Nick -
Thanks for allowing me to sling irresponsible insults at you with
impunity. It has been VERY helpful to my recovery. You might
consider opening a clinic.
One of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahnuik, wrote a protaganist who
visits his mother in a dementia/alzheimer's ward every day where the
other women there constantly mistake him for some male in their life who
wronged them early in their lives. At first he argued with them and
tried to convince them that he wasn't "THAT funny uncle", etc.
Eventually he discovered it was easier for him to just give over to them
and accept whatever identity they "needed" him to have and then began to
embrace the roles they caste him into, acknowledging whatever perceived
harm his character had leveled on them and then apologizing for that
action profusely. It was cathartic for them and he realized he was
making their day. Of course, he had to repeat it every visit "groundhog
day" style. Palahnuik (who wrote Fight Club also) writes fascinatingly
obtuse characters.
I considered calling “quantum randomness” “notional”, but I wasn’t
sure WTF I meant by that. There’s a dimension here I am groping to
express. Quantum randomness and natural selection and gene are way
out on that dimension as things we believe in the concreteness of, yet
they are far from our concrete experience. We experience them as
foundations of our thought, yet we never see them. I guess the best I
can say at this point is that something about that makes me uneasy.
I share your uneasiness, but mine may penetrate deeper (shallower?) into
the less esoteric models. I mentioned my own strong intuitive
preference for a "flat earth" and "earth-centric" celestial system, even
if my *intellect* believes it could recognize the anomalies those models
exhibit and resolve "the facts" more better with the "new and improved"
models.
I want to push back on “evolution just is”. Evolution is a way, and
not other ways. Evolution is more directly presented to experience
than is natural selection. Natural selection is the very abstract
idea that resolves problems and paradoxes raised in Darwin’s
imagination by his “experience” of evolution. Just as “gene” is a
“pseudo-concrete” idea that resolves paradoxes and problems raised in
Mendel’s pea-patch.
I have to agree with this. I don't mean to say "I know without any
doubt that evolution just is" but rather, "if evolution IS, then it JUST
is", rather perhaps than "it's nature needs/affords to be belabored".
Maybe a more fundamental article of faith than "natural selection" or
"gene" or "metabolic pathway" are. I'm not sure evolution is directly
observable, but the artifacts we find CAN perceive directly seem more
directly mapped to it as a model than for example, "natural
selection"? I suspect for another group of "true believers", THEIR
fundamental models (e.g. omnipotent patriarchal
creator/punisher/forgiver/mystery-maker) are just as fundamental?
"God/Goddess just is"?
I too am awaiting Dave’s summary. I have ordered the book from the
library. I wish I were there to take Dave’s course.
I imagine you to return to SFe in September each year, do I have my
calendar wrong?
- Steve
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