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Obdicut posted:I bet the 'theory' pounces on anyone from that time period who does show introspection as just an early-evolver. ah, which merely proves our point, you see
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May 27, 2015 10:47
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HEY GAL posted:Edit: What's the explanation in this theory for people who hear the voice of the divine after we developed modern brains? Are they just crazy? One of the major themes of the book is the interpretation of schizophrenia as a "remnant" or "artifact" of bicameralism. Jaynes handwaves that bit in Gilgamesh away as a later addition. Again, and it feels somewhat stupid to write all these caveats, but seemingly everyone who's actually read the book thinks of it as brilliant and illuminating nonsense. It's like, you know, we don't get mad at Don Quixote for believing in knight-errantry, we applaud him for his stubborn heroism. Why be an artless cynic?
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May 27, 2015 10:51
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Ras Het posted:One of the major themes of the book is the interpretation of schizophrenia as a "remnant" or "artifact" of bicameralism. It seems like a well-written book about absurd bullshit. It seems like it examines the background of the problem of thinking about consciousness well. And we, as the reader, are left to cheer or scorn Don Quixote as we want, but most importantly, we do not rely on him or his perspective in any way. He seems a bit like Thor Heyerdahl, but without the actual physical experimentation that led to a real discovery. I don't get why you don't understand that some people think that the important word in 'brilliant nonsense' is 'nonsense' and not 'brilliant'. I think it may be worse, and more damaging, to write brilliant, convincing nonsense than stodgy and unreadable nonsense, because Jaynes crackpot ideas manage to convince more people because they're well-presented.
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May 27, 2015 11:09
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I'd like to think science can withstand someone writing a book.
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May 27, 2015 11:12
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Since we will likely never know, short of some amazing advances in neurological studies, my pet theory is we probably mimiced the way a child's brain develops. That we know fairly well since we can study it whenever we want and it seems fairly logical way for species level development to go.
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May 27, 2015 11:15
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Ras Het posted:I'd like to think science can withstand someone writing a book. Nobody is claiming it can't withstand it, dude. If the book has a virtue, it's raising issues that people talk about. That's what people are doing here: They happen to be saying what you apparently also believe, that the book's main theory is totally wrong. So what is your actual problem?
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May 27, 2015 11:16
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Since we will likely never know, short of some amazing advances in neurological studies, my pet theory is we probably mimiced the way a child's brain develops. That we know fairly well since we can study it whenever we want and it seems fairly logical way for species level development to go.
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May 27, 2015 11:31
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MrNemo posted:Like, Patron-client relationship I can pretty much grasp. It's a relatively straightforward money/support relationship with some more complex sociological baggage. But I cannot really grasp how 'You're family is from an area I control and we both claim descent from a water fairy so I guess I have to overlook your incompetence, flimsy claim to the throne and the utter disaster you've helped bring about' works. Oh my sweet summer child...
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May 27, 2015 11:52
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Obdicut posted:So what is your actual problem? That it's extremely unproductive intellectually to argue so strongly against a book one hasn't read (I assume?).
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May 27, 2015 11:59
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Ras Het posted:That it's extremely unproductive intellectually to argue so strongly against a book one hasn't read (I assume?). They're arguing against the central premise, though. They're not criticizing the book for presenting the idea badly, they're criticizing the idea. The idea itself is absurd nonsense. You don't appear to be arguing that anyone is really misunderstanding the idea at the heart of the book, right?
