Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: coberst on 11/11/2008 17:25:50
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Can You Imagine This?
Imagine that you and a thousand other people lived deep in the jungle of Africa. Imagine further that every one of you had been born colorblind and none had any idea what color was. Imagine further that you were an exercise nut and discovered, quite by accident, that if you performed a certain sequence of exercises you developed color perception.
What would you do?
If you tried to tell the others what would they do? Would you be able to convince any one of them to follow your example? How would you explain to them what you had accomplished? Would they eventually kill you like the Athenians did Socrates?
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Which part of Africa is the Jungle? It is a big continent.
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Imagine This
Imagine that you and a thousand other people lived deep in the jungle of Africa. Imagine further that every one of you had been born colorblind and none had any idea what color was. Imagine further that you were an exercise nut and discovered, quite by accident, that if you performed a certain sequence of exercises you developed color perception.
What would you do?
If you tried to tell the others what would they do? Would you be able to convince any one of them to follow your example? How would you explain to them what you had accomplished? Would they eventually kill you like the Athenians did Socrates?
I imagine you have never seen this touching film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracle_Worker
http://video.google.it/videosearch?hl=it&q=The+Miracle+Worker&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=5&ct=title#
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Coberst - this is a re-run of Plato's parable of the cave, moved to another continent.
The central tenet of Plato's Republic, from which this comes, is that only philosophers are capable enough to make the important decisions and run things.
Considering some of the recent comments made about philosophy in this forum there won't be many takers. [;D]
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If I were a good little Thatcherite, I'd keep quiet about it and find a way to use the gift to my advantage and retire early in luxury.
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I would keep doing the exercises until the colours were so good that I thought I was on acid. Then I would lie down and enjoy the experience. People would then start asking me why I was enjoying myself so much and I would tell them that it was the sheer joy of exercise. They would be so taken with this that they would try out my regime. People tend to want a piece of someone Else's happiness. So if they see you are happy but aloof they will copy you.
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If I had never seen colour before and suddenly developed colour perception I'd probably freak out for a while.
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It is now clear to me why the people executed Socrates.
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It is now clear to me why the people executed Socrates.
Why did they?
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It is now clear to me why the people executed Socrates.
Why did they?
I had once concluded it to be natural that when confronted by a new idea humans tended to do a turtle; withdraw into their shell until the coast was clear.
After some time posting in cyberspace I have modified my view somewhat. I think that we tend to display two types of turtle responses to our encounter with new ideas.
The terrapin withdraws quickly into its shell and the snapping turtle hisses, spits, and snaps when such an encounter happens.
I suspect that the Athenians were a mixture and they had many others who did not want a population that had the capacity to think critically.