Today's Topics:
(2 msgs)
Escape from the Land of the Pinks!
I'm not selfish, I'm evolving
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Date: Mon, 25 Feb 91 22:54:58 -0800
From: 71155000 <skreee@ucscb.ucsc.edu>
Message-Id: <9102260654.AA16200@ucscb.UCSC.EDU>
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject:
to pink:
Your color scheme is all wrong... next time try a tiger
print or a shale grey... but youre doing well with what you have fellow
sub...
-ug
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Date: Tue, 26 Feb 91 12:01:38 EST
From: Michael Turyn <mturyn@psyche.mit.edu>
Message-Id: <9102261701.AA25780@psyche.mit.edu>
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject:
It has been pointed out that I mis-spelt Penn Jillette his name.
You wish to know my excuse? ``Bob''.
Yes, ``Bob'' is the complete, divine, and all-encompassing excuse.
If that Pink Boss asks why you 're five minutes late, and all you can do is
mumble something about traffic YOU 'RE NOT RIGHT WITH ``BOB''
If you 've got a fever of 102, and a headache of deros-induced proportions,
and great boils breaking out all over your body THAT ITCH (my friends!),
and t~rhat date calls up and says he/she will leave you if you don 't see
him/her soon, and all you can do is say something about being a little sick,
then YOU 'RE NOT RIGHT WITH ``BOB''
If that cop stops you for doing 26 mph in a 25 zone, and all you can do is
scream something about stopping a plot to assassinate the President and
Vice President (and especially if it 's true), then
YOU 'RE NOT RIGHT WITH ``BOB''
Yes ``Bob'' is the ultimate excuse, he is the only excuse you need, it
is wrong to even attempt to employ any other excuse. It is a _mistake_
to think about using any other excuse. It is BLASPHEMY to suggest that
any othr excuse could possibly have a chance of having a small probability
of existing.
Of course, you can still use Doktors for ``Bob'' as an excuse
(``Mr Nexus sir, I _had_ to use those innocent angel-like aliens
to make aquarium sealant---there was one chance in ten billion
that one of them might hear about Doktors for ``Bob'' sometime
within the next ten thousand years!!''
``Case dismissed!''
)
\.
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Date: Tue, 26 Feb 91 22:55:50 EST
From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
Message-Id: <9102270355.AA08888@riesz>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: Escape from the Land of the Pinks!
I was wondering one day about the difference between Findamentalists,
Charismatics, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals. From the outside all of
these sorts of Christians look alike, but I figured that there were
probably significant differences, so I should keep my database up to
date. So where do you get quick information about flavors of
Christianity? From soc.religion.christian, of course! So I posted.
I got a couple of useful replies. One reply, however, seemed to be
from someone who was thoroughly Pinked and WANTED TO TELL ME ABOUT IT!
After a paragraph of useful information, it rambled:
You may not have asked for this so throw out if you want:
Hi! THIS IS A PERSONAL VIEW I KEEP ON FLOPPY FOR TIMES LIKE THESE WHEN I
HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE:
Forgive me for the length but felt lead to tell you:
To give you a little background on myself:
I was born in La Porte, Indiana 9/3/52. We lived in a small community
[130 lines of biography deleted! Complete with words in ALL CAPS
and exclamation marks!!!!! Now I know where the style in the Book
is cribbed from.]
This is just the tip of the iceburg, you'll have to wait for my book! ha!
I can't wait.
Dale
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Message-Id: <QbmmLoa00Uh_Q4bldi@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 91 22:22:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Scott Robert Sadusky <ss6r+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: I'm not selfish, I'm evolving
A Modest Proposal on Altruism
Why did Mother Teresa become a nun and dedicate her life to helping
others? Why did a man in New York City's Central Park, on seeing a dog
fall through the ice on a pond, jump into the water to save it? (Both
man and dog died.) And why have hundreds of thousands of Allied
soldiers risked their lives to liberate Kuwait, a strange and distant
land?
Because they are docile and stupid. That, simplified and
paraphrased a bit, is the message of an article in "Science" by Herbert
A. Simon, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University and an authority on
psychology, computer science and economics (for which he won a Nobel
Prize in 1978).
The acts above, Simon notes, are all examples of altruism, the
sacrificing of one's own fitness, or reproductive potential, for that of
others. For years, Simon has puzzled over how altruism could be made
compatible with sociobiology. This school of neo-Darwinian thought,
which traces the behavior of humans and other animals to the selfish
urge to perpetuate genes, holds true altruism to be a maladaptive--and
even illusory--trait. Individuals, sociobiologists argue, only help
others who are closely related to them or who can bestow some benefit on
them in return. But it seemed to Simon that many acts of altruism do
not fit into these categories.
Simon finally concluded that altruism is a by-product of a more
common human trait: docility. He notes that docility, which he defines
as "receptivity to social influence," usually contributes greatly to the
fitness of individuals. In other words, those who go along, get along.
Societies often exploit this trait by teaching people to do things
that, while diminishing individual fitness, benefit the greater
good--like paying taxes or enlisting in the army. According to a
mathematical model devised by Simon, societies that foster altruism will
thrive as long as the costs of altruism to individual fitness do not
exceed the benefits from docility.
This scheme might be foiled if humans were truly shrewd creatures.
Docile or not, we might calculate how various types of socially
encouraged behavior affect our fitness and reject those that diminish
it. There goes altruism. But humans are not very good at making such
calculations, Simon argues, because we have "bounded rationality." That
is a gracious way of saying that we are kind of stupid.
Simon acknowledges that his theory offers a somewhat cynical view of
human nature. But that, he says, is an inevitable consequence of doing
serious social science.
-reported by John Horgan in the March 1991 issue of "Scientific American"
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Is this what you people mean by "slack?"
ss6r@andrew.cmu.edu
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End of Subgenius Digest
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