[ExI] a little essay on anger and respect

[William Flynn Wallace]

Keith, maybe I am missing something, but your post seems to be too obvious
to state.   bill w

On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 12:13 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I don't expect you to buy into this worldview, it seems that humans
> have a profound rejection of the concept that they have evolved
> psychological traits that are beyond reason.
>
> However, if you accept evolution, particularly evolutionary
> psychology, then behavior is the direct or indirect result of
> evolution.  The ability to have beliefs at all comes out of the
> psychological mechanisms that wind up people for wars.  Details in the
> paper.
>
> Keith
>
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 8:47 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > I still don't see any data from anybody that establishes that belief
> overpowers reason.  What do we even mean by a belief?  Is acknowledging
> gravity equations a belief?  Is someone suggesting that a belief is based
> solely on emotions  with no data?
> >
> > Emotions are totally essential to decision making.  Ask for proof.
> >
> > "We got this way because of evolution...."  What follows seems to me to
> be a totally circular argument.   bill w
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 9:02 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf
> Of Keith Henson via extropy-chat
> >> ...
> >> >
> >> >>>>...  Belief overrides reason almost every time for the vast
> majority of people.
> >>
> >>
> >> >>>...Sure does...   spike
> >>
> >>
> >> >> ...How do you know this,  Spike and Ben?
> >>
> >> >...It's a consequence of evolution.  People have been selected for
> belief to trump reason because genes for doing so survived better.
> >>
> >> >...It's the subject of that paper one person looked at.   Keith
> >>
> >>
> >> I am a firsthand witness to this.
> >>
> >> The man convinced against his will
> >> is of the same opinion still.
> >>
> >> Isn't that the old saying?  Are there any exceptions?  A few.  Read on
> please.
> >>
> >> I can offer many examples, but I will just mention a rather striking
> one.  I was at a museum which was mostly about Native American culture, but
> they had a small dinosaur skeleton, a hadrosur.  I was gazing at this beast
> in complete awe, when a person who is a poster-child example of
> creationism-at-all-costs-to-reason-and-logic offered his explanation of how
> that skeleton came to be: it was carved from stone, an idol of sorts, which
> now confuses the true believers.
> >>
> >> At the back of your heel there is a spot where the Achilles tendon
> attaches to the Calcaneus.  Did you ever wonder how it attaches?  I hadn't
> either, until I was looking at that fossilized dinosaur skeleton,
> specifically at the structure analogous to our calcaneus.  I was most
> astonished to discover... that insertion site had been perfectly preserved
> by whatever preserved the rest of that skeleton.
> >>
> >> I couldn't find a good photo of it on the internet, but if you think
> about it... how do tendons attach to bones?  Why haven't you pondered that
> before now?  Ponder that now.  Then recognize there must be some kind of
> rough patch or something on the surface of the bone to give the tendon
> something to grab onto, perhaps a bunch of holes parallel to the tendon.
> Before I saw that skeleton, I never thought of that, but... there, right in
> front of my lying eyes... was a perfectly... preserved... Achilles tendon
> insertion site.  Ah.  That beast waited 80 million years to teach a mammal
> about the reality of evolution.
> >>
> >> Within days, I realized the evidence of evolution was overwhelming.  I
> realized it was curtains for all fundamentalist religion that is based on
> creationism (which is really all of religion.)  Evolution was real, we are
> all just dust in the wind.  Dust in the wind.  I resisted that conclusion
> with every fiber of my being, but there was the evidence staring me in the
> face: a perfectly preserved tendon insertion on a fossilized dinosaur.
> >>
> >> spike
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >
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