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It's just a bug in our design as humans, IMO, but it's that same bug which allows us to occasionally do monumentally amazing things. It just depends how you spi
by BigZaphod 17y ago
It's just a bug in our design as humans, IMO, but it's that same bug which allows us to occasionally do monumentally amazing things. It just depends how you spin your perceptions to yourself, I suppose, and if you can accept that greatness is, more or less, a large scale way of turning a frown upside down. :)
- dkimball 17y agoOh, I'm a nut too, and humanity would be much worse off without its nuts, but what concerns me is that particular, Timecube-esque variety of nut -- not particularly creative or ambitious, but turgid and cramped. Why do people end up like that...?
- BigZaphod 17y agoI can't really say why, but I think the common thread they share is they get lost following a path of information that becomes self-referential - and rather than seeing that as a flaw, they apply a kind of naive mathematical reasoning and assume that because they ended up back where they started it proves the whole system is consistent - and that's therefore a good and universal truth. If you've ever listened to any significant amount of Coast to Coast AM, you've probably heard any number of conspiracy theorists and paranormalists justify and build their books and beliefs upon the books, beliefs, or incidents of others. My untested hypothesis is that if you unraveled all those interdependencies and book citations, references, etc. you'd end up with an entirely self-contained cloud of "evidence" that is disconnected from objective reality.
- delackner 17y agoWhatever it is in a culture that leads desperate people to decide to kill strangers before commiting suicide has far more to do with the culture than with human DNA.
- BigZaphod 17y agoCulture is a byproduct of humanity and therefore it's quirks are a reflection of our quirks.