Posted by
John Kennison on
Jan 04, 2014; 1:17pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/11-American-Nations-tp7584250p7584625.html
I consider myself a rational person because I believe what I observe and I believe in what is observed by any group of people I trust (such as a near consensus of scientists). I further believe in whatever follows logically. I believe I can predict the likely consequences of my actions and this helps make me a reasonably happy person. Belief in God or belief in the inerrancy of the bible do not pass my tests. But there is scientific evidence that religious people are healthier and happier than non-religious people. This seems to be so even though people who would apparently be neither healthy nor happy are almost always religious. So what should I make of this?
________________________________________
From: Friam [
[hidden email]] on behalf of glen [
[hidden email]]
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2014 7:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"
On 01/03/2014 03:47 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> Or the `successful' may just be apex predators, but still just one of
> many possible species of person. They feed on the productivity of these
> other species. Perhaps not wanting to be one of them, the drug addict
> (unconsciously) denies the predator that productivity... As Arnade
> observes, everyone makes mistakes, so perhaps we can just enumerate the
> wolves and note that's what wolves do but that they get no further honor.
Well, it seems to me that the ascription of honor (or any other
honorific) is a dynamic thing. Not only is society fickle like that,
but it's also difficult to predict what your arbitrary weirdo might take
_pride_ in. Witness:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/man-dies-eating-roaches-587314or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_MeiwesSo, we can't prescribe what honor the wolves get. In fact, merely
counting them might encourage more people to want to be them. I think
the answer lies in creating/facilitating wolf-eating species.
--
⇒⇐ glen
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