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May 27, 2015 12:10
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Charlie Mopps posted:I take it you have never worked in a company that employed some questionable hiring tactics like nepotism? See Nepotism I can grasp, I can understand Marcus Aurelius making Commodus his sole heir just becaue he's his bioogical son. I can understand the importance of hereditary position in society, you're the son of a lord so you're born to rule, it's natural that you should get this high level job. But in this case you have someone who wasn't of a particularly high ranked family, who was bad for the position and whose only claim to the throne was that he was in love with the current Queen of Jerusalem (who had cut a deal with those that didn't like Guy that she'd divorce him pre-coronation with the proviso that she'd be able to to choose who she would marry. I can imagine the faces of the assembled Lords when she announced her choice immediately after being crowned). Hell it was even against the written will of the previous king. But no, the fact he was from an area of France that Richard controlled and so technically owed fealty to him and had a shared mythological ancestor was enough to get his support. It's like a CEO picking an incompetent person to head up a company he was investing in because the guy had been a mid-level manager at a daughter company of the CEO's. I can acknowledge the reasons but they just don't make any kind of sense to me. Although he did end up packing the guy off to be king of Cyprus in the end since even his own men flat out refused to let him leave Guy as the king of what was left of Jerusalem.
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May 27, 2015 13:14
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MrNemo posted:See Nepotism I can grasp, I can understand Marcus Aurelius making Commodus his sole heir just becaue he's his bioogical son. I can understand the importance of hereditary position in society, you're the son of a lord so you're born to rule, it's natural that you should get this high level job. But in this case you have someone who wasn't of a particularly high ranked family, who was bad for the position and whose only claim to the throne was that he was in love with the current Queen of Jerusalem (who had cut a deal with those that didn't like Guy that she'd divorce him pre-coronation with the proviso that she'd be able to to choose who she would marry. I can imagine the faces of the assembled Lords when she announced her choice immediately after being crowned). Hell it was even against the written will of the previous king. The fact that you persist in thinking of it as a job is a problem. You need to question the degree to which your ideas of suitability to rule are just a bunch of criteria you have been taught, growing up, to think of as relevant.
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May 27, 2015 13:26
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Obdicut posted:They're arguing against the central premise, though. They're not criticizing the book for presenting the idea badly, they're criticizing the idea. The idea itself is absurd nonsense. You don't appear to be arguing that anyone is really misunderstanding the idea at the heart of the book, right? The idea itself isn't absurd nonsense. It's unlikely, given our understanding of the brain and consciousness 30+ years later, but the multidisciplinary look at consciousness is still relevant today. Like, Democritus and Erich von Däniken are both Dudes Who Were Wrong About Things, but Democritus' atom isn't absurd nonsense, just pretty wrong according to what we know now.
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May 27, 2015 15:05
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homullus posted:The idea itself isn't absurd nonsense. It's unlikely, given our understanding of the brain and consciousness 30+ years later, but the multidisciplinary look at consciousness is still relevant today. Like, Democritus and Erich von Däniken are both Dudes Who Were Wrong About Things, but Democritus' atom isn't absurd nonsense, just pretty wrong according to what we know now. This is going to provoke me into reading the book and I am 99% sure that I'm going to conclude it's absurd nonsense afterwards. "Unlikely' would be a soft way of putting it. Astronomically and insanely unlikely and requiring a ton of coincidences to occur in exactly the right way, whereas the alternate explanation requires no special pleading, arguments, or hand-waving at all. I don't get the comparison to Democritus; this seems like a hell of a lot more of Daniken territory. Democritus came up with atomic theory to explain the nature of matter, which clearly needed an explanation and had an existence that descended below human observability. It's an elaborate claim to explain an elaborate, mysterious, observable thing. What Jaynes is doing is attempting to make an extremely elaborate claim to explain something which may not actually have happened at all--there is probably not significant transition in human consciousness dating to that time period, of which there is almost no evidence, and what evidence there is appears to have been collected solely to support the hypothesis, with counter-evidence handwaved away.
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May 27, 2015 15:41
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HEY GAL posted:Not even--all you can judge is their aesthetic choices, their preferred literary style. To turn around from literature to making arguments about brain structure isn't even wrong, it's so out there. Well, you actually can tell if someone is severely schizophrenic based on what they write. yvette's bridal, for instance. Thing is, those don't look anything like ancient literature.
