[FRIAM] rip Dennett

[glen]

Both Knox (who's back in Italian court) and Robinson are atheists, but I guess practice Zen. This leads to an interesting inside vs outside conception of who they "are". It strikes me that no amount of studying a person (or, more accurately, the detritus they've left behind and the dissipating wake their behavior dredged through the ambient goo) can capture that duality. I feel this despite my arguments in favor of a kind of holographic principle for behaviorism where whatever information is inside must be encoded on the outside. Even if we buy such a principle, perhaps including a kind of information loss through radiation, the "studying" of the person would be biased by when the studying occurs. A year that starts right after they die? A year that starts according to a validated [pre|retro]diction algorithm so that the studying is finished when they die? A temporally fenestrated study that happens in little bursts over one's entire lifetime, but cumulatively sums to a year?

In the podcast episode, they publicly ask each other "how do you want to die?" Robinson's waffle is interesting. Would a Zen person want to die while in some mushin state?

Back to Dennett, OS Card, Lovecraft, and all the wonderfully productive people with an Evil facet: Skeptoid had a recent episode on EMDR <https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4928>, where Dunning concludes it has its roots in the thoroughly debunked neuro-linguistic programming tradition. Yet it may accidentally have some clinical benefit. But again, I'm skeptical of the skeptics. This rationalist *need* we have for a fully grounded, trustworthy map from inside to outside, thoughts to actions, mind to body, just feels like arrogance ... an unjustified confidence in our own brain farts. People are complex enough that we can harvest what we want, cafeteria style, and leave the rest to disappear into the amnesiac void. We neither need nor want a *complete* understanding of anyone or any thing.

On 4/24/24 20:26, Steve Smith wrote:
> I am lead by Glen's response to think of Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_for_the_Dead>
> 
>     In Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead," the main and titular theme revolves around understanding and compassion through the truthful telling of one's life. The novel introduces the concept of a "Speaker for the Dead," someone who tells the unvarnished story of a person's life at their death in a way that aims to present all aspects of the individual—their good and bad traits, their successes and failures—in a balanced and empathetic manner.
> 
>     This role of the Speaker is designed to allow those who are left behind to truly understand the deceased, fostering forgiveness and a more profound comprehension of the complexities of human nature. This practice contrasts with traditional eulogies that often gloss over a person’s flaws or reduce their life to a series of highlights.
> 
>     The theme extends to broader philosophical and ethical questions about how societies deal with truth and reconciliation, the nature of forgiveness, and the possibility of understanding different forms of life. This is particularly explored through the interaction between humans and the alien species called the Pequeninos on the planet Lusitania. The novel challenges characters and readers alike to consider the ways in which understanding and compassion can lead to healing and peace, even across the divides of culture and species.
> 
>     "Speaker for the Dead" thus delves into the necessity and challenge of empathy, advocating for a more comprehensive and compassionate approach to understanding both the living and the dead. This thematic focus on empathy and understanding is what drives the narrative and the development of its characters.
> 
> A spiritual woo-woo treatment might imply that a person's soul would not be fully free to "move on" until such a full accounting was done. In the book, the "Speaker" would spend a full year fully researching the person's life and relations to achieve this thorough/blunt eulogy on the anniversary of the Dead's passing... I don't remember how this was supported/funded but the idea moved me when I encountered it.
> 
> On 4/24/24 8:26 PM, glen wrote:
> 
>> I could only wish I'd be criticized this well when I die:
>> "Dennett’s text is full of tirades wrought from petty grievances, is disorganized to the point of being unreadable, and like the rest of his books, will undoubtedly not have much influence."
>> <https://jacobin.com/2024/04/daniel-dennett-social-darwinism-philosophy>
>>
>> There's this fantastic podcast by Amanda Knox called Labyrinths (https://antennapod.org/deeplink/subscribe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.megaphone.fm%2FDONSN6255278021&title=Labyrinths+with+Amanda+Knox <https://antennapod.org/deeplink/subscribe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.megaphone.fm%2FDONSN6255278021&title=Labyrinths+with+Amanda+Knox>) where one episode is about death and things like 'how you want to die'. My best hope is that all the ppl who think I was a hack, or an idiot, or whatever would gather to trash me. The milquetoast accolades we present when a person dies are literally disgusting.


-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