On 14 Aug 2015, at 23:21, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
From: Kim Jones <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]
>
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: Idiot Test
Idiocy only ever applies to other people, yes. It's like sexual
perversion and corruption; these things are done only by others,
never by me! Why I speak of the need for some fabled 'test' - a bit
like Alice drinking from the bottle marked 'drink me'. Alice was no
idiot. She had the fundamental human curiosity to "suck it and see"
rather than fall back on some safer, less interactive approach.
Perhaps idiots lack the curiosity to undergo some experience that
will doubtlesly undermine their chosen weltanshauung.
You can call me an idiot if you want but you would be using some
other attribution criteria to the ones I am putting forward. Trouble
is, if we ever really decided what constituted an idiot, there would
soon be no more idiots because then we would have it nailed and
could genuinely do something about it. Idiots, however, abound in
society. It is more, as Bruno says, some willful act of denying
something absurdly; a kind of mendacity. Furthermore, I do not
consider someone an idiot who does not agree with me. That's where
you have failed to take in the message, Chris. There are always
alternatives, and the inability to take stock of them is where
idiots reveal themselves. Actually, I don't go in search of
agreement or disagreement. I prefer exploration and suspension of
judgement. Explorers don't judge the terrain they explore; they
create a map. I have changed my views several times over regarding
core matters. Actually I find it rather easy to drop one set of
ideas for another. For that reason, no one will ever catch me in the
act of being certain about anything. Even about who the idiots are.
Sure... there are always alternatives (or most of the time anyways)
and idiocy is the mode of mind that becomes stuck in one explanation
excluding all other possibility.
Some would say "stuck in a wrong explanation", as it might not ben so
stupid to keep an explanation when it works. Now, technically, this is
provably false in theoretical Artificial Intellligence as a machine
able to change its mind, even when her explanation work, will
recognize large classes of (computable) phenomena (by a result of Case
& Smith). But that concerns competence, and I like to distinguish it
from intelligence which I see more like a protagorean virtue, obeying
[]p -> ~p.
My point is that we are all of susceptible to that idiotic mode and
that it is vital therefore to always keep this in mind. We ourselves
may be idiots at times (even if we think we are being brilliant).
OK.
I am not saying anything one way or another about you or anybody
else in particular, merely cautioning everyone (including most of
all myself) that idiocy is an insidious trap, which can creep up
from within unnoticed and will often masquerade itself as being
something entirely more intelligent.
We must remain constantly vigilant about our own innate potential
for slipping into idiotic mental frames; and only by recognizing
this as a real and ever present potential existing within ourselves
can we in fact remain vigilant.
Yes, that works well with the protagorean thing. The slipping is
always nearby. There are no algorithm to prevent it, but humans have
good slogan and heuristics, like "Hell is paved with good intention",
"turn your tongue seven times in your mouth before asserting something
big", etc.
Oops, I have to go,
Bruno
-Chris
K
On 15 Aug 2015, at 5:39 am, spudboy100 via Everything List <[email protected]
> wrote:
Chris, when you can think of politicians and actors of your
political preference, who behave "idiotically:" then you'd really
be making a succinct point. The rationale being, "if you agree with
my position, thus, you are wonderful, but if you disagree, you are
a moron." On this mailing list however, it ain't politics that
drive the passion, but disagreeing with an equation, a precis,' a
hypothesis. It's like on the show Big Bang, where blood in nearly,
drawn, over whether String or Loop Quantum Gravity have the best
explanation for reality, when as all right thinking people know,
it's all explained by Chaotic Inflation. Easy peasy.
-----Original Message-----
From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <[email protected]
>
To: everything-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, Aug 14, 2015 1:42 pm
Subject: Re: Idiot Test
I am curious.... you seem to speak of "idiots" exclusively in terms
of "them" of some "other" group of individuals. Do you consider
yourself to be potentially an "idiot" or have you managed to
achieve existential certainty that idiocy is something that only
ever applies to other people? If you have achieved this certainty
-- e.g. that in no possible way could you ever be an idiot; that is
an amazing feat.... or could it be incontrovertible proof of your
own idiocy?
Any definition of idiocy that does't -- at least potentially --
include the "self" within the scope of its embrace is idotic - -IMO!
P.S. -- I am suspecting that if you respond at all, you'll probably
roast me with scorn, for having had the temerity to suggest that
idiocy is something we are all capable of achieving; and that no
one is immune from idiotic mind modes.
-chris
> On 14 Aug 2015, at 8:21 am, chris peck <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> So, to cut to the chase, when a thread appears claiming the
benefit of a psychedelic is to work out who the idiots are, when it
is suggested that the substance be used in such a miserly way, I
can't help but feel the people suggesting that are the ones who
have missed the message....
I think Strassman was right. You need a certain substance in your
system to be even able to conceive of thinking without some
limiting effect of consensus. The human mind has a 'native'
behaviour and we might refer to this as 'baseline consciousness'.
It is merely a starting point in the enterprise of exploring the
terrain of consciousness.
The Idiot Test is a cynical exercise, you seemed to have missed
that. It's a cartoon in words designed to focus on something
sinister; either a lie or a form of stupidity. A thought bubble as
we say nowadays. Just one grade better than a silly poster on
Facebook. The term 'idiot' is a pejorative, so we do need another
word to cover the concept "the lack of imagination to envisage
alternatives to the one currently held under any scenario" which to
my mind at least, does sound rather mentally deficient.
But I learnt a lot from Bruno's breakdown of it. Idiocy and
Intelligence are not polar opposites. They walk hand in hand.
Anyway - at a certain point in the presumably not too distant
future, somebody WILL decide who all the idiots are - using
whatever rationale - and they will all be eliminated. Probably by
an AI who worked it out all by itself.
So
2. Idiots usually end up designing technology that eventually
destroys them and everyone else.
So, it may be that such people also receive a Darwin Award for
performing the inestimable service to the human race of removing
their DNA from the gene pool.
K
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to everything-list+ [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