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May 27, 2015 15:55
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MrNemo posted:See Nepotism I can grasp, I can understand Marcus Aurelius making Commodus his sole heir just becaue he's his bioogical son. I can understand the importance of hereditary position in society, you're the son of a lord so you're born to rule, it's natural that you should get this high level job. But in this case you have someone who wasn't of a particularly high ranked family, who was bad for the position and whose only claim to the throne was that he was in love with the current Queen of Jerusalem (who had cut a deal with those that didn't like Guy that she'd divorce him pre-coronation with the proviso that she'd be able to to choose who she would marry. I can imagine the faces of the assembled Lords when she announced her choice immediately after being crowned). Hell it was even against the written will of the previous king. The real reason Guy was allowed to keep kicking around was the male Royal family pretty much died out and and he was just kind of left. Not of going into the complex political situation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
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May 27, 2015 16:34
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Obdicut posted:This is going to provoke me into reading the book and I am 99% sure that I'm going to conclude it's absurd nonsense afterwards. "Unlikely' would be a soft way of putting it. Astronomically and insanely unlikely and requiring a ton of coincidences to occur in exactly the right way, whereas the alternate explanation requires no special pleading, arguments, or hand-waving at all. Jaynes was a psychologist. His reasoning is: Language in the left brain > language stuff goes to its right-brain analog bits in some cases > what's this apparently language-ready right-hemisphere area for, if not language? Brain is normally quite specialized > Hypothesis: it's also for language, and in the past, it got used more. So, by analogy to Democritus, Jaynes is intrigued by this mysterious area of the brain that is associated with language but not normally used for it and is shown to be associated with auditory hallucinations. Its origins are beyond historicity, so he came up with a theory that uses, among other things * the frequent ancient complaints that the anthropomorphic gods used to walk among them, but no longer do so * ancient texts that show direct intervention of the gods, * ancient texts that show little or no introspection * ancient (Greek) lack of attribution of the self * ancient attempts, such as oracles, to reconnect with the gods * modern (at the time) understanding of neuroscience to connect all the dots. Did this big change happen 3000 years ago? Probably not. But it's an impressive effort to connect evidence from multiple disciplines, rather than grossly misrepresented "archaeological evidence" and misleading photographs showing alien astronauts in Aztec reliefs.
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May 27, 2015 17:07
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blowfish posted:At some point, people must have become conscious because we evolved from animals that are not. That's just like, your opinion man. 
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May 27, 2015 17:11
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Arglebargle III posted:That's just like, your opinion man. I don't think the can of worms is necessary in this case. Chimpanzees have pretty complex social structures, they will steal people's poo poo and laugh at them, and when they are kept in captivity by themselves they will start to hurt themselves after a little while and show all the signs of going crazy. You can make some definition of consciousness that excludes every animal except for humans, but i think you have to admit that other animals at least show some degree of it. The whole bicameral mind thing sounds ridiculous to me, the brain is just an organ. It gets confusing for us because we dont fully understand how it works, but unless you dig up a brain from 3001 years ago and a brain from 2999 years ago and there are measurable differences, you're not getting me on board.
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May 27, 2015 18:20
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homullus posted:Jaynes was a psychologist. His reasoning is: Already, that's several huge reaches with no reason to make, them, based on our incredibly incomplete understanding of the brain. There is also a much easier explanation: a lot of dual-language people have active language centers in both parts of their brain. Even if that were the case, to assume a theory as radical as this to explain something vestigial, especially symmetrically vestigial, is ludicrous. quote:So, by analogy to Democritus, Jaynes is intrigued by this mysterious area of the brain that is associated with language but not normally used for it and is shown to be associated with auditory hallucinations. Its origins are beyond historicity, so he came up with a theory that uses, among other things Almost all of these things are heavily subjective interpretation, and are based on ignoring large amounts of text that do not match up with this. The story of Job, for example, is incredibly introspective. quote:to connect all the dots. Did this big change happen 3000 years ago? Probably not. But it's an impressive effort to connect evidence from multiple disciplines, rather than grossly misrepresented "archaeological evidence" and misleading photographs showing alien astronauts in Aztec reliefs. I don't find it impressive, I really don't. I really think if he's as good a writer as the reviews say, he could have done a lot better to write about a non-absurd theory that doesn't ignore tons of poo poo. And part of the reason I'm annoyed is that it creeps into others thoughts and speech. To talk about a 'big change' is begging the question. If you read Hamlet's soliloquy, you'll find it devoid of "I" and devoid of any attribution of the self. If you read the epic of gilgamesh, you find all sorts of commentary on the self, like how a long journey changes one--Enlil is actually chastised for lacking introspection. All of this poo poo being based on selective and subjective interpretation of texts places it firmly in the area of 'crazy alien scientist dude' to me.
