LINK: WHAT’S THE POINT IF WE CAN’T HAVE FUN?

Baffler_24_Graeber_Image

“In the full-blown capitalist version of evolution, where the drive for accumulation had no limits, life was no longer an end in itself, but a mere instrument for the propagation of DNA sequences.”

WHAT’S THE POINT IF WE CAN’T HAVE FUN?

 

Article by my favourite David Graeber on how the meaning of life, even matter itself, could in many important ways be to play. If it sounds too out there for you, give it a shot, you might be pleasantly surprised. The way I see it, it strikes a great balance between being intellectually adventurous and grounded.

Here’s a snippet from the article on the whole concept of the selfish gene:


[…] It came, instead, to be subsumed under the broader “problem of altruism”—another phrase borrowed from the economists, and one that spills over into arguments among “rational choice” theorists in the social sciences. This was the question that already troubled Darwin: Why should animals ever sacrifice their individual advantage for others? Because no one can deny that they sometimes do. Why should a herd animal draw potentially lethal attention to himself by alerting his fellows a predator is coming? Why should worker bees kill themselves to protect their hive? If to advance a scientific explanation of any behavior means to attribute rational, maximizing motives, then what, precisely, was a kamikaze bee trying to maximize?

We all know the eventual answer, which the discovery of genes made possible. Animals were simply trying to maximize the propagation of their own genetic codes. Curiously, this view—which eventually came to be referred to as neo-Darwinian—was developed largely by figures who considered themselves radicals of one sort or another. Jack Haldane, a Marxist biologist, was already trying to annoy moralists in the 1930s by quipping that, like any biological entity, he’d be happy to sacrifice his life for “two brothers or eight cousins.” The epitome of this line of thought came with militant atheist Richard Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene—a work that insisted all biological entities were best conceived of as “lumbering robots,” programmed by genetic codes that, for some reason no one could quite explain, acted like “successful Chicago gangsters,” ruthlessly expanding their territory in an endless desire to propagate themselves. Such descriptions were typically qualified by remarks like, “Of course, this is just a metaphor, genes don’t really want or do anything.” But in reality, the neo-Darwinists were practically driven to their conclusions by their initial assumption: that science demands a rational explanation, that this means attributing rational motives to all behavior, and that a truly rational motivation can only be one that, if observed in humans, would normally be described as selfishness or greed. As a result, the neo-Darwinists went even further than the Victorian variety. If old-school Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer viewed nature as a marketplace, albeit an unusually cutthroat one, the new version was outright capitalist. The neo-Darwinists assumed not just a struggle for survival, but a universe of rational calculation driven by an apparently irrational imperative to unlimited growth.

QBDP EPISODE #8 – THE GARRET EPISODE

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Το καλό πράγμα αργεί να γίνει, είναι γνωστό, αλλά αυτή το φορά το παράκανα: Έναν χρόνο μετά, το podcast με τον Γκάρετ είναι επιτέλους ονλάιν. Ηχογραφημένο 6 Αυγούστου 2014 στο μπαλκόνι του Γκάρετ στην Γλυφάδα, πριν το μεγάλο βήμα του στον χώρο των games (είναι ο φίλος μου που δουλεύει στη Riot που αναφέρω όποτε και σε όποιον μπορώ για να κόβω αντιδράσεις!) και δεν τον έχω πολυδεί από τότε…

