How Affinity angered most of the population of planet earth, called his girlfriend fat by accident, killed god and is the only person evah whom the buddhists have declared Jihad upon. (long long long) (1251 hits)
Category: Science & EnvironmentalRating: 1.09 on 19 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Affinity (View user info) at 2005-06-22 16:52:23 EDT
Bonjour,
Well I got home early from work today. Beautiful evening, beer in hand I ask my self 'what shall I do this evening'.............. It occurs to me that I haven't submitted anything other than puerile pictures and rude comments to Uber in ages. I am trying to aim my writing style towards the conversational end of scientific, but it may just be bullshit. Comments appreciated.
Topic: Well folks today, using only flawed logic and extravagant rhetoric.........
I WILL KILL YOUR GODS AND REPLACE THEM WITH SOMETHING SIMPLE, ELEGANT AND VERY BIOLOGICAL
I wrote a post ages ago that had a bash at describing why people are always insulting French folk like Caulaincourt. People read my post and still insult Caulaincourt but I hope that they at least know why they do it now.
Here is the post: http://www.ubersite.com/m/62181
Please read as it will give a little background and introduce you to my writing style.
O.K., I'm saying that no matter how sophisticated we humans have become, we are still prey to behavioural legacies that stem from a brain architecture that's remained unchanged for millennia. We are still using the same brains that people were using 10,000 years ago!
It does not matter how clever or how stooopid you are, we all have problems second guessing the REAL reasons for our own motivations, and let's face it, who can be bothered to do that; it's boring.
"Why did I eat that last sandwich? Because I was hungry or because I didn't want my wife to eat it because she's getting a bit porky"
It gets worse.
We falsely assume that our perception of the world is the true and accurate one. Boffins are particularly guilty of this. This is of course horseshit of the highest order. We only have access to limited sensory apparatus. Our eyes only respond to a certain frequency of light, our ears only to a certain frequency of sound, our skin to sensation, our nose to olfactory stimulation and so on. We have limited sensory apparatus.
Also, people have different ranges of sensory stimulation and sensitivity; some people are missing senses and some even claim to have extra ones. Yet, we have around six billion people (that's, 6,000,000,000) all walking around convinced they know what red is, what a pigeon sounds like and what a rose smells like.
What we actually have is consensual agreement to settle on rough definitions of things. We do this so we can talk to each other.
So instead of seeing things as they 'really' are, we see things the way that particular cultures have historically agreed to see them, and we store these agreements in the brain as 'symbols'. A concentrated piece of information about a thing that includes:
Material properties (weight, height, density)
Uses (food, furniture)
Relationship to self (this is a personal thing or a public thing)
Compare and contrast (is a chair like a sandwich?)
Nifty, and this system works really well for things like chairs and a ham sandwich's because these things are concrete and static through time. Does not matter where and when you come from. A 12th century Transylvanian serf would sit on a chair and eat a ham sandwich no worries.
When we think, separate symbols are retrieved and processed in higher cognition. Essentially this means having a problem that requires resolution, taking the symbols that are most relevant to the problem and smashing them together until the answer pops out. This answer itself becomes a unique symbol that is stored for later.
Different specialist areas of the brain are responsible for different types of processing (modular cognition). This helps because symbols can be very different: mathematical/musical, emotional, material, homeostatic etc. This all works out because the brain has the fastest fucking network speed evah!
This fabulous piece of indexing is largely what makes the brain so great. But what are the downsides of this form of information storage?
Well for starters, we never have a true representation of a thing inside our heads. We have an abstracted amalgam of its properties and relationships to other things.
This is not a logical system. Warning! Error may creep into The System. While higher cognition is what makes the brain so creative in its responses, symbolic storage of concept and 'on-the-fly' processing is responsible for a load of things that are shit about humans.
We are not natural scientists as our brains process information symbolically. We can never know logic; we can only ever have symbolic representations of a logic system (ironic but true). We can make machines that use logic, like computers, but in interpret their information symbolically. True, those symbols can become ever more refined and a more accurate representation of reality, but symbols they remain. Good thing too, If we were purely logical, we would all be algebraic savants and terribly boring.
Thing about logic, you can't argue with it. A thing either is or isn't. No grey areas, no room for debate, B.O.R.I.N.G.
THE PROBLEM
Thing about cognition is this; all thinking is the mashing together and combining of symbols. No worries so far. But what happens when two symbols come together that cannot be reconciled?