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May 27, 2015 19:55
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JaucheCharly posted:At best you can judge the few educated who actually wrote down their thoughts, but what about the legions of analphabets? We have Suetonius's writings for those.
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May 27, 2015 20:06
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Obdicut posted:Already, that's several huge reaches with no reason to make, them, based on our incredibly incomplete understanding of the brain. There is also a much easier explanation: a lot of dual-language people have active language centers in both parts of their brain. Even if that were the case, to assume a theory as radical as this to explain something vestigial, especially symmetrically vestigial, is ludicrous. quote:Almost all of these things are heavily subjective interpretation, and are based on ignoring large amounts of text that do not match up with this. The story of Job, for example, is incredibly introspective. quote:If you read Hamlet's soliloquy, you'll find it devoid of "I" and devoid of any attribution of the self. If you read the epic of gilgamesh, you find all sorts of commentary on the self, like how a long journey changes one--Enlil is actually chastised for lacking introspection. All of this poo poo being based on selective and subjective interpretation of texts places it firmly in the area of 'crazy alien scientist dude' to me. Hamlet's soliloquy contains reflection and meta-consciousness or whatever in its first sentence, thinking about how various others might perceive a situation, deciding to put up with it or go down swinging.
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May 27, 2015 20:59
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homullus posted:"Several huge reaches"? Really? I mean, actual-really, not sarcastic-really. I thought it was widely accepted that language lived in the left hemisphere for most people, that analogous parts of the right hemisphere were responsible for auditory hallucinations. We do know a lot more about lateralization of the brain now, but what we know now is not at issue. The huge reaches are going from that to "therefore it's likely that until written language was more useful than for recording how many goats Ak-rahu owned, everyone was non-sentient globally". homullus posted:It is rather It is strange that so many early texts talk about people routinely talking to gods, hearing voices/feeling presences, and not deciding things for themselves internally. Most of those texts are also conveniently of the form "well I didn't personally have this happen but heard from this guy who heard from this guy that heard from his grandpa that Zeus totally hit him up".
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May 27, 2015 21:07
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homullus posted:"Several huge reaches"? Really? I mean, actual-really, not sarcastic-really. I thought it was widely accepted that language lived in the left hemisphere for most people, that analogous parts of the right hemisphere were responsible for auditory hallucinations. We do know a lot more about lateralization of the brain now, but what we know now is not at issue. Yeah, that's old thinking. The right hemisphere plays an important part in language interpretation. We definitely do not think we know all the areas of the brain responsible for language, and there aren't just singular areas. In addition, the language centers all play other roles as well, so that corresponding language-ready part in the right hemisphere might be performing those other functions. What we did know back then is that we knew very little about the brain, less than we do today, and making grandiose theories about its functions was dumb--not that that stopped a lot of people who should have known better from doing so. quote:It was also likely composed over a thousand years after this supposed breakdown of the "bicameral mind". Iliad also. The argument is not wow, literally all of our earliest texts show no introspection! I rest my case, blue-pillers!!. It is rather It is strange that so many early texts talk about people routinely talking to gods, hearing voices/feeling presences, and not deciding things for themselves internally. Why is that strange? Modern texts show the same thing. People routinely talk to gods, they routinely listen to voices telling them themselves things, and they constantly use language that says an exterior force motivated them to do things. I do not even understand the most basic allegation of this. Our language, idioms, etc. is chock full of externalized decisions and externalized will. "I was moved to" "I prayed and god told me to" "I heard the voice of my father saying" "My mind wanted one thing, my heart wanted another" "I'm not myself" "Something came over me" "I had no choice but to" "Reflexively, I" etc. ad infinitum. That there is a difference between