Sunday 26 May 2013

More brilliant ideas from Daniel Dennett; author of " Darwin's dangerous idea " and " Breaking the spell "

Dennett offers intuition pumps to help avoid being like prey lured by the bioluminescent escas
 of a bathypelagic angler fish.

I was attracted to " Intuition pumps " by the tweet of Richard Dawkins.
 I thought it would be fun to read the book he was reading.
 I was a bit worried that Intuition pumps would be beyond me
 and that i would be like a fly to the nectar bribe of a pitcher plant.
Some of it was a bit abstract for me but still worth looking through.

I shall attempt to follow Rapoport's rule and list the points in the book
 that I admired or agreed with first before attempting rebuttal's

The best things about this book is that it steer's toward reality by being
 based on the fact of evolution by natural selection and introduces the
 reader to the works of Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley,
Jerry Coyne, Charles Darwin, Richard Feynman.
   IP recommends , " Surely you're joking Mr Feynman ". So I bought it & read it - true enough - it's super.
I thought he would have given a nod to other great books like
" Believing bullshit, how to avoid falling into a black hole "
 by eminent philosopher Stephen Law and
 " Evolving out of Eden, christian responses to evolution " by
 Robert M. Price and Ed Suominen..
Loc437 Dennett comments that " 'Well it seemed like a good idea at the time'
 has often been regarded as the rueful reflection of an idiot, a sign of stupidity
 but we should regard it as a pillar of wisdom."
Every issue has pros and cons. Often we get drawn into making a decision by
 the pro and it is only afterwards that the cons slowly dawn on us or are
 discovered from bitter experience. Many decisions involve a trade off
between competing priorities and aspects. Maybe no matter what decision
 is taken it is always a bit of a mistake in terms of the other priorities.

Dennetts books have helped me to stop being like a moth circling the " light " of Christianity by showing
which points of it are not reality. This has helped me escape the black hole at the centre of
 the christyway galaxy and now the golden rule is just a guiding star.

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