Happens all the time, 'oh no, shall I have the banana or strawberry shake'? Usually it doesn't matter. We eventually make a decision and fret quietly for a few hours about the choice we turned down. No harm done.
What about this then;
Thought 1: We know that we get old and our bodies die.
Thought 2: The body is the vehicle for the mind
Thought 3: I am alive and my mind feels ageless
This shits everyone up. What happens to our minds when we die?
It's a tough one, particularly these days with science and everything telling us that consciousness is an illusion and that the mind is an emergent property of cognition etc. Doesn't make you feel any better to know that when the brain dies there is no 'you' to feel bad about there not being a 'you' anymore.
EXISTENTIAL ANGST AHOY!
It's evolutionarily necessary for an animal to worry about self this because it engenders the kind of self-preservation that keeps a person alive to spray sperm or eggs all over another animal until babies are made. All higher order animals have this instinct to some degree.
Right, so these sorts of mind fucks crop up all the time; what does infinite look like?
What colour is red when the lights are off? When a tree falls down in the forest etc........
The one thing that creationists or anyone else without a sophisticated understanding of evolutionary theory always do is underestimate just how long biology has had to suss these problems out.
There is NO WAY that the brain would have evolved without some way to deal with this problem of cognitions that cannot be reconciled. Without such a system we would all be gibbering wrecks and the species would die out. For now let's call this solution 'THE SYSTEM'.
In psychiatry and psychology we can see the consequences of 'The System' failing. It causes humans to become anxious and depressed. They become thought disordered. They become psychotic. This failure even has its own name; cognitive dissonance, referring to difficulty in assimilating a new concept.
Anyway, if you can't deal with this shit its Bananatown for you. So 'The System' handles all the processing problems which would normally drive you mad.
I think I have figured out what The System is and in figuring it out I accidentally killed god. Bummer!
All humans have three things in common.
1, we all go crackers if we can't sort our psychological shit out.
2, every society has at least some interpretation of metaphysical intervention.
3, every society has stories.
This last point is particularly important because stories reflect the way that the brain strings symbols or cognitions together. This is called narrative in psych circles, and narrative is culturally transmitted. For example, in the west, even non-Christians have a Christian notion of social morality (there is a chicken-egg argument here). 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you' is so ingrained into our transactions that all of our transactional cognition has to involve this principle. This is why we often feel guilt when we screw someone over.
Anyway........
The System is such a simple solution for the brain to come up with I'm sure it's the correct one. When the brain experiences the kind of cognitive conflict described above, and that conflict is causing distress to the organism (you and me), it says 'fuckity fuck, if I don't do something about this we're screwed'.
The System is a cognitive shut down clause that identifies thought processes that cannot be reconciled and returns a metaphysical explanation for the problem. At the point of this system activating, all it does is say
'Beyond this point, this problem is beyond your ability to comprehend. You, mere mortal, cannot understand this shit'.
The explanation is beyond physics, metaphysical.
This makes us feel pretty good about ourselves. Problem solved, life goes on, spraying sperm and eggs everywhere..............
I am using the term metaphysics to denote a philosophy that features a system of absolute reasoning, Gods, atheism, spiritualism, Zen, Tao, Wicker, science fiction, pragmatism etc, anything where the believer sees the answer to a problem as lying outside of their current ability to comprehend. Religious folk may say 'ah that is God's way' of some such bollocks. The scientist may say 'we don't understand it now, but we WILL in the future' or some such trite nonsense.
Right, so this system is established as a cognitive mechanism for keeping the organism on the straight and narrow. We can appreciate that it needs to overrule the human urge to understand a problem, and it does this by telling the human that a human cannot understand the answer.
Here is an important question. Why are there not 6 billion religions? One personal religion for each of us.
Because, when this system first activates, it does what every other cognitive system does, which is draw experiences to it that back up its claims. Because humans are social animals, and we all have this mechanism, we all talk about the feelings that it produces within us. Stories are created to describe common themes, these themes ring true with everyone else and are elaborated upon, shared, developed and finally told to children where the narrative crosses to the next generation. These stories develop their own vocabulary where the justifications are contained implicitly within the words used. Guardians of these stories become fundamental figures within a society; they become revered. Ultimately the narratives are appropriated for social engineering agendas and for personal gain.
