Grant Morrison @ Disinfocon

[Kai]

I suppose I must point out that the phrase "Humans Are Irrational Monkeys" is a shorthand symbol for a much more subtle and complex idea, in the same manner as "You Cannot Escape the Black Iron Prison".

Due to the development of the frontal cortex, and the ability to form complex meta thoughts (thoughts about thinking), humans are capable of analyzing their behavior.  As such, they are able to make decisions regarding their actions, if they choose to do so.

A large number of humans (I may even go out on a limb and say all humans, at one time or another) have acted, will act, or even tend to act instinctively-- whether socially pre-programmed, or from more basic, limbic-system origins. 

When a person acts in a manner that shows a lack of comprehension, consideration, compassion, forethought, or rationality, you can generally say that they are not using their frontal cortex completely.  As such, you can (unchairitably) say that they are behaving like primates, i.e. "Monkeys".

Social psychologists and animal behaviorists have shown that in large groups, this tendency in unthinking primate reactionism increases.  Which is why the phrase is not, "a human is an irrational monkey", it's "HUMANS are irrational monkeys."

The point, as always, comes down to self-awareness and Think For Yourself, Schmuck!  We all have the potential to become howling, shit-throwing monkeys.  BUT WE ALSO HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO WALK ON TWO LEGS.



The choice is yours.

[hooplala]

I suppose I must point out that the phrase "Humans Are Irrational Monkeys" is a shorthand symbol for a much more subtle and complex idea, in the same manner as "You Cannot Escape the Black Iron Prison".

Due to the development of the frontal cortex, and the ability to form complex meta thoughts (thoughts about thinking), humans are capable of analyzing their behavior.  As such, they are able to make decisions regarding their actions, if they choose to do so.

A large number of humans (I may even go out on a limb and say all humans, at one time or another) have acted, will act, or even tend to act instinctively-- whether socially pre-programmed, or from more basic, limbic-system origins.  

When a person acts in a manner that shows a lack of comprehension, consideration, compassion, forethought, or rationality, you can generally say that they are not using their frontal cortex completely.  As such, you can (unchairitably) say that they are behaving like primates, i.e. "Monkeys".

Social psychologists and animal behaviorists have shown that in large groups, this tendency in unthinking primate reactionism increases.  Which is why the phrase is not, "a human is an irrational monkey", it's "HUMANS are irrational monkeys."

The point, as always, comes down to self-awareness and Think For Yourself, Schmuck!  We all have the potential to become howling, shit-throwing monkeys.  BUT WE ALSO HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO WALK ON TWO LEGS.



The choice is yours.

Granted, completely, but if you actually watch the Morrison video... THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HE SAYS!

Did anyone arguing against it ACTUALLY watch the video?



And, the context that the "humans = irrational monkeys" was used here did not seem to imply that the choice was ours to be better, to me it certainly seemed to be a shorthand for a barstool.  It won't work because people are irrational monkeys, which is not the way you just explained it.  You can't have it both ways.

[Doktor Howl]

You call this good conversation???

No, I guess it wasn't.  I won't be participating in any more of these.

Thanks for the wake up call, Trip.

You're actually letting someone tell you what you do and do not like?

OK

No, I'm just refusing to be the on-call bad guy.  Find another sucker.

[LMNO]

I suppose I must point out that the phrase "Humans Are Irrational Monkeys" is a shorthand symbol for a much more subtle and complex idea, in the same manner as "You Cannot Escape the Black Iron Prison".

Due to the development of the frontal cortex, and the ability to form complex meta thoughts (thoughts about thinking), humans are capable of analyzing their behavior.  As such, they are able to make decisions regarding their actions, if they choose to do so.

A large number of humans (I may even go out on a limb and say all humans, at one time or another) have acted, will act, or even tend to act instinctively-- whether socially pre-programmed, or from more basic, limbic-system origins. 

When a person acts in a manner that shows a lack of comprehension, consideration, compassion, forethought, or rationality, you can generally say that they are not using their frontal cortex completely.  As such, you can (unchairitably) say that they are behaving like primates, i.e. "Monkeys".

Social psychologists and animal behaviorists have shown that in large groups, this tendency in unthinking primate reactionism increases.  Which is why the phrase is not, "a human is an irrational monkey", it's "HUMANS are irrational monkeys."

The point, as always, comes down to self-awareness and Think For Yourself, Schmuck!  We all have the potential to become howling, shit-throwing monkeys.  BUT WE ALSO HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO WALK ON TWO LEGS.



The choice is yours.

Granted, completely, but if you actually watch the Morrison video... THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HE SAYS!

Did anyone arguing against it ACTUALLY watch the video?



And, the context that the "humans = irrational monkeys" was used here did not seem to imply that the choice was ours to be better, to me it certainly seemed to be a shorthand for a barstool.  It won't work because people are irrational monkeys, which is not the way you just explained it.  You can't have it both ways.

We're now talking about three different things.


We're gonna need to untangle the various threadjacks before we can proceed, otherwise we'll be shouting past each other.

I'm a bit busy at work right now; I'll see if I can clarify things in a bit.  However, my previous post was a response to h-town, and had little to do directly with the OP, if that clears things up.

[hooplala]

OK.  I don't actually have time to get into this today either, so I don't know why I responded.  Actually I don't know why I responded in this thread at all.  Must.  Stick.  To.  Apple.  Talk.

[h-town]

"Let my frontal cortex go,
ya damned stinkin apes"
                \

[Requia ☣]

"Let my frontal cortex go,
ya damned stinkin apes"
                \

[Doktor Howl]

[the last yatto]

nonmyspace version
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6148569602584070911#

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

As far as I can tell, it creates more redundancy in exposure to popular items than an actual increase in diversity of exposure to news topics.

Basically, a whole lot of repost.

This is something I would like to study and get actual numbers on. I will post about it somewhere, but this thread doesn't need more jacks (I just read the whole thing).

I think that perhaps studying it properly would be an AI-complete problem, though. It's easy enough to run the text of news stories through a script and give the net information content of the word choice and phrasing then compare it to a projection, but for semantics we need to do better parsing. Alternately, a naiive form could translate declarative headlines into question-answer pairs and we could run information content analysis on the pairs (which is quite easy).

My guess, though, is that you are probably right -- lots of articles and most of them are saying the same things in different words, rather than saying a significantly bigger variety of things.

[P3nT4gR4m]

In case you haven't seen it, here's Grant Morrison's heady talk at Disinfocon: (circa 2000)

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1391124753

I haven't watched the entire clip yet, but he totally reminds me of P3NT4GR4M

Of course the Scottish accent accounts for a lot, but still

What is it about the scottish and being crazy bastards.

You try living your whole life in scotland. Going crazy is the only sensible option.