Αθεϊσμός vs «εναλλακτική» επιστήμης, ο κίνδυνος της εμπόλα (λολ), ιστορίες από τα Еnglish conversation groups και άλλες από το EVS στη Σόφια, ερωτήματα όπως «σε τι είναι χρήσιμη η νοσταλγία;», «τι θα γινόσουν αν μπορούσες να ξαναδιαλέξεις εναν διαφορετικό δρόμο;», «είναι χάσιμο χρόνου να παίζες games αν περνάς καλά;», «θα είναι το Angry Birds το Mario των hardcore του μέλλοντος;», «πώς θα είναι το facebook σε 50 χρόνια;», «θα ζούμε όταν θα γίνει η Ελλάδα έρημος;», «πόσο μπορείς να πιεις πριν οδηγήσεις;», «υπάρχει το Total Perspective Vortex;», «ποιό είναι το τίμημα μιας ζωής συνεχώς σε κίνηση;», «το Breaking Bad σε έκανε να θέλεις να δοκιμάσεις meth;», «ήταν μαλάκας ο Chris McCandless;» και άλλα πολλά. Μια συζήτηση για τα πάντα και τίποτα, ένα Ne-fest άνοιγμα μυαλών όπως συνηθίζουμε (και η αλήθεια είναι ότι μου λείπει τώρα που είμαστε πολίτες του κόσμου).

Ένα podcast μιάμιση ώρα για να γελάσουμε, να σκεφτούμε, να θυμηθούμε, και που αποκαλύπτει πολλά και για τους δύο μας που δεν μοιραζόμαστε απαραίτητα συχνά. Απολαύστε!

Review: The Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry + Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα ΧΙΧ

The Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of EnquiryThe Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry by Rupert Sheldrake

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have the rational intelligence to be a scientist, but it’s not in my personality to fill in cracks in established mental models. I seek anomalies that open cracks.

~Ran Prieur

Quickly becoming one of my favourite quotes.


Jimmy Wales tells “energy workers” that Wikipedia won’t publish woo, “the work of lunatic charlatans isn’t the equivalent of ‘true scientific discourse'” [link]

Jimmy Wales’ statement is as revolting as the discussion under it. I would suggest that you read it, but only if you have the stomach for tens of “skeptics” parrotting the mainstream opinions about woo, parapsychology etc, claiming the truth and the high ground of knowledge as they usually do. Even the article itself is taking clear sides without shame.

Do these people know anything about the subject? Does Jimmy Wales know anything about the subject, he who with one broad swath pigeonholes so many people as lunatic charlatanes? I don’t know whether this technique in particular has had successes, explicable or inexplicable, in doing what it says it does, I haven’t looked into it to be honest, but I’ve seen the same discussion surrounding “pseudoscience” too many times to count.

Why this hate? Why this elitism? Why this aversion to exploration of the fringes? When did science become all about defending what’s already known? I thought the opposite was the main idea. Is materialist science, peer-reviewd journals, wikipedia, Richard Dawkins and the rest, parts of a bulletproof world theory anyway?

No, they’re not. Far from it. And if you want to know why, you should absolutely read The Science Delusion (title insisted upon by publisher) by Rupert Sheldrake. His main idea is that science and the scientific method are generally good at giving answers about our world, but, just like organised religion 500 years ago did, it has become too inflexible, too bulky, too dogmatic, too rid of assumptions, too sure of itself and too dismissive to be of any real use today. Meanwhile, it’s hindering research that could further our understanding of the world in unimaginable ways.

What’s interesting is that Sheldrake in this book provides us with -what’s normally considered as- hard evidence for a world that cannot be explained materialistically. That includes results of real peer-reviewed experiments that point to the reality of things like brainless memories, statistically significant telepathy and many more chin-stroke-worthy phenomena that truly test mainstream science’s beliefs of what should or shouldn’t be possible.

After reading the book, I checked Rupert Sheldrake’s Wikipedia entry just to see reactions to his work from the scientific communituy. Not surprisingly, the discussion was not much more sophisticated than what I witnessed in the link at the top of this review: accusations of pseudoscience, charlatanism etc pervaded the articles, indications that the skeptics hadn’t really comprehended the criticism aimed at their methodology and worldview, didn’t follow up on the bibliography, plainly assuming that there must have been something wrong with it (confirmation bias), or that they simply didn’t even read the book. Richard Dawkins has said, after all, that he doesn’t want to discuss evidence when it comes to inexplicable phenomena, raising questions about whether he’s really interested in the truth or not – in my personal experience, most skeptics do not have furthering their understanding of our world at the top of their priorities.