When The System has been programmed with a narrative we have no need to question it, regardless of evidence, that's just the way that it is. We just feel it to be true. We have faith.
So the freshly activated system draws strength from a narrative, and that narrative is likely to be the one that is predominant in a society, Christians in the west, Muslims everywhere else (ha ha). The success of the narrative is gauged by its ability to prevent problem cognitions in the host.
Narratives can be seen as viral and in competition with each other. They actively seek to discredit each other. If for some reason your narrative fails and you begin to experience psychological distress, you are liable to fall pray to a more powerful narrative.
This sucks, because we can't all go round saying, 'I don't know' to everything. I think that if we become aware of a cognitive function such as this, we can program it ourselves with a more productive and pro-social narrative.
I would like to see Science, philosophy, art and philanthropy at the forefront of our societies. They tell no lies. Science describes the universe we inhabit and help us harness its energy, philosophy and art are describing our own consciousness and how we feel about everything. Philanthropy, well that just makes it a little more likely that no one is so hard pressed that they are forced to adopt a fundamentalist narrative and bomb the bejesus out of me.
Beers Consumed 4.
User Reviews
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2006-01-19 17:15:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Affinity (user info) at 2005-06-24 12:57:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
To the lifeforms indicated below. Thank you so much for your comments.
They will be sent to our complaints department and you will be contacted within 21 eons
Submitted by Affinity (user info) at 2005-06-24 12:55:44 EDT (#)
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Everything you ever wanted to know about TimmBuck2
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Submitted by Affinity (user info) at 2005-06-24 12:55:08 EDT (#)
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Everything you ever wanted to know about WhatDoesThisButtonDo
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Submitted by Affinity (user info) at 2005-06-24 12:54:22 EDT (#)
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Everything you ever wanted to know about egadz
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Registered on or around: 2005-06-12 03:25:43
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Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2005-06-23 10:33:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
WTF IM NOT READING ALL THAT
Submitted by Ejryuu (user info) at 2005-06-23 10:18:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
The only reason this drivel stays out of a negative rating is for the picture. I desperately want a 'smite' key on my keyboard. Or 'burninate'
Submitted by egadz (user info) at 2005-06-23 09:55:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Somebody shhot him.
Please?
I got bored about a paragraph into that psuedo-intellectual horseshit
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-06-23 06:58:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Faltless, funny and interesting.
Submitted by zakalwe (user info) at 2005-06-22 20:18:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for reading the Nights Dawn trilogy.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-06-22 19:21:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Apparently, this Affinity is the bastard love child of GLALL and Franz Kafka.
Submitted by Harmless (user info) at 2005-06-22 19:05:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"and it does this by telling the human that a human cannot understand the answer"
Meaning of Life = 42
Submitted by Affinity (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:30:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:21:06 (#)
Ranking: 2
are you called affinty after the reality disfunction?
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one of my fave books!
Submitted by WhatDoesThisButtonDo (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:29:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Learn to hold your liquor or stop drinking.
Submitted by TimmBuck2 (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:23:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Synonyms: boring, monotonous, tedious, irksome, tiresome, humdrum
These adjectives refer to what is so uninteresting as to cause mental weariness. Boring implies feelings of listlessness and discontent: I had never read such a boring book. What is monotonous bores because of lack of variety: "There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea" (James Russell Lowell). Tedious suggests dull slowness or long-windedness: Traveling by plane avoids spending tedious days on the train. Irksome describes what is demanding of time and effort and yet is dull and often unrewarding: "I know and feel what an irksome task the writing of long letters is" (Edmund Burke). Something tiresome fatigues because it seems to be interminable or to be marked by unremitting sameness: "What a tiresome being is a man who is fond of talking" (Benjamin Jowett). Humdrum refers to what is commonplace, trivial, or unexcitingly routine: My quiet cousin led a humdrum existence.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:21:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
are you called affinty after the reality disfunction?
Submitted by Deidra (user info) at 2005-06-22 17:15:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You have a lot of time.
Submitted by ProgramGeek (user info) at 2005-06-22 16:55:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yeah seriously, im not reading all that shit.
Fuck u
http://www.ubersite.com/m/69084
Submitted by Morlock (user info) at 2005-06-22 16:53:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ok, here's your plus 2. I can't read all that right now... but since you used so many words it HAS to be "killer of all ass".