these old texts and modern ones in this particular area is a subjective judgement made by someone who was looking for support for his theory. quote:Hamlet's soliloquy contains reflection and meta-consciousness or whatever in its first sentence, thinking about how various others might perceive a situation, deciding to put up with it or go down swinging. He's not talking about how others would perceive the situation. The entire monologue is about how our will and our thoughts are taken away from us by something he places as exterior--the fear of death. or maybe not, but it doesn't matter, because that's just a subjective interpretation of a text that is widely interpretable--as are the classic texts, and Hamlet is at least in a language we mostly understand. This is why I'm aggrieved at this guy's ludicrous theory: it sucks people into defending it. Edit: To put it another way, let's grant the absurdity that the ancient texts do have this pattern and modern texts do not--as if he's actually evaluated each in any sort of systematic or meaningful way. Just grant that. A probable explanation is that there's a stylistic difference in the representation of thought and feeling. Another probable explanation is that our knowledge of the languages misses nuance that would make it more clear the relationship of the characters to their own thoughts. Another probable explanation is that the particular texts talking about people interacting with gods is entirely different from everyday life, and the representations of people who are heroes and gods isn't supposed to resemble normal humans. Etc. etc. Way, way down on the list would be "They literally all thought different from us and then their brains changed about 3000 years ago". I mean way the gently caress down there. About as far down as "It was aliens". Obdicut fucked around with this message at 21:35 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 21:18
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homullus posted:It was also likely composed over a thousand years after this supposed breakdown of the "bicameral mind". Iliad also. The argument is not wow, literally all of our earliest texts show no introspection! I rest my case, blue-pillers!!. It is rather It is strange that so many early texts talk about people routinely talking to gods, hearing voices/feeling presences, and not deciding things for themselves internally. Tunicate posted:Well, you actually can tell if someone is severely schizophrenic based on what they write. yvette's bridal, for instance. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:37 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 21:33
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Come to think of it, in a world where everyone really did experience all thoughts as coming from gods, why would it be explicitly noted in every language? Would they not consider such things so routine as to not be worth recording in a lot of languages?
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May 27, 2015 21:40
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Nintendo Kid posted:Come to think of it, in a world where everyone really did experience all thoughts as coming from gods, why would it be explicitly noted in every language? Would they not consider such things so routine as to not be worth recording in a lot of languages? Because it's an easy way to legitimize authority?
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May 27, 2015 21:43
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midnightclimax posted:Because it's an easy way to legitimize authority? And whose authority are you legitimizing when the story's about how some throwaway peasant? Again, in a society where actually everyone truly believed all thoughts actively came from the gods, so the regular peasant's god commands aren't anything special compared to the King's god commands.
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May 27, 2015 21:49
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Obdicut posted:
His point was that we are pretty much set up for external attributions (other examples of which you have adduced), and that has remained unchanged. Voices, gods, conscience; we crave external authority for our actions and external responsibility for our failures. Recent experiments have shown that people are more likely to blame an external factor when one is just presented as a possibility for their failure at a task (and then they also don't try as hard at a subsequent task as those who were told it was their fault). Rather than viewing these internal communications as conscience, or a voice "in my head" that we nevertheless view as self-generated, the ancients (according to Jaynes) perceived it externally moreso than we do today, and that some perceived them as auditory hallucinations. The notable thing in literature is the increasing advent of internal attribution. Anyway! I think I'm just repeating myself now. Read the book, or not, as you see fit. 
