great deal about both the fine tuning “problem” and the many worlds’ theory of QM — of which he is an advocate.
then you cannot deny that one of these universes could become a living entity. God arises from chaos, in the same way that life randomly arises here on Earth.
What an odd thing to say. Do I think it is possible that some super capable being might evolve even in this universe. Sure, of course. But being that doesn’t make them god, who, surely by a theist definition lives outside of all those universes. So I guess I don’t even really understand the point you are making here.
C) Physicists believe that no-one can prove that any thing exists if it is not observed- it becomes a cloud of possibilities. So what holds things together? If God is always watching, then God is the one keeping it real.
I think you are confused by what physics means by “observer”. And, in fairness, it is something that isn’t super clearly defined. But regardless, aren’t you a bit creeped out by this — that God is watching EVERYTHING you are doing like some freaky weird ass Santa, knowing when your bad or good, so be good for goodness sake?
@Martin
I would contend that if she had studied Russell’s biography she’d have found evidence for the Chesterton quote, because Russell was capable of believing anything.
I don’t know a great deal about Russell except through various pithy quotes and a few arguments that he has made. I did actually know his niece, who was, ironically, a pretty serious Christian believer…. Nonetheless, you say this pejoratively. But this is the essence of science — a willingness to believe anything at all, as long as that is where the data points. It is religionists who are locked in mental handcuffs justifying the doctrines and ideas from a book that was written by bronze age tribes who didn’t know why it rained, why the sun came up in the morning or what bacteria was.
His views were all over the place, and I don’t think in a particularly clever way. In the 1930s Russell was an outright pacifist (I have a pretty good opinion of ‘appeasers’ like Neville Chamberlain because they actually did a lot to rearm and prepare Britain for war that often gets ignored and think they should be distinguished sharply from the pacifists like Russell and also those who claimed to be hostile to Hitler but didn’t support rearmament, like the pre-war Labour Party). By the end of World War Two, he had become an ardent proponent of a nuclear backed pax-Americana and was getting patronage from the CIA. By the 1960s he was now in favour of nuclear disarmament and was working with the likes of Sartre to oppose American foreign policy. He went from being pro-Zionist to opposing Israel. He favoured a global state, ‘scientific planning’, eugenics, UBI, etc.
Perhaps he came to these views ‘scientifically’. I have my doubts, I’m pretty sure he had his own mental handcuffs.
One can throw plenty of criticism at Keynes, but I think Keynes’ observation of Russell is also quite good and amusing:
Admittedly, Russell’s youngest son, Conrad, was a very good historian of the English Civil War. I didn’t even realise for years that Conrad was Bertrand’s son. But I like Conrad’s work in debunking the old Whiggish and Marxist perspectives of that war.
In fairness to Russell, he did come up with the idea of an orbiting teapot (to demonstrate falsifiability) which you have to admit is a useful and peculiarly English invention of the mind. I always thought it so much more charming than the FSM, which of course came from one of those tasteless Americans. My God, next they’ll come up with an orbiting Big Mac.
Hirsi Ali misses the point, maybe because of their upbringing, but you can be a “cultural Christian” and just follow what you think is right, you can even be a “cultural Jew” and no-one will condemn you even if you oppose the baby mutilations, but you can never be a “cultural Muslim”, not unless you go underground and pretend, which is what HirsinAli realised they had to do.
It’s easy being a “cultural Christian”, most of the belief seems obviously correct, and no-one will threaten to cut your head off.
“A) The Universe is fine-tuned. If any of the numbers that make up the Universe were even slightly different (gravity was weaker or stronger, for example), then life (as we know it) would be impossible. So God created the Universe as it is.”
That the Anthropic Fallacy. We exist, therefore the universe must have been created for us to exist. Isn’t it so weird that the sea is lower down than rivers? Somebody must have arranged it that way!
It’s a fallacy, as if the fine-tuned numbers were different such as to make our life impossible, then we wouldn’t be here to wonder at the fine-tuning of the universe.
Some other life would exist, and be wondering at the fine-tuning that was created just for them. Or, no life at all would exist, and there would be no wondering.
She’s bought the “noble lie” case for Christian belief: it may not be true but she likes what it represents.
Consider me unimpressed.
If you believe that there is only one Universe, then the fine-tuning becomes a problem. And it was scientists who discovered it. In the same way that Creationists use the God-of-the-Gaps argument, so scientists use the Multiverse as their excuse to explain things. Fine-tuning just right? Must be the multiverse! Well, I can use the Multiverse as well!. Where did God come from? God arose/arises spontaneously from the Chaos of the Multiverse, in the same way that life arose on our version of Earth.
Q) Do you know how to make God Laugh?
A) Tell God your plans for the future!
