Fiction: Stormwolf and Basalt II

Magmae strolled with doc. "What do you think of Adam? Of our new weatherchanger?"

Doc smiled. "Intelligent. Well trained. Appropriately tough. A high class compared the to the intelligensia and bravos the institute normally intern with us."

"Is he ours or theirs?"

( Read more... )

Writer's block: Why do people care so much about the private lives of celebrities?

Why do people care so much about the private lives of celebrities? Because (I assume) we're optimised to socialise in small groups, and knowing what our sibling's friend is getting up to would help bind a group together, except that now we live less in a small society, so we may not know anything about people other than close friends and colleagues, so who fulfils our need to gossip? The doings of friends-of-friends, of celebrities, and of soap-operas. I can't prove that's true, but I think it's the same need in all cases.

Do you believe in the loch lomond monster

The quiz http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.php which several people have linked to a while ago, and recently, attempts to measure how consistent is your belief in the existence or non-existence of God and some other philosophical questions. Which is a very interesting idea, although obviously most people find the quiz making incorrect assumptions about them at some point during it.

People pointed out its contrast between questions:

If, despite years of trying, no strong evidence or argument has been presented to show that there is a Loch Ness monster, it is rational to believe that such a monster does not exist.

and

As long as there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality.

I think the intention is to trip up people who think that in the absence of overt evidence, atheism is a bad assumption but a-loch-ness-monster-ism is a reasonable one, despite their similarities. Or to trip up people who find themselves unable to believe there (or aren't) compelling arguments against (or for) God (or Nessie), even if the question instructs them to do so. Although it undermines it somewhat by describing the absence of evidence in different ways, and by not making it clear if "no evidence after much trying" is supposed to be a hypothetical assumption, or truth, which invites people to have some hidden evidence they forgot to discount (depending if they're supposed to disagree with the assumption, or imagine it.)

However, it occurs to me that possibly a question they COULD have asked after the loch ness one, was, with similar wording, do you think it's rational to believe a loch LOMOND monster doesn't exist? They'd probably have the same answer, but I think people would be more certain about the loch lomond monster.

That is, even if you're instructed to discount the evidence for the loch ness monster, you instinctively put some weight onto the argument that "lots of people believe it might be true", even if you know most of them do so for spurious reasons.