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May 27, 2015 21:50
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homullus posted:His point was that we are pretty much set up for external attributions (other examples of which you have adduced), and that has remained unchanged. Voices, gods, conscience; we crave external authority for our actions and external responsibility for our failures. Recent experiments have shown that people are more likely to blame an external factor when one is just presented as a possibility for their failure at a task (and then they also don't try as hard at a subsequent task as those who were told it was their fault). And he bases this on subjective reading of texts that's contradicted easily by more plausible theories. quote:Anyway! I think I'm just repeating myself now. Read the book, or not, as you see fit. Do you get why this kind of poo poo is infuriating? And in your above explanation, you say nothing about Jayne claiming that people's minds actually changed 3000 years ago--is that not actually part of his argument? It seemed to be, from what you are saying before. This new presentation of his argument differs greatly from your first explanation of his argument.
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May 27, 2015 21:56
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homullus posted:His point was that we are pretty much set up for external attributions (other examples of which you have adduced), and that has remained unchanged. Voices, gods, conscience; we crave external authority for our actions and external responsibility for our failures. Recent experiments have shown that people are more likely to blame an external factor when one is just presented as a possibility for their failure at a task (and then they also don't try as hard at a subsequent task as those who were told it was their fault). I've read the book dude, the argument just doesn't work.
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May 27, 2015 21:56
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Obdicut posted:And he bases this on subjective reading of texts that's contradicted easily by more plausible theories. Don't be infuriated! Go back to whatever it was you were doing before. Go to your happy place! Both things are part of his argument -- as I said, it is multidisciplinary. I wasn't setting out to explain the whole thing; I was first explaining the science side, because that's why I mentioned Democritus (who was also pretty wrong!), then the literary side, which I apparently did a terrible job of explaining because you're still claiming "subjective reading." I say nothing about Jaynes' claim that people's minds actually changed 3000 years ago due to cultural pressures in the face of disasters because it is to me the most far-fetched part. The ancient world he imagines is one with far less connectivity and trade, and is far more theocratically monolithic worldwide. 3000 years ago is too recent, and the world's people not that homogeneous.
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May 27, 2015 22:16
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homullus posted:Don't be infuriated! Go back to whatever it was you were doing before. Go to your happy place! You didn't do a bad explanation of explaining the literary side, because there is only a subjective reading possible. The science he's talking about is totally wrong, the history he's talking about is wrong, and the literary criticism he's engaging in is facile and fatuous. So what's the cool bit about his theory again? From the reviews, it really sounds like people liked the book because he talked interestingly about the way we externalize thoughts. What is infuriating is that then he apparently cobbled on this junk-rear end pile of stupid crackpot theory poo poo to it, which is going to keep suckering people into it and keep cropping up. This is why I feel a well-articulated lovely argument is worse than a badly-articulated lovely argument. The latter doesn't tend to get so many adherents and defenders.
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May 27, 2015 22:20
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Stealth Tiger posted:I don't think the can of worms is necessary in this case. Chimpanzees have pretty complex social structures, they will steal people's poo poo and laugh at them, and when they are kept in captivity by themselves they will start to hurt themselves after a little while and show all the signs of going crazy. You can make some definition of consciousness that excludes every animal except for humans, but i think you have to admit that other animals at least show some degree of it. yes, the "it happened in the bronze age because literature  " thing is stupid and any meaningful transition point probably goes somewhere into earlier human or great ape evolutionthough at this point ~true believers~ would probably say something about how brain hardware was already there and then BrainOS X (non-schizophrenic edition) got added on top 
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May 27, 2015 22:42
