aesmael: (Electric Waves)
New show advertised recently, Eli Stone. Seemed like fun, a main character having extravagant, perhaps prophetic visions. I thought I would give this sort of show another try after snarling at Medium.

I don't like it. After a few minutes, I realised this was the show I heard about some months ago, in which the opening episode establishes in court that vaccinations using thimerosol (faintly disguised as 'mercurisol' in the show) as a preservative cause autism, and that the company producing the vaccine was aware of this.

I don't like seeing such a charged falsehood presented on television as fact, considering it has been established firmly in multiple studies that there is no such link, and yet there are still numerous parents trying to sue companies which produce vaccines for 'making their child autistic'.

That, and the scene toward the end in which, after the main character is told that his visions are caused by an inoperable brain aneurysm, another character tells him they can have another explanation and perhaps he is a prophet, apparently in a Christian framework (Moses is referenced as an example 'I'm not' 'but God told Moses he would send a prophet to every generation'). The main character says he does not believe in God and gets told "Do you believe in right and wrong? Do you believe in justice? Do you believe in love? Then you believe in God." This sort of declaration that being a moral person is identical with belief in the Christian God annoys me a lot.

Plus, I would have preferred if he decided to attribute significance to his visions on his own.

Perhaps it would have been better viewed as some sort of alternate reality story or fantasy, but I think I would rather not watch a show which seems to have as its primary message that evidence-free belief and decision-making is better than the other kind.

Date: 2008-12-02 13:00 (UTC)From: [identity profile] lost-angelwings.livejournal.com
I hate this idea that only if you believe in a "god" can you be a moral person, or that morality and goodness are things that can only be handed out and taught to us by non-humans :\

Date: 2008-12-02 15:36 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
Let me guess: this show was written by someone who sees faith as inherently more virtuous than fact. Right?

I am not sure why people are so attracted to conspiracy theories. I can easily see how they get trapped in them (by discounting any evidence to the contrary as "what they want you to think" and therefore tainted), but what baffles me is how they get trapped in them in the first place.

And yeah, that "Moral people believe in God" thing is an awkward bit of circular reasoning. (Like there's any other kind, heh.)

Date: 2008-12-02 16:59 (UTC)From: [identity profile] pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com
We've got this pattern-matching firmware in our heads, you see.

It's very, very sophisticated stuff. Relatively speaking, anyhow -- most of us can recognize faces every time, even if we've forgotten the name. Or that feeling you get when a place you visited a couple of times as a child, and haven't been back to until just now feels subtly, hauntingly familiar. Vision's a big part of it, sure, but it applies to any complex phenomenon we can even wrap our minds around. Like seasons -- noting that the year is a cyclical thing, that sometimes it's dry and sometimes rainy, that the moon's mad shapeshifting might just follow a regular cycle, or that when your mate and your friend both look sort of nervous when they know you're both around, they're probably shagging on the side...

It's pretty versatile. But it works too well. Because of what we use it for, you follow? A pattern is either really there, or it isn't. If we see it, and it isn't there, we're wrong. If we don't see it, and it is there, we're wrong. Both are failures of the firmware...but one of them has worse consequences, as far as evolution's concerned.

Look into the long grass. See a tiger there? Of course not -- you're a modern urban human who probably never encounters a predator we haven't tamed, domesticated and turned into a household companion. The possibility doesn't cross your mind. But think about someone who does have to worry about predators every time they go out into the tall grass to hunt. There just might be a tiger there, coiled and waiting to spring -- and if you think you see one, you might have only seconds to react before it makes its move.

If there is a tiger, and you decide there isn't one, you'll be passing through its digestive system that evening. End of you, end of your gene line, and end of the trait you carried that predisposed you to dismiss the possible tiger on the grounds that there wasn't evidence. Catastrophic failure.

But if there's not a tiger, and you decide there is one, you run back to the village in a panic, shout excitedly to everyone about how you came this close to being cat food, the hunting parties get a little more zealous about spearing anything that moves for a while, and your panicky superstitious genes survive to reach the next generation.

We've been refining our particular oversensitive version of that software for at least three million years. We can see patterns in anything now -- even ones that demonstrably aren't there, couldn't possibly be there. Look for them in a complicated-enough data set, and they'll appear as if by magic.

Constellations in the night sky.

Images in television static.

Unseen patterns in the stock market that somehow elude all the experts.

Prophecies in ancient books.

Conspiracies within disconnected historical events.

I think that some people just have an emotional need to feel like they're in the know, that the chaotic scramble of modern life hasn't completely left them behind. These people are going to find conspiracy theories especially tempting. After all, the more you look for evidence, the more of it you find...

Date: 2008-12-02 17:18 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
Ah, yes! I knew about this dynamic before (it explains my own social paranoia), but I never made the connection to conspiracy "theories" for some reason.

That's a good point about how seeing patterns that aren't there as more conducive to survival than the reverse. And here I thought superstitious people were more numerous just because they had more kids...

Date: 2008-12-02 17:23 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
Err, is more conducive to survival.

Date: 2008-12-02 18:04 (UTC)From: [identity profile] pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com
In a sense, they are. Why do you think they have more kids? ^^

Date: 2008-12-02 22:40 (UTC)From: [identity profile] pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com
It's not survival that matters in evolution, it's reproductive success. The comment is sort of a joke calling attention to that; it's a joke because mere predisposition to such belief is not necessarily as strong an effect in our selection anymore -- people often have more kids when they're lower on the economic bracket, instead.

Though...being lower on that scale does seem to correllate with a sense of anxiety and nervousness about the world and how possibly-hostile it is...

Date: 2008-12-02 16:05 (UTC)From: [identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com
I have to admit that some of the most moral people I've known over the years have no religious faith although I've met some equally moral people of faith. I am a Quaker, but I don't think it makes me better than anyone else- just me :o)

Best not to generalise, I guess.

Oh and that stuff about 'making a child autistic'- I met parents like it when working with folks with autism. There are still folks putting their children at risk of childhhod diseases by refusing the MMR vaccination here because of this nonsense.

It's about the need to blame something or to put off blame because of guilt- but, like my being trans, left handed or colour/music synaesthetic, in the end, no blame attaches to anyone- these things just are......

Date: 2008-12-02 17:23 (UTC)From: [identity profile] allieflowlight.livejournal.com
THANK YOU.


And there's hope yet--I saw a TV commercial the other day about how childhood diseases that have long been cured are now becoming more and more common, because of the falsehood being told about vaccines.

I'm glad these falsehoods are being countered somewhere else besides science journals and blogs. Stuff like this is why I involuntarily clench my fists whenever somebody goes, "Come on; what's the harm in people believing these things?"

Date: 2008-12-02 17:36 (UTC)From: [identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com
You're welcome :o)

We're in the midst of a measles epidemic here in the UK due to this idiocy. That's a condition which was largely eradicated in MY childhood forty odd years back! It's not just a spotty face- it's potential deafness, blindness and brain damage!

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aesmael

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