From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2015 8:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Idiot Test
On 14 Aug 2015, at 23:21, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
_____
From: Kim Jones < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]>
To: " <mailto:[email protected]>
[email protected]" < <mailto:[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.
I would agree that a profound lack of curiosity is a hallmark of idiocy. But I
disagree that it only ever applies to other people. I contend that idiocy is
latent and innate within all of us; and recognize that it is potentially within
my own being… even perhaps unbeknownst to me. It is this later kind of idiocy
that is most insidious and hardest to recognize and transcend.
>>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.
I am calling no one an idiot, by calling all of us – bipedal, slightly enlarged
fore-brain apes (on the beginning of a journey to infinity) -- out as having
the innate potential for idiocy latent (or active as it may be) within us.
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,
..
Precisely…. At each frame of reference moment there are a thousand ways to slip
down into mental ruts, beckoning with modes of belief (idocy), all wrapped up
and sometimes most appealing in their superficial nature. Because I am acutely
aware of just how easy it is to slip (one way or the other… so many ways to
falter)…. I try (don’t always succeed) to be forgiving of idiocy in others and
take the gentle approach (though I can become an angry barking dog when I get
into online fights with John Clark… lol)
-Chris
Bruno
-Chris
K
On 15 Aug 2015, at 5:39 am, spudboy100 via Everything List <
<mailto:[email protected]> [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 <
<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]>
To: everything-list < <mailto:[email protected]>
[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 < <mailto:[email protected]>
> [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
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