eduqateDec 28
Daniel Keys Moran
Heinlein described what we consider an artifact of internet culture in 1949, in Gulf:
Dec 27 at 11:07pmWeb
Show threadjonathankoren™Dec 27

@fatsam “What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.” — Dr. Leonard Orr

Edit Actually, it's a Dr. Leonard Orr quote. not a Robert Anton Wilson quote. RAW quoted Orr.

Show threadRoy Brander🍁Dec 27

@fatsam

Very close to "thinking fast" in the "...and slow" split.

The pandemic really separated out people, and parties, and whole cultures, by their ability to think using facts and figures, rather than wishful-thinking.

The anti-vaxxers, (like creationists) with their acceptance of all the rest of medical science, except the bit they have a giant conspiracy theory about, could be the best example of Heinlein's "bowl of milk".

Show threadMark DominusDec 28
@fatsam @rdm That last sentence echoes something Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography: “So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
Show threadMark DominusDec 28

@fatsam @rdm
Heinlein's implication here is that he is not merely better than the average man but better even than the “exceptionally bright” man.

Franklin was observing that he had himself been making up convenient excuses to do the convenient thing that he had a mind to do. (In this case, to give up his vegetarian diet and eat delicious-smelling fried fish.)

Show threadDaniel Keys MoranDec 28

@mjd @rdm The line from "I am smarter than everyone else" to outright fascism is well traveled. And of course there are many kinds of intelligence, too.

But it's an apt description regardless. Ideas are not responsible for the people who have them.

Show threadAlan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏Dec 28
@fatsam I am reminded of my favorite line from The Big Chill: you can go for a week without sex, but try going for a week without a rationalization.
Show threadCharlie StrossDec 28
@fatsam It's a shame the brain-eater got him in later life …
Show threadDaniel Keys MoranDec 28
@cstross I try not to hold him responsible for anything that happened after he had his brain problem, but the people around him should have stopped him from publishing at least his last couple of novels, in the forms they were in. His last two novels are simply vile.
Show threadMichael W Lucas Dec 28

@fatsam @cstross

I remember in high school wondering what happened to him after "Job."

Today, I suspect my youthful adoration of that book was largely driven by being raised in an evangelical church. I won't reread it, pretty sure it has brain worms.

If anything happens to me, my wife has strict instructions to stop me from publishing brain worms.

Show threadsynlogic4242Dec 28
@fatsam how were they vile? I've not heard of this
Show threadDaniel Keys MoranDec 29

@synlogic4242 pedophilia, in one book; incest in another, where a father deflowers his 16 year old daughter on her birthday. (The incest stuff goes back to Time Enough For Love, before his oxygen to the brain interruption, but if I recall everyone involved is supposed to be an adult, in that book.)

He was dancing around the subject for a while. His last couple of books he just went with it.

Show threadsynlogic4242Dec 29

@fatsam I dont remember that in the Heinlein I read

btw, off-topic, but in your profile bio blurb, is that a quote from Moby Dick?

Show threadDaniel Keys MoranDec 29

@synlogic4242 it's from the story Gulf, collected in Assignment in Eternity.

And yes, the quote is from Moby-Dick.

Show threadMartin Schröder 🇺🇳Dec 28
@fatsam
Is that an argument against democracy and for Starship Troopers rule?
Show threadDaniel Keys MoranDec 28
@oneiros I am sure some people would use it that way, but it's not my intent.
Show threadBecca 🌳🚀🛀Dec 28
@fatsam I hate this kind of condescending crap. The brain-worms, @cstross, are right there in that quote. Splitting people into different classes, assigning one the right to rule the other. Yes, we are all rationalising animals, and that goes for the people who invent the machines just as much as for the people using them. Fuck Technocrats.
Show threadCharlie StrossDec 28
@rlcw @fatsam You know Technocracy, Inc. was highly influential on the origins of American SF, including John W. Campbell, H's early editor? (H wrote for money and made no bones about it: so he wrote what they wanted to buy from him. So not sure if this was what he thought *at the time*—late 1940s, shortly after his divorce—or a reflection of editiorial taste. It was certainly closer to his thinking by the late 1960s.)
Show threadBecca 🌳🚀🛀Dec 28

@cstross In Wiki it says that he started heading into the autocratic fantasy land in the forties.

Tech Inc. had a website, and a membership application that is a fascinating form: https://technocracyinc.org/membership-application/
@fatsam

Show threadCharlie StrossDec 28
@rlcw @fatsam During the forties his second marriage broke up and he met Virginia, who was *definitely* a right-winger. They married, and he kept drifting right. (I'm going by the Patterson two-volume biography. There's an entire sub-field of SF academia dedicated to understanding just what the hell he was thinking. Bear in mind it covered a 50 year working life ... that's time for a lot of changes.)
Show threadBruno NicolettiDec 28
@fatsam The problem with that quote is that it applies to everyone, not just the ‘average man’. We all rationalise, are biased and use flawed reasoning. Sure, some of us are more prone to being suckers, or are suckers for some things but not others. The unwritten implication is that the reader, along with Heinlein, is some Nietzschean ubermensch not prone to such flaws. Believe that and you a sucker. Which explains the Elon Musks of this world.
Show threadBodhipaksaDec 28
@bjn @fatsam The one thing that's certain about a person who writes like this is that they have massive cognitive biases of which they are entirely unaware, precisely because they have decided that cognitive bias is something that only other, lesser, people are subject to.
Show threadRichard QuinnDec 29

@bodhipaksa @bjn @fatsam

My own cognitive biases terrify me: like a virus that lurks hidden, waiting to be woken by a random thought or event.

I fear them because I could act on them and I could encourage others by them. But I also fear them because expressing them could see me 'cancelled' and unable to express another thought.

What defences do we have?
How can we guide each other through the morass?

#cognitiveBias

Show threadBodhipaksaDec 29

@rq4c @bjn @fatsam

Voltaire said, "We are all formed of frailty and error; let us reciprocally pardon each other's folly." Admitting to ourselves & others that we're subject to cognitive bias leads to intellectual humility, which is a very attractive quality. We tend to think people with strong opinions will be popular, and sometimes they are, but people with intellectual humility are more widely admired. Ironically, what I've just described is itself a form of cognitive bias or distortion 🙂

Show threadTom BortelsDec 29

@fatsam

Heinlein was a noted asshole. Talented writer, but an asshole.

When someone uses the phrase "superior men" unironically - that's a hint. And it's the tip of the iceberg here, sadly.

Yes, lots of people abandon logic and science for wishful or mystical thinking. That makes them ignorant, not inferior. The solution is education, not dismissal, or you end up where we are today.