NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/conscio/942

Text File | 1993-01-22 | 3.3 KB | 64 lines

Newsgroups: alt.consciousness
Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!torn!nott!bnrgate!bmerh85!bmers30!dgraham
From: [e-mail] (Douglas Graham)
Subject: Re: The Weak Anthropic Priniciple (was Re: Next?)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet News)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 08:26:05 GMT
Lines: 52

Ok, screw all this "meaning" stuff.  I can't see it going anywhere,
and I'm not sure it's relevant to consciousness anyway.  But the following
is interesting.

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Malcolm Shute) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Douglas Graham) writes:
>>>So, Douglas, if you are at odds with the stance of those with religious
>>>beliefs, *and* those with scientific beliefs, just who *are* you believing?
>>
>>Myself.  There's too much bullshit floating around to trust anybody
>>else.  I see no reason to put blind trust in either theologians
>>*or* scientists.  That doesn't mean that I have all the answers --
>>just that I will never believe something just because a lot of
>>other people do.
>
>Beware, on this one!
>You're treading a very risky path, if you really mean what you say here!

Now this I find interesting, and it may even belong in this newsgroup.
Previously I spoke of zombielike nature of 20th century man, and
I think that one of the prime causes of that is that we are constantly
being bombarded with context-free factoids.  They do not engage our
rational thinking capacity (which I associate with consciousness -- I
haven't yet done much reading on the subject, so I could be dead wrong).
Instead, all we can do is to choose either to believe them or not, and
usually we do that unconsciously based on which authority the pronouncements
supposedly originated from, or on their emotional appeal.  So for example,
if Dupont can pay a bunch of scientists to say that the hole in the
ozone layer is harmless, I might tend to believe that because it's what I
would like to believe, and because everybody knows that scientists
wouldn't lie, or couldn't have ideological blinders on.  I figure that
we all have our heads so full of these factoids, many of them contradictory,
that our capacity for thought (consciousness?) is greatly diminished.
So I try not to let them sneak in without a real close examination,
and it is this process of standing on guard against propaganda that
I associate with consciousness.

Now you're telling me that this is a risky path?  Why?

One of the things that gives me nightmares is the thought of western
civilization humming along for over 1000 years without anybody ever
questioning the veracity of a certain collection of dogma.  Nobody ever
questioned it because everybody else believed it.  I shudder when I think
of all those people going through their entire lives talking absolute
bullshit, and I do everything I can to avoid falling into the same
trap.  One of those things is to take care not to believe things
just because a bunch of other people do.  Maybe I'll still be talking
bullshit, but at least it'll be my own bullshit. :-)

My apologies if this is an irrelevant rant.
--
Doug Graham         [e-mail]         My opinions are my own.