"We think by feeling, what is there to know?"
--Theodore Rothke

that said

Do we all believe in human irrationality and rationality?
um. maybe. They both have their places. People become increasingly rational when they remove themselves from the thought process. People are irrational as they become more subjective. That does not mean that our 'reason' ever becomes fully rational, and there is always, always logic when a person thinks--its just that personal logic often operates without accounting for all available information and thus produces 'irrational' results. Irrational thought is just incomplete thought; be it a fear of the dark or a paranoid schizophrenic delusion.
Try this out for size:
1. Given its life history and biology, an animal will always do what it believes to be best in a given situation; that is to operate in the most logical fashion.
2. All life histories contain strong biases, and all biologies great flaws
3. Therefore no animal will ever operate in a completely logical fashion.
We can imagine pure reason or feel powerfully about something that we don't understand completely, but these things are not wholly irrational.

Emotion is hardwired logic applied to behavior given the phenotypes typical ancestral environment and selective conditions. Feelings become problematic for modern people because we have not existed in our current environment long enough for productive changes to take place (usually only 7 deaths in 2000 years will matter—if they are the very last phenotypes bearing a mild variation of a trait which then absolutely has left the population).

So behavior often seems irrational; the sociology experiments were a subject will sacrifice 1 real dollar to keep a hypothetical opponent from gaining 20 imaginary dollars in an unfair exchange, or choosing not to attempt something with 50:50 odds because the potential feeling of losing outweighs the potential joy of victory, but these behaviors are not irrational given the subjective nature of a person. As a social animal, personally losing one dollar to teach another person not to cheat or be unfair has greater utility for the species, and under the draconian nature of natural selection 50:50 odds are not good enough, therefore losing should feel worse than winning good (otherwise you'd take more risks and fail more often).

You say "God" represents something irrational in human thinking? um, in a way, but based on the sheer frequency with which people generate gods and myths and rituals, and the similarities among geoculturally separate populations lends to the idea that there are hidden psychological motives for these behaviors. I don't have the time or energy to elaborate fully, but a guy named Woods wrote a very good treatise on how evolution created god in the thinking of man. For me, whether or not I believe it or don't believe it is irrelevant, the fact that I can't knock his argument down means that I must let it stand.

A clear truth can be discovered not by making evidence fit an established scenario, but in generating a scenario that is not harmed by any evidence presentable. If you want me to abandon evolution, bring me evidence that can be reproduced that will invalidate it, and demonstrate how.

What do you mean by "framework of irrationality"
To argue within such a framework is preposterous because there is no reason why one argument leads to another. This is why debates based on 'incomplete' positions collapse when explored; they always amount to "this is my position and I will not accept evidence against it..."

Why don't we all accept that the first woman was a Cassowary who's skin was stolen by the first man? Or that man has hunger as a punishment from the gods because of the unequal division of a sacrificial Ox into the bones and the meat?

All myths are the same because none will tolerate evidence.
My creation myth can move, so if sufficient evidence pointed to archaic lake chad 12 million years ago as the site for the origin of Bipedalism, I would abandon the rift valley of 7 mya (albeit reluctantly since I am human), yet my roommate Dan would never abandon the Eden of 6,000 years ago, despite the fact that an age like that would mean that radioactive decay and sedimentation are irrational processes (which he says are theoretically true processes (?? i don't know how he thinks??) ). It's a position that you can't understand, but merely have to "believe."

On another note, the SOB's ritually killed the Neophytes last week, and I suppose that we'll be reborn as immortals tomorrow. For the last week, I've been "Hemolytic Jaundice" and ignored by the immortals (upperclassmen) who just say "what is that smell" if I pass to closely. ave. I think they are going to cover us in food.

posted by Adrian   [10:22 PM]

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