Re: virus: Consensual Bandersnatching

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Thu, 13 May 1999 00:32:09 +0100

At 20:31 11/05/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>"Consciousness is preferable to unconsciousness."
>
>I wouldn't veto it.
>
>I might reword it as something like: "Attentiveness is better than
>distraction" or "Mindfulness is better than habit"

Difficult again, see... when I was /conscious/ of all the little tasks I had to succeed in to drive a car, erm, when I was learning to drive, it was a baaaaaaaad experience. Now I do the driving on semi-autopilot- I'm not that aware most of the time of which pedal I'm going for, how to get from 2nd to 3rd gear, how much pressure to hit the brake with. What I'm aware of is... tunes from the stereo, worries about what I'm going to do when I get where I'm driving, that sort of thing. Habit's sometimes better than mindfulness.

And distraction's often quite important too- bumps you out of cognitive ruts, lets new ideas into your mental mix, that kind of thing.

Thinking about ideas is really DIFFICULT, isn't it? Why don't we agree some arbitrary dogma, and cut to the phase where we beat up people who don't like it?