[ExI] Limits of human modification

Tue Nov 24 18:17:28 UTC 2015

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 12:17 AM, Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com> wrote:

> I would eliminate superstitions, or our very bad ability to just
> statistics intuitively, which I believe is related to being superstitious.
>
> I would not eliminate religious feelings…IF, as I suspect, it is linked to
> our ability to understand other minds. You may be familiar with the theory
> that autism is a kind of mindblindness.  A theory of mine (which may be
> incorrect), is that the human need to address inanimate forces as spirits
> or gods (or patterns in the will of one all-powerful God) is a kind inverse
> mindblindness. If autistic people tend to treat other people as inanimate
> objects, the religious person is inclined to treat inanimate objects as if
> they were people. (Martin Buber celebrates this very tendency.)
>
> But I believe that the ability to write fiction is also directly related
> to this capacity. Creativity of this kind, storytelling specifically, is a
> like overdetermined mind sightedness. But, being a writer myself, I should
> hate to eliminate this ability in my children, or in the human race. I
> think some people also call this Emotional Intelligence.
>
> Interestingly, when I did my genealogy, I was struck by the high
> percentage of clergymen there were in the earlier generations. (One of them
> had a daughter accused of witchcraft at Salem! She wasn’t killed because he
> put in a word for her.) Later generations had less clergy… but more fiction
> writers.
>
> Of course, if there were a way to untangle the ability to imagine other
> mind form the tendency to distrust science, that would be nice. I’m not
> really sure that’s a genetic issue, but maybe it is. Certainly I’ve noticed
> that even academics in the liberal arts who are atheists but still very
> “mind sighted” also seem to share an antipathy to science shared by the
> most uneducated and fanatical folk who otherwise have nothing in common
> with them. Odd! But maybe it’s just because people who are very story-wise
> are not often good at math and science. If you could boost one without
> losing the other, that would be my preference.
>
> Tara Maya
>

That's very interesting.  I have never heard creativity and emotional
intelligence conflated. I tend to disagree with it, but then our
understanding of creativity (C) is very poor.  In a general way, we can say
that C is something people like or find useful, but in certain fields, like
classical music or the visual arts, there is tremendous disagreement on C.

What do you think of Alexander McCall Smith?  He surely can spin stories,
but I'll bet the literati hold their noses when he is mentioned.

I do hope that we can eliminate our race's tendency to worship things like
trees or ancestors or farm animals.  That may be different from
superstition.  I suspect we will need a few hundred years of research to
tease these things out (once we have reached some agreed-upon definitions,
which we certainly do not have now - and may never have if philosophers
keep dithering).

Those in academia who distrust science may be those who still believe in
the blank slate and deny the role of genes (not just sociologists), like
those who would deny the role of gender in the differences in math scores
at the high end, despite the overwhelming evidence.  ("My theory is
correct.  Never mind what the data say." - the tail wagging the dog).  I
very much doubt that they deny findings in physics or chemistry.  They
don't know enough to do that.  Of course they don't know enough psychology
either.

Re clergy:  the first son inherits.  The second and thereafter go into
academia or the ministry, in British history and some others.

bill w

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>
>
> On Nov 23, 2015, at 5:32 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I assume that at some point in the future, every single human
> characteristic will be found to be determined, at least in part, by genes,
> perhaps quite a few of them.
>
>
> Yes to your question.  If they don't like immortality they have options.
> Perhaps if there were a way to eliminate certain memories it would be
> easier to live longer.
>
> Here's one for you all:  if you could eliminate religious feelings,
> tendencies to worship gods or even people, superstitions, would you?
>
>
>
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