Every Sunday over the coming months I will engage in irrational behavior. I will jump up and yell when a man I’ve never met carries a stitched-together, inflated, oblong pigskin ball over a line drawn in the artificial turf. Yes, I am an NFL fan. And although I have never met any of the current members of the New England Patriots, whenever something good or bad happens to them, I will feel it. (In my defense, I grew up in a town outside Boston. I guess old allegiances die hard.)
It’s crazy, I know. Maybe my behavior should be criticized. Maybe psychologists should study why I do it. Here’s a hunch: Perhaps it has something to do with the misplaced tendencies of my “tribal mind.” On some level it’s possible that I believe the men on the team I have adopted as my virtual coalition are going to bring home some of the spoils of their victory. Among these is status. (The cheerleaders I could do without. But I guess the winning team doesn’t get to keep them as the pom-pommed booty from battles won.) Is that what is really going on with me and millions of others? I’d like to know. And once I did know, I just might persist in loving pro football.
Because I am well aware I engage in what can only be described as irrational behavior, I try to be tolerant of other types of activities that make absolutely no sense to me yet other people nonetheless get passionate about. Such as NASCAR and television soap operas.
I also try to view religious behavior the same way, with one significant exception: that practitioners of religion understand what they perceive as important and are passionate about is a personal matter. Sure, go ahead and believe Jesus once walked on water and will one day return to Earth. In my semi-facetious analogy, so, in my own way do I believe that Tom Brady performed a number of miraculous feats. But not in recent seasons. For he fell and has yet to rise again. Maybe this season he will prevail over the forces of evil — such as the New York Jets.
I have no qualms with personal irrationality provided believers don’t claim that what they are irrationally exuberant about is a truth that all others need to recognize and respect if not likewise participate in.
Unfortunately, many, many believers do make those claims. They force what should be a personal matter into town square. And that is why others, like me, deem it necessary to speak up in opposition.
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Tags: atheism, religion, Sunday Un-Sermon
The above is a zoomed section of a photograph. It’s a part of a scene. Can you recognize anything in the scene? What do the shapes and colors suggest?
The full photo below the fold.
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Tags: photography, Saturday Puzzle
[recycled post; first appeared here]
An imagined dialogue:
Biologist: Young man, you don’t really like breasts . . .
Young Man: What?! I love breasts! Are you crazy?! Do you think I’m gay?!
B: Let me finish. You are not attracted to breasts for the breasts alone.
YM: Sure I am. Show me a photo of just a set of breasts, preferably full and upright and naked breasts, and I’ll be attracted to them.
B: Hold on. What I am trying to say is that your genes are causing you to be excited by signs of sexual maturity and fertility.
YM: If they are signs they definitely aren’t “Stop” signs. Maybe “Go” signs. Or “dangerous curves ahead.” But really, I just like breasts and that’s all there is to it.
B: Okay. Consider this: Is the reason why you crack open a nut simply because you enjoy cracking nuts?
YM: From breasts to nuts, I think you have issues, man.
B: The purpose to cracking open nuts is to get at the edible nut-meat. And the purpose of that is to eat and satisfy your hunger. One of the purposes of that, in turn, is to feed your liver fats and sugars that will keep you fueled during the hours between meals.
YM: I don’t eat for my liver. I eat because I am hungry. Screw my liver.
B: It may seem that way. But there are causes deeper than what our minds can readily perceive.
YM: I’ll tell you one thing – I definitely prefer breasts over nuts.
The above NASA pic reveals what we could see without the clouds and ambient light normally obscuring our vision. I’m not sure what coastline that is, but let’s call it New Found Lands.
Stars and galaxies — the backdrop to our relatively puny spinning planet. Far out, man!
Although I find existence to lack meaning with a big “M,” it does strike me as wonder-full.
Have you heard? A new generation of robots may be just around the corner. As the ScienceDaily piece words it:
The first prototype robots capable of developing emotions as they interact with their human caregivers and expressing a whole range of emotions have been finalised by researchers. [link; all emphases mine]
Robots developing emotion? Isn’t that somehow oxymoronic? Robots are machines and machines don’t have feelings. Right?
More about the breakthrough machines robots:
The robots are capable of expressing anger, fear, sadness, happiness, excitement and pride and will demonstrate very visible distress if the caregiver fails to provide them comfort when confronted by a stressful situation that they cannot cope with or to interact with them when they need it.
Oh boy. Pardon my emotional reaction here, but . . . crap. I’m having trouble coping right now. There is just so much to this topic to be skeptical about. And there certainly is that crucial element that, when pushed to it’s logical extreme, challenges my own understanding of being and self.
First off, human emotion is tremendously complex. An “emotion” can include a few or most of the following incomplete list of changes to: facial expression, gestural expression, vocal qualities, posture, muscle tone, heart rate, blood pressure, hormone and neurotransmitter levels, blood flow to specific regions of the brain resulting in what has been called a “priming” of types of memories/thoughts, etc.
Beyond the measurable, physical changes, emotions are a social phenomenon. Only social animals develop and express emotions. It seems the development in robots has smartly focused on this social aspect. But it’s the personal element that I wonder about. And this is the element we can’t really verify. Not now.
Consider this claim from the write-up:
[T]hese robots differ from others in the way that they form attachments, interact and express emotion through bodily expression.
Sure, they may seem to form attachments. But are they only “going through the motions”? Are these robots merely very good mimics?
Granted, they may be a real step in the direction of creating “beings” that learn and respond on many levels, just as we do. Machines that can have motives and undergo fluctuations in their intent and energy level, among other things. And as these robots develop, thinkers like you and I will be forced to wonder when mimicry crosses the line to a “real” thing.
Sure, humans are made of flesh, and robots are not. But when it comes down to the very nitty-gritty, are we not just incredibly elaborate meat machines? In suspecting that robots could never have true emotions, am I merely being xenophobic; is my innate instinct to be alarmed by potential deceit (as all we hyper-social primates are) merely being triggered? Don’t be fooled by the robot! It isn’t really a person. It is deceiving you!
At this point in time, I have very strong doubts about robots developing what we might call true emotion. But I don’t know. When I think about it . . . Why not? No, we aren’t talking about an evil engineer using a syringe to magically inject a soul into his contraption of sheet metal, stainless steel bolts, and tangles of wire. It’s much more complicated than that.
And soul, what is that? I don’t believe in it. Not as something distinct from the workings of an animal body. But what about the personal part. That dynamic but not fully plastic, distinct agency we perceive as “soul,” as an individual’s persisting essence?
I don’t know.
And frankly, I’m a bit confused as to why anyone would want to develop or own such a robot. Still. With the progressive development of these . . . machines many, many important questions are being raised.
Tags: behavior, emotion, philosophy
I like Spanish Moss. But it’s not. Moss, that is. Technically, it’s an epiphyte. Here’s some of what the Wikipedia entry says about it:
Spanish moss is an epiphyte (a plant that lives upon other plants; from Greek “epi”=upon “phyte”=plant), which absorbs nutrients (especially calcium) and water from the air and rainfall. Spanish moss is colloquially known as “air plant”.
That this plant absorbs water from the air and rainfall explains why it’s found here in Florida. We’ve got air “thick” with humidity and rainfall.
Tags: nature, photography
