Hah.. connections, as [link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521841143/qid=1100020864/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-2176562-1700167?v=glance&s=books| this Mayr book] -- with an "others liked.." ref to a Richard Dawkins screed.

Apropos.. enroute tonight, heard Krasny talking to John Searle about his book, Mind - A brief introduction. With Qs from e-mail and phone -- a nice excoriation of Dawkins and other (my words) - linear, plodding thinkers about simplistic pairs of opposites. Searle sped through Descartes, on through "the Hs" - Huxley, Hegel and the other Germans. He paused to admire David Hume's towering intellect (while disagreeing also with his simplistic "query into whether there was a Self 'inside there'").

As always, I find your reductio of origins? of the current drunkards-walk of pseudo-science like String 'Theory' + the stuff in your links .. as being about either feminism or narcissism -- still pretty effete, and for obv reasons:

Masc/fem have no palpable [referents]; the putative traits are found across gender - and the concepts themselves are muddied and muddled by various people reinventing [referents] to suit publishers pandering to pop fads. There is a presumption of a 'polarity' when what we have -by inspection- is a continuum; merely the start of the confusions. 'Analog' is NOT just a form of digital-think, but with fewer digits-of-precision!
(Did I mention - your people-model sucks? .. but at least it's ~~ harsh enough ;-)

Searle is working from some (defined) usage of the ideas, Observer-dependent / Observer-independent as he attempts to relate mind, language and do an arabesque around the above turgid philosopher list. I can't summarize here an impressive pithiness expressed over an hour.. in approaching consciousness, attention, focus.. and even that 'mindfulness' via which an aim can be sustained, "a promise can be made" [by What? 'Inside'?]. No String-theorist he.

Am almost tempted to buy his book.. maybe because we seem to agree ~ on what is mostly irrelevant and what is Important in properly weighting the rampant (Western) ignorance of basic metaphysics -- in any effort to understand 'our consciousness'.

At least begin-to -- and then put the final nail in the coffin of the distractive AI-droids of the sort who imagine that 10010101 crap may/shall! ~ one day create a functioning conscious 'entity' - yada yada. The mechano-Man Disney dream of many.

In brief then, I see this confusion as part & parcel of the 'evolution' chestnut above + the current dysfunction of that huge majority who have no idea what a theory Is (for!)

This election demonstrates, QED: the primitive level of metaphysical balderdash which is the fundie basis for having voted really.. for Armageddon: The Wholly-owned Disneyland/DOD Reality Show for frightened sheep, immersed in inculcated Puritan guilt. But still: wanting to be at the-side-of the fantasy Numero Uno, watchin the suckers 'down below' gettin boiled in oil. Pure reptile brains at their nastiest ... by the millions!

The defects then, are quite larger than silliness about masc/feminine 'traits', or even deeply inculcated ignorance of "what a theory might be" and what the 'scientific method' is: it is a murdering of language, such as inhibits ever finding out (or wishing-to, again) even these two concepts; never mind.. the really Difficult stuff, which would need real labor, sustained over time.

So OK - we agree on the result: We're Fucked, either for an extended period or permanently [nukes eat up any self-correction time]. But not because of male-female games: because of a reverence for 'comfort' / ez mindless superstition over enquiry / and a choice of juvenile Neediness
(Shrub Will Take Care of Us) over - deciding to do the ever-delayed work of growing-up.

I'll ~ go along pretty-much with

..like seemingly all modern people, they insist on aggrandizing their work and making it inaccessible to laypeople. Thus, the simple distinction between a theory of origins and a description of a statistical process based on simple, verifiable genetics, goes unstated and misunderstood.

The post-modern narcissist's mind is concerned only with its own image, not with the transmission of information. Biologists are just as guilty as anyone. Furthermore, lacking mathematical insight, they are far too prone to mistake correlation for causality.

- except that 'narcissism' of that degree implies a waning of [1]consciousness, and over a relatively short time-span: visible within our young-lives, yet..


Epitaph [?] Peter Pan pipsqueaks
(Screw the glandular show; it's a Red Herring.)


my 3 kopeks


[1] ie. A devolution has occurred / Dumbth has occurred (?) in general self-knowledge; inability to even limn the means to that acquisition -- and the ennui we see all around, all implying a certain 'trampish-state': not wishing even to try | just seek mindless diversion Neat as in, undiluted with periods of honest Work.

[Bizness ritual epitomizes! "the useless task" - imposed as daily reinforcement of the Managing Class over serfs-in-cells. It's about Power! not Sex - that other part-time soporific mass-control-aid..]