My questionnaire include some digs at the notion of Toxic Memes. http://www.davidbrin.com/questionnaire.html
________________________________ From: Michael Harney <dolp...@mikes3dgallery.com> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Sun, November 21, 2010 9:55:54 AM Subject: Re: Brin: Arguing Doesn't Work: Fact Vs Belief On 11/21/2010 10:17 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: > > >On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Michael Harney ><dolp...@mikes3dgallery.com> wrote: > >Dawkins addresses this a bit in his book _The God Delusion_. > Evolutionarily, it makes sense. Children cannot afford to > disbelieve >things that are told to them by elders. Doing so means consuming >poisonous things or getting too close to lions or other dangerous >predators. That seems tautological to me, since it is only true if what you're being told is true. Believing false information of that nature would be selected against, so one could imagine that humans could have evolved a strong sense of when to believe those in authority. Actually, false ideas would only be selected against if those ideas had negative survival value. If the survival value is neutral, then the idea and the people who believe it continue. Or, an idea may have negative survival value for the individual, but positive value for the group. ex: the Aztecs would sacrifice people to the gods during times of famine to try and appease the gods to end the famine. Though bad for the individual being sacrificed, whether or not the famine ended, the group would be better off as there would be less mouths to feed and fewer people would starve. You do have a point though as teenagers actually lose judgment and consequence ability in their early teen years, it makes it more likely for them to disregard what they have been taught, making it more likely to try something that they were told was bad. Any thing that has negative consequence is likely to be witnessed by others and the taboo reinforced, but expectations to can influence what a person sees. If the parents said "Say your prayers every morning and night or bad things will happen". If a rebellious teen stops saying their prayers, they are more likely to interpret any bad thing that happens as a direct consequence of not saying their prayers as that is what they expect. In this way, people may end up crediting the wrong idea for good or bad results resulting in neutral ideas being sustained. Besides, some of us had parents who taught us to be skeptical of authority. I'm fairly sure DB's kids have been taught that! > > >"Be skeptical of authority, kid." > > >"Why?" > > >"Because I'm your father and I said so." > > >Nick > True, but the idea of teaching children to question authority is a relatively new one, or rather, it is one that only a small portion of the population engaged in until recently. Even now I would say it is still a small minority of the population. If holy texts are any indicator, questioning authority back in much older times usually ended in the questioning person being killed.
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