Comments on: hold

By: this post contains blatant linkage « thegovernance.com

this post contains blatant linkage « thegovernance.com — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:03:48 +0000

By: DonR

DonR — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:35:55 +0000

Check out The Purpose of Purpose lecture Dawkins did recently. It’s on richarddawkins.net. He references the Ray Comfort clip and shows some history of the banana.

I always found that the simplest response to the banana argument was the question, “What about the coconut?”

By: Stephen Turner

Stephen Turner — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:42:44 +0000

I believe you’re more or less correct about the banana’s history. Someone wrote a book about it a year or two ago, and the Cavendish (what we nearly always eat) is now threatened by Panama disease, which did for other varieties that used to be popular. This is also a good place to mention the SETI science podcasts, which are generally excellent, and I think would be of interest to people in this forum. They had an item about the banana book last year, which you can get here:

http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Here_s_an_Idea_

Ob J&M: I like Mo’s choice of reading material.

By: mateo-argentino

mateo-argentino — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:05:23 +0000

Hey, you guys remember the “banana” joke from J&M?? you know “the banana is an atheist’s nightmare…”, well yesterday I found out something awesome: Bananas are product of artificial selction.
You see, bananas are sterile, and depend on humans to reproduce.

Furthermore, the yellow banana is actually a mutated plantain: In 1836 a Jamaican guy found a mutated tree among his plantains and discovered that this yellow plantain had a sweeter taste and didn’t need to be cooked.

And there’s more: Plantains were also artificially selected: The wild banana is larger and not so “perfect-shaped”, and is full of seeds. It was after generations of selective breeding that the plantaint got to the stage we now know, and then a mutation resulted in the banana, being a positive mutation for the survival of the species, it was transmitted into the next generations.

p.s: You guys sould try bananas con dulce de leche, its the dessert of the gods…

By: Intelligent Designer

Intelligent Designer — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:47:41 +0000

But then, there is the David Bellamy factor, isn’t there…

By: Intelligent Designer

Intelligent Designer — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:45:41 +0000

Daoloth said:

“I therefore am uncomfortable with people who set themselves up to pronounce on what is good or bad in �science� generally- the tendency to assume that because you are competent in one area you will be so in another.”

I see what you mean, but I believe that the rigour of scientific training, the honing of one’s ideas through debate and peer review, and the general experience of life and the world that one has by the time one is old enough to be competent to pronounce on ’science’ generally give one a degree of legitimacy.

Richard Dawkins himself embraces many other disciplines in the God Delusion, and although he is not a qualified psychiatrist, sociologist, physicist, theologian, geologist or historian, I have no problem with him bringing the arguments from these schools of thought into his book. After all, it would be a pretty dull (not to mention short) book without them.

By: Daoloth

Daoloth — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:02:04 +0000

One of the points to raise here is that humans are inherently fallible thinkers. “Well, duh!” you might think- but that’s what makes scientific method so valuable.
It is inherently self-correcting with a body of people who try to tear into ideas and force the thinking to be better. Its not a set of beliefs or a set of experts but an attitude and a public mechanism- ideas are tested by experiment.
I therefore am uncomfortable with people who set themselves up to pronounce on what is good or bad in “science” generally- the tendency to assume that because you are competent in one area you will be so in another.

By: Agile Entrepreneur

Agile Entrepreneur — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:41:00 +0000

I found this really cool word in the wikipedia page on DK effect – anosognosia.
“The authors draw an analogy with anosognosia – a condition in which a person who suffers a physical disability due to brain injury seems unaware of or denies the existence of the disability. This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments, such as blindness or paralysis.”

By: JMo

JMo — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:10:50 +0000

I see this kind of thing all of the time. I am intelligent enough to know that even after all the reading, schooling, working, I know that there is a great deal I don’t know and many much more intelligent than I. The people I get a kick out of are those who think that they are intelligent but aren’t but still try to convince everyone that they are. They are worse than the ones who know that they aren’t all that smart, at least these types know who they are and that if they chose to could actually get more intelligent.

