Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Letter to a Materialist Sam Harris
First - Your talk at the Texas Book Festival was wonderful and many atheist brains were there with neural correlates of right morality. Except for the nihilist. I saw the security detail and realized how much stress you are under for announcing an obvious truth about faith. Keep it up.
There is nothing you have written or said that I disagree with so this is nuance that I want to share for what it's worth. As a materialist I am drawn to eliminativism because - thanks to your books - I do not believe that "faith" or "belief" explain much of anything. Simply put - all these faithists live in a state of perpetual and unending anxiety which lays the groundwork for atrocious action. When I hear "God has a plan for your life and THAT'S why you're completely fucked!" it *still* makes me anxious and I am on decent meds now.
Consider two subjects:
Akbar - sees his female property in the cloth bag and prays for the death of all apostates five times daily, has just been fitted with a vest full of C4 and ball bearings.
Bubba - lives in a gated community in Birmingham Alabama to keep gang-bangers from raping his women, has just added a fully automatic pistol to his gun collection.
My conjecture is that in both cases the "faith" and "belief" of these two are non-existent. The actual brain state of anxiety caused by continued reminders that people are dreaming of messing with their shit is the problem. These daily exposures to the frightening material world create the seeds from which suicide vests and guns to kill black people sprout.
Right up until last Thursday Benoit Mandelbrot was calm fractal. Dr. Weinberg thinks about particle physics day and night for 50 years and gets smarter *not* anxious (although I did get him started on meatpuppets on board the ISS on Saturday before I saw you). Dr. Dawkins thinks about extended phenotypes day and night for 40 years and gets smarter *not* anxious. Anxiety is not a meme it is a meme substrate (memestrate) upon which mischief flourishes. What I believe but cannot prove is that the brain states like the ones you had on the powerpoint are the substrate upon which all memes grow. People can be sad, mad, glad, transcendent, bemused directly from the same brain state because their particular meme-sauce rides on top of the energy produced by particular brain states. This crackpot idea comes from two sources:
1. "The End of Certainty" by our late UT peer Dr. Prigogine
2. Certain wild explanations for my lack of female companionship
This is all hush-hush because I don't want to go back to in-patient treatment again.
Which brings me to my last point. Where is your "Selfish Gene"? I have a place for it on my bookshelf for anything you write but I need a popularized science book on the brain to put next to "In Search of Memory". If I have to wait until after you're Nobel that will be okay.
Stand by our President,
Kirk Holden
There is nothing you have written or said that I disagree with so this is nuance that I want to share for what it's worth. As a materialist I am drawn to eliminativism because - thanks to your books - I do not believe that "faith" or "belief" explain much of anything. Simply put - all these faithists live in a state of perpetual and unending anxiety which lays the groundwork for atrocious action. When I hear "God has a plan for your life and THAT'S why you're completely fucked!" it *still* makes me anxious and I am on decent meds now.
Consider two subjects:
Akbar - sees his female property in the cloth bag and prays for the death of all apostates five times daily, has just been fitted with a vest full of C4 and ball bearings.
Bubba - lives in a gated community in Birmingham Alabama to keep gang-bangers from raping his women, has just added a fully automatic pistol to his gun collection.
My conjecture is that in both cases the "faith" and "belief" of these two are non-existent. The actual brain state of anxiety caused by continued reminders that people are dreaming of messing with their shit is the problem. These daily exposures to the frightening material world create the seeds from which suicide vests and guns to kill black people sprout.
Right up until last Thursday Benoit Mandelbrot was calm fractal. Dr. Weinberg thinks about particle physics day and night for 50 years and gets smarter *not* anxious (although I did get him started on meatpuppets on board the ISS on Saturday before I saw you). Dr. Dawkins thinks about extended phenotypes day and night for 40 years and gets smarter *not* anxious. Anxiety is not a meme it is a meme substrate (memestrate) upon which mischief flourishes. What I believe but cannot prove is that the brain states like the ones you had on the powerpoint are the substrate upon which all memes grow. People can be sad, mad, glad, transcendent, bemused directly from the same brain state because their particular meme-sauce rides on top of the energy produced by particular brain states. This crackpot idea comes from two sources:
1. "The End of Certainty" by our late UT peer Dr. Prigogine
2. Certain wild explanations for my lack of female companionship
This is all hush-hush because I don't want to go back to in-patient treatment again.
Which brings me to my last point. Where is your "Selfish Gene"? I have a place for it on my bookshelf for anything you write but I need a popularized science book on the brain to put next to "In Search of Memory". If I have to wait until after you're Nobel that will be okay.
Stand by our President,
Kirk Holden
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