As for which religion to believe, physics leaves that question open. However, many ex-muslims claim to have had dreams where Jesus told them to emigrate to the west, and become Christians. And, in muslim beliefs, Jesus went to Heaven to be with Allah, whilst Mohammed’s soul is in the grave. So, in muslim terms, it looks like Jesus got the better deal. So who should they believe?
Nicholas,
You are using teleological arguments. I could unpack the casserole* further but any point that starts with, “physicists believe…” is bound to be bollocks.
*I genuinely did come-across that piece of management-speak recently. God help us all! It was in a Quaker meeting so we’re basically fucked from arsehole to breakfast time as my late Grandmother would have put it.
In the end, it’s all belief systems, all the way down.
You’re a scientist. You have to take a bunch of crap on faith, starting with the idea that what your senses are reporting to you about your experiments is accurate, and that you’re interpreting them properly.
You’re a Christian. You have to take a bunch of different crap on faith, starting with the idea that what your parents and your clergy taught you is Truth.
None of us are actually operating on anything other than a vaporous fog of supposition and wishful thinking, when you get down to basics. All y’all are potentially just figures of my imagination, bit players in my psychosis, created out of whole cloth as my mind runs down in the psychiatric ward that I’ve been committed to after losing it all…
How would I know? How would you know? How would anyone know?
At some point along the solipsist trail, you have to make a decision about what you want to accept on faith. And, you have to acknowledge that you could, God forbid, be mistaken. Still, without the framework of faith in something, life is a hell of a lot more difficult to stomach.
Good friend of mine has this habit of treating her “appliances that talk” as real people, politely interacting with them as though they were. She has her kids doing the same thing. Why? Because, she says, if you don’t do that, then you’re going to begin dehumanizing and treating other actual humans as though they were devices; so long as there’s a pretension of humanity, a potential…? She’s going to insist on saying “please and thank you” to Alexa and whatever else tries talking to her.
She’s delightfully nuts, to my view, but… Is she wrong? She’s certainly set the marker for her kids, which I think makes them better people. I mean, if they’re polite to the refrigerator, then they’re way more likely to be polite to people, no?
Anyone claiming they don’t have a belief system is either lying to themselves and others, deeply mistaken, or outright psychotic. You have to have something going, in order to function in the world, regardless of what it is. And, half the misery of the human race is caused by those who insist on inflicting their belief system on others. I nod along politely when my friend tells me about her rules of conduct referencing the inanimate, and I don’t tell her she’s crazy.
Partially, because I’m pretty sure that when the robot apocalypse happens, she and her kids may well be the only ones spared.
Irrational belief seems to be a basic human need. Maslow left it out of his Hierarchy of Needs, but looking around me? Everyone I’ve ever encountered had these irrational beliefs going, many of which I’ve found deeply disturbing. I’ve another friend who constantly goes on and on about irrational people of faith, and how science is the only thing that works…
Dude still throws salt over his shoulder when he spills it, and demonstrates a whole host of other superstitions about daily life that he isn’t even fully aware of. Doesn’t believe in a God, any god, but won’t cross a path made by a black cat…
I’ve got no idea at all how he reconciles all that. You call him on it, and he denies doing it, but I’ve watched him. He’s got a “lucky shirt” he wears whenever he’s rooting for his football team, and talks about how “they” are going to win the Superbowl, this year…
Rational man, though. Believes in “SCIENCE!!!!”. He’ll tell you so.
Despite the fact that he’s innumerate, and wouldn’t know the scientific method if it walked up and bit him in the ass.
“Solipsism” is the belief that you are the only person in the world. Permanent Bewilderment is the end result of Solipsism, as you wonder why you are being so cruel to yourself. Also, the world is so complex, that one mind couldn’t have made it up. Why did I put topless Tahitian women so far from myself?
To leave more room close-by for the Scandinavian ones? (See? You can take credit if you try hard enough.)
Is this a new form of self-abuse?
Kirk,
I’m a recovering astrophysicist. I am also RG colour blind. My wife was going to the shops once. She had a list. She asked if there was anything to add. I said, “toothpaste – that… green stuff the dentist recommended”. She said, “Er… Corsodyl – that’s pink”. Next time I looked at it it became pink. One of the weirdest moments of my lfe. I trust my wife. So, yeah, belief systems. Seeing as we’ve been married for just over 17 years I think I trust her over more important things than the colour of toothpaste. So, yes, we do see things via our belief systems and our sensory apparatus.
But… I design websites. Yes, in colour. (or color if you prefer*). I think through colours not just visually. I think in hexadecimal. It is my way around my disability. Yes, it’s a long way around but it’s my way. It reminds me of an adage from Arthur Eddington, “Never trust an experimental result until it has been confirmed by theory”. That is way more profound than it seems.
*I was having a moment there. Most of the software I use is from the USA. I get confused with that spelling. Although, in principle, I could design something that looked like the loading screen of a ZX-81 on a 14″ B&W telly.