By: mateo-argentino

mateo-argentino — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:47:07 +0000

hey, there’s this webcomic I think you are guys will love: smbc-comics.com, its noy always about religion, but its (almost) always funny…today’s comic mocks te Fall of Humanity…its brilliant.

By: Anon.

Anon. — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:21:26 +0000

PfatBudz has a good point. I find myself increasingly “infallible”, as old-age starts to strip me of my intelligence. Any other old-timers noticed this?

By: Stonyground

Stonyground — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:56:16 +0000

For some reason this one made me think of motorcycling. Riding a powered two wheeler is, up to a point, inherently dangerous and just about everyone who does it has had to go through a learning process which includes falling off occasionally. The point being that most of us learn from our mistakes, and though a spill can still happen to the best of us, I have now been riding for decades without coming a cropper (You just watch, it will probably happen tomorrow). However, there seems to be a minority of riders who, no matter how many times they crash their bike, still see themselves as being nearly as good as Rossi. They seem to be able to rationalise that it was not their fault and couldn’t be avoided and so they appear not to learn from it. Sorry if I’m a bit off topic.

By: PfatBudz

PfatBudz — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:35:31 +0000

I think it is more along the lines of: it takes an intelligent person to recognize that they are not the highest form of intelligence. Below a certain amount of intelligence it seems so many people lose touch with reality and start living in their own “infallible” head.

Cant hate people for being incapable of deciphering reality though, some people just dont have that option. So much of this thread reminds me of doublethink from “1984″. I am a long time reader of J and M and I love reading the comments but I never had the pull to join in on the conversation, but this comic is perfect and I had ta jump in.

By: open minded atheist

open minded atheist — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:51:35 +0000

Like me making a fool out of myself by spelling Kruger wrong … obviously I did that just to demonstrate how fallible even the brightest among us can be

By: open minded atheist

open minded atheist — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:48:51 +0000

Isn’t the Meta-Dunning-Krueger effect, that people who actually are competent in one area, feel falsly immune to the Dunning-Krueger effect in other areas, with sometimes hilarious consequences. Like scientist talking about philosophy or religion.
Allegedly, the conviction it couldn’t apply to you is the easiest symptom to identify it being at work.

By: Rose

Rose — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:29:27 +0000

Hey I said something like this once when commenting on a blog and got dismissed as elitist. I wasn’t talking in terms of incompetence though, I was talking in terms of general intelligence. I said that it takes an intelligent person to recognise an intelligent person . . . is that much different from the Dunning-Kruger effect?

By: this post contains blatant linkage - The Gutter Snipe

this post contains blatant linkage - The Gutter Snipe — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:46:56 +0000

[...] Jesus and Mo – hold And, really, any form it is, humanity wins [↩]I take mine black, french press dark roasted. Dad prefers his mellower, drip brewed and double double. We both need coffee [↩] This entry was written by The Snipe, posted on June 19, 2009 at 11:46 pm, filed under in my sights. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « QUICK, WHILE I’M THINKING OF IT: Schedules [...]

By: JohnnieCanuck

JohnnieCanuck — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:24:59 +0000

I remember reading about that. Some lies are essential, such as when placating higher ranking members or building alliances with peers. They are tools for good, as well as for bad.

The best way to lie face to face to someone is to convince yourself, at least in the moment, that what you are saying is true. It makes the body language work. The trick is almost automatic, a habit that doesn’t require conscious effort to invoke. Undoubtedly we all do it, and at least a little more than we think we do. Could I have a chorus of “Not me” now?

One of my daughters was so susceptible to this as a child, that she couldn’t back down from a denial once made, no matter how easily it could be refuted. Didn’t even matter if there were no significant consequences. I learned not to force that initial denial and just talk about the situation quietly.

This is just another mechanism that has been appropriated by the helminth of religion to strengthen its parasitic hold on its hosts.

By: RavenBlack

RavenBlack — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:07:04 +0000

I thought they were going to say the barmaid rather than 99% of scientists.

By: Daoloth

Daoloth — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:50:35 +0000

It gets worse. Read Bob Trivers on why any social species is under strong selection for self-deception, the first step to being able to manipulate others is to be able to have a subset of ones own mind that believes the crap