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Obdicut posted:You didn't do a bad explanation of explaining the literary side, because there is only a subjective reading possible. The science he's talking about is totally wrong, the history he's talking about is wrong, and the literary criticism he's engaging in is facile and fatuous. So what's the cool bit about his theory again? Why are you so worked about an interesting but ultimately wrong idea? Nobody in this thread so far agreed with Jaynes theory. They've just corrected some misunderstandings about it. The worst sin of Jaynes was not checking what anthropologists, historians, and classicists was saying at the time. Again, he was a psychologist, and he tried to approach this problem through neuroscience and consciousness studies which were just taking their first baby steps. blowfish posted:yes, the "it happened in the bronze age because literature See, that's the thing. He never argued brain physiology and genes suddenly changed during bronze age collapse. Rather, he claims consciousness (which he has a very narrow definition for it) is socially acculturated during childhood. Also, I may be misremembering it but he also didn't claimed pre-consciousness people were schizophrenic. Schizophrenia is caused by neurological factors resulting in a temporary breakdown of consciousness and reverting back to the lower order of thinking, which is the bi-cameral mind. fspades fucked around with this message at 22:53 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 22:43
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fspades posted:Why are you so worked about an interesting but ultimately wrong idea? Nobody in this thread so far agreed with Jaynes theory. They've just corrected some misunderstandings about it. Why ask me something I already explained? I'm annoyed because interesting but crackpot theories tend to suck people in, get repeated, poeple who have only a little knowledge think they have validity. They work against the sum of human knowledge. quote:The worst sin of Jaynes was not checking what anthropologists, historians, and classicists was saying at the time. Again, he was a psychologist, and he tried to approach this problem through neuroscience and consciousness studies which were just taking their first baby steps. And as a psychologist, he should have known that making this sort of grandiose stretch of a theory was ludicrously asinine. That he also should have known that going outside his discipline was foolish unless he really was going to take the time to understand what those other disciplines said. But the cardinal sin was that instead of talking lucidly about the interesting problems that our apparent externalization of thought creates, what it might mean about consciousness, he decided on a howl-at-the-moon theory, went looking for evidence for it while ignoring counter-evidence, and wrote a book about it. Like I said, he reminds me a bit of Thor Heyerdahl, but Heyerdahl is redeemed by his actual physical anthropology which really helped our understanding. His theories were good only in so far as they motivated him to do that, otherwise Heyerdahl's theories are aggravating because people keep bringing them up as though they have some validity. To put it yet another way: Isaac Newton's work on physics and optics and math and poo poo was really cool. His work on alchemy and a bible code was a complete waste of time that actually worked to retard scientific progress. It sounds like Jayne recognized interesting problems in consciousness, and then vomited a malformed theory all over it. Cool on the recognizing interesting questions, too bad you shat it all up. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 23:20 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 22:53
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Obdicut posted:Why ask me something I already explained? I'm annoyed because interesting but crackpot theories tend to suck people in, get repeated, poeple who have only a little knowledge think they have validity. They work against the sum of human knowledge. This is really dumb, and I'm glad most academics I've met don't think in this way. A well-articulated and seemingly convincing idea is always better than otherwise. Because even when they are wrong, they bring our attention to previously ignored subjects and create interesting debates that takes us forward. I'm not saying Jaynes' was one of those, but it would be a pity if people stopped to think boldly for fear of being proven otherwise.
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May 27, 2015 23:07
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fspades posted:This is really dumb, and I'm glad most academics I've met don't think in this way. A well-articulated and seemingly convincing idea is always better than otherwise. Because even when they are wrong, they bring our attention to previously ignored subjects and create interesting debates that takes us forward. I'm not saying Jaynes' was one of those, but it would be a pity if people stopped to think boldly for fear of being proven otherwise. Again, my point is that Jayne could have done the 'bring our attention to previously ignored subjects' (if it was previously ignored, which it really wasn't) without loading on the bullshit asinine theory. Well-articulated theories that ignore evidence and abuse other disciplines to make their argument are not, in fact, good things, nor are they 'thinking boldly'.
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May 27, 2015 23:14
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the Bolivian Atlantis theory holds a lot more water than this bicaramel nonsense
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May 27, 2015 23:17
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Obdicut posted:Why ask me something I already explained? I'm annoyed because interesting but crackpot theories tend to suck people in, get repeated, poeple who have only a little knowledge think they have validity. They work against the sum of human knowledge. Sounds a bit like GG&S. Only I think he took the feedback, took a few steps back towards his first field, and did Collapse, which was pretty good. GG&S wasn't, like, bad bad either.
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May 27, 2015 23:19
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