In any case, I find the accusations against Sheldrake, and this book in particular, hollow: The Science Delusion has close to 40 pages of notes and bibliography of actual experiments to back it up and Sheldrake’s style and prose themselves are lucid as well as restrained. Even in the parts in which he discusses the inability of science to interpret the phenomena, where he proposes his own theory of morphing resonance as a possible explanation -the parts I enjoyed the least because I cannot exactly grasp the concept of morphic resonance-, he does so without conviction, but rather with the spirit of the curious researcher. A true scientist in my book. The skeptics’ reaction to his work seems to disregard all of this completely; they treat him like they would any old fraud.

But I understand: scientists are also people. What would it have been normal for them to do in the face of rejection of their entire lives’ work plus a few hundred years of tradition? Accept their failure? Accept their dogmatism? Just as scientists are people, science is also a human activity, and as most of human activities do, it also suffers from the same problems human beings generally have, only in a larger, more chaotic scale.

Finally, one more reason I appreciated this book so much was that it was… tender. At the other side of the raging skeptics and this blind rejection there is investigation, there is respect, there is a belief in a state of things that resonated deeply with me. Maybe it’s because Sheldrake’s main field of research has been biology that he shows such love for plants, animals and life in general. For whatever reason, it warmed my heart and made me think that if I ever was a real scientist, Sheldrake would be my rold model: a fighter for truth against the faux fighters for truth, the romantic gardener who everybody calls a hippie but he alone sees what everybody else is too blind to see.

Third five-star review in a row after Μίλα μου για γλώσσα and
Small Gods
(lol). Am I becoming softer or just more grateful?

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Review: Last Chance to See

Last Chance to See
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Douglas Adams proved with this book that he wasn’t just a brilliant science fiction writer with a virtually unrivalled wit and sense of humour; it went to show that he had an admirable, enviable even, sense of social and ecological responsibility, taking him, as far as I am concerned, from the “brilliant writer” tier, to the “paradigm of humanity” club, reserved only for those people (and there’s not a lot of them around) that can work as sources of true inspiration for me. Last Chance To See is a manifesto on almost everything that’s wrong or imbalanced in the world today — and it was written more than 20 years ago. The Douglas Adams impish vibe that is so cherished by many serves as little more than a tasty side dish for this book. It is that good.

My edition has a foreword by Richard Dawkins who has a similar opinion of the late man as I do. While I do not really agree with his flagship Atheist views (even if I would much sooner classify myself as an Atheist than a “Creationist”), he does do a magnificent job of summing up the point of this book in just a few words:

Of the endangered animals that Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine set out to see, one seems to have gone for good during the intervening two decades. We have noew lost our last chance to see the Yangtze river dolhpin. Or hear it, which is more to the point, for the river dolphin lived ina world where seeing was pretty much out of the question anyway: a murky, muddy river in which sonar came splendidly into its own — until the arrival of massive noise pollution by boat engines.
The loss of the river dolphin is a tragedy, and some of the other wonderful characters in this book cannot be far behind. In his Last Word, Mark Carwardine reflects on why we should care when species, or shole major groups of animals and plants go extinct. He deals with the usual arguments:

Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And consercation is very much in time with our own survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients for many industrial processes.

Yes, yes, he would say that kind of thing, it’s expected of him. But the pity that we need to justify conservation on such human-centered, utilitarian grounds. To borrow an analogy I once used in a different context, it’s a bit like justifying music on the grounds that it’s good exercise for the violinist’s right arm. Surely the real justification for saving these magnificent creatures is the one with which Mark rounds off the book, and which he obviously prefers:

There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.

[…]

He [Douglas Adams] saw with his own eyes how quickly such painstaking edifices of evolutionary artifice can be torn down and tossed to oblivion. He tried to do something about it. So should we, if only to honour the memory of this unrepeatable specimen of Homo Sapiens. For once, the specific name is well deserved.

My respect also goes to Mark Carwardine, who has continued to bring the word out all these years, as well as to all the people all over the world, described in the book or not, that have devoted their lives to noble and moving ideals.

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