[ExI] Physics versus psychology

[Mike Dougherty]

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> The theory says that everything of this sort must have either been
> selected or be a side effect of something that was under selection.
> It is, for example, hard to make a case for the ability to be addicted
> to drugs to have been selected.  But it's easy to understand drug
> addiction as a side effect of critical motivational reward mechanisms.

To make that case I'd want to invoke some kind of alien programming,
much like the TV show Stargate SG1's Goa'uld.  But that's just
fantasy.. :)

> But take hypnosis.  I can't make a case for that either being selected
> *or* being a side effect of something that was selected.
>
> There is always the case that some feature could be the result of
> random drift but it's not all that likely.

I'd say it's just lucky [sic] that we happened to discover a
particular exploit of human awareness and learning that hypnosis is
possible under certain conditions (set/setting, prior experience,
willingness, etc.)