[ExI] Motivated Reasoning

[Tristan Linck]

On 2020-02-04 12:22, Gabe Waggoner via extropy-chat wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2020 at 12:26 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> > Let?s do an informal survey.  Younger people here (under 40 crowd) do you
> > know what that reference was?  Older ones here too, do you remember that
> > episode?  Keith I already know you do, and of course plenty of us here
> > remember it well.
> >
>
> > You know my response, but just to formally confirm: I know the reference
> > and have seen that episode.
>
> I, too, get the reference to pon farr. I'm 44, and my introduction to the show was in October 1984, when my dad sat me in front of the TV to watch "The Doomsday Machine." He said, "This is a show I used to watch when I was a kid. I liked it, but you'll probably think it's stupid after a few years." I still have the original VHS tape on which he recorded that episode, along with "The Changeling," "Wolf in the Fold," and "Mirror, Mirror." Good times. My classmates used to tease me and say, "Hey, Gabe, your ears are getting pointed."
>
> All these years later, and that show has dramatically influenced the person I've become. Star Trek and Stargate, as well as the writings of Arthur C. Clarke and many others (fiction and nonfiction), have all driven me to embrace transhumanism/Singularitarianism/digital ascension/cryonics, etc.
>
> I always figured some Trek folks were part of this list, but I'm happy to see it explicitly mentioned.
>
> --
> Gabe Waggoner, MS, ELS
> Science Writer-Editor
> 7318 Edmonston Rd.
> College Park, MD 20740-3018
> lostmyelectron at protonmail.com
> http://www.nasw.org/users/rgwaggoner/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

As one of the under 40 crowd, I'll add another data point of knowing the 
reference. In my case it started with my grandmother and "The Trouble 
with Tribbles" on VHS. She was more into TNG than the original series, 
but that was the episode that grabbed my attention as a small proto-nurd 
and led to all the rest! I'll say that most of my local acquaintances 
(more nurds, although fewer under 40 than there used to be) still do get 
into detailed discussions of the old Trek episodes!