Oh come on man, post the whole thing.
Yesterdays blog post is much better.
Let me assure you that philosophical arguments about objective and subjective perceptions of reality are fine and dandy but I still have a day ahead of me that involves diapers, cooking, and laundry.
Perhaps Scott Adams envisions himself as Morpheus as he enlightens us proles on the nature of “reality”?
I clicked, I read, and thought it was stupid. But, to each his own.
My iPad browser actually held up for both articles for a change.
I think the second author (describing the work of a third) is sniffing down the trail of something. I am no physicist but I suspect we are literally on the verge of earthshaking discoveries in the field. As I understand it the math “that fits” indicates there are, in reality ( oh, that word) 11 dimensions. Our perceptions are limited to three. I do believe the third author is trying to extend this concept into cognitive science. Maybe it is just me but it seems premature to try to investigate this until we have a better handle on “WTF seven other dimensions”. I suppose it never hurts to get started but extending any reasoning into our experience is pretty risky. We all remember Phlogistan and Ether.
He makes a claim that people irrationally come to a conclusion then “cherry pick” data to bolster it.
Having thrown away the basis to believe in anything, he rushes right on as though he hadn’t done it.
That’s known as having your philosophical cake and throwing it in the garbage too, or something like that.
Adams is an interesting character, which I much appreciate.
I have ordered his book.
Sort of a pointless exercise. I like Adams most of the time, but his link provides no intellectual nourishment. The author believes he’s unique, and can see a reality that no one else has perceived. An interesting delusion, but not that uncommon. Maybe he actually thinks writing this article will get him laid.. Then it all makes sense.
The birth rate for some groups, muzlims, welfare recipients,ilegales(?)...is greater than the norm.
If this trend holds, bow to your new masters.
Scott Adams shows some terrific insight into human character, yet in doing so reveals his own blind reversal of rationality. It could be the fodder for a very long column, but just a couple of quick points. 1) Adams is primarily a secularist in his views, which restricts the comprehensiveness of his vision, and 2) secularists are on unfamiliar territory when the discussion turns to present growth and rehabilitation, since they tend to burn brightest in the world of random assignment with regard to human development (evolution, if you like).
It's not that the human organism is no longer attuned to reality in order to propagate.
It's that the reality of the environment they are responding to is different than in the past, and the current reality is dominated by progressive government.
To thrive in the society created by today's Progressives, you need to know your way around an EBT card, not a snake.
Trump is the last exit before the full-blown totalitarian Progressive control of human society.
This reminds me of a book entitled “Fashionable Nonsense” by Paul (?) Sokol featuring the new paradigm of quantum gravity and heuristics. Adams needs to tread lightly lest he becomes a modern day Lacan.
I think that Hoffman is full of crap. Oh, sometimes his hypothesis is correct, but not for the reason he believes.
Here’s my hypothesis: Mother Nature is a stone cold bitch. You make just one really stupid mistake, and you’re dead. If you haven’t reproduced yet, your stupidity just increased the average Survival IQ of the human race. Even if you’ve reproduced, your offspring will now have a harder time reaching reproductive age and passing your stupid/complacent genes to your grandkids. That is pretty conventional so far, no new ground broken, and I’m not taking any credit for it.
I also think that most humans have an instinct (built in by Mother Nature and/or God) to be cooperative with others, for reasons of common interest. If a tribe of loosely (and sometimes not-so-loosely) related people cooperate with each other, the strong will watch over the weak (while having time to rest and improve skills), while those weaker can plant/harvest/cook food, make clothing, raise kids and pass on knowledge, etc. Again, nothing much new here - and if our ancestors didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be writing it, and you wouldn’t be here to read it.
However, sometimes when the cooperation is hyper-successful, particularly for a long period of time and over a large area, a measure of complacency develops. As an example, ANY civilization that becomes rich and powerful, and extends over a large land mass for a long period of time (Rome and the US being primary examples). People don’t face - sometimes for several generations - any kind of mortal threat to their survival besides old age, common diseases and injury (i.e. no or very few enemies of the biped variety). They see their situation as being normal, not the exception to the rule of Human History. So their complacency turns into feeling sorry for those worse off (they have the luxury to think that way), and begin to give them a helping hand (or more). Eventually, they begin to view simple kindness and generosity as ends unto themselves...and they become evolutionarily stupid in the process. Their WISHES for reality become reality - for them (and, sometimes, for a large portion of society). They have no need for the smarts, the cold, hard look at reality that their ancestors required to survive. Then comes an evolutionary challenge, a severe one - and large numbers of these kind of people die, some before or during their reproductive years. Lots of people DO survive, as they were either just lucky (and that plays a role in evolution), or they were among the smart people who could actually determine reality and deal with it. Society then becomes VERY reality-based for a while, until the evolutionary challenge goes away for another few generations.
IMHO, we’re in the stage just before a big evolutionary challenge to our society (or we could be in the middle of it, and there’s a powerful argument to be made for that). Soon there will be a winnowing of the stupid, in some form or other. For now, Scott Adams and Hoffman are correct - because we’re at the stage of evolutionary complacency here in the Western World.
By the way, all great religions teach us to be kind and compassionate with the poor, old, widows & orphans, etc. I’m not saying that such is a bad thing and, in fact, it can be very advantageous for both individuals and society...if not allowed to be transformed into a society-wide misplacement of compassion. Misplaced compassion is probably as guilty of creating human misery as outright evil, though I’ll leave that argument to a bunch of religious and moral philosophers (mainly because it bores the piss out of me, but also because I have better things to do).
Humans, unlike animals, can project their needs and aims into the future, which is always and unfailinbgly a semi-known to unknown, depending on how far into the future one is trying to project. ANY conception about future time is a model with data gaps and the function of mind that attempts to fill in those gaps is indistinguishable in its process from delusional states and hallucination. If you add the element of expectation derived from wishing (which is an attempt to grasp, apprehend, possess the future before it’s here as a means to lessen insecurity, anxiety, fear), it is apparent that humans live largely in a subjective universe in which reality and logic have the same attributes we see them evidence in dreams - very plastic, stretchy, bizarre, uninterpretable. Children, with little control over their reality, live in a state of wish and fantasy. Liberals who live in the childish realm of wish and whimsy are unable to, not only see reality, but to project future realities with a necessary degree of accuracy to insure survival.
” Smart, well-informed people disagree on nearly all major issues. So being smart and well-informed doesn’t help you grasp reality as much as you would hope. If it did, all of the smart, well-informed people would agree. They don’t”
Damn... that’s good