Re: virus: Will and Force ?[the corrected version]

psypher (overload@fastmail.ca)
Thu, 20 May 1999 23:32:30 -0400 (EDT)

...bits of my original reply got garbled, this is the correct text, apologies to all.
>
> ...again, you have missed the point entirely. You have cited a list
> of [admittedly valuable and impressive] contributions to humyn
> understanding but it is not an exhaustive list of contribution.
> ...someone who doesn't know squat about any of the things you list
> but has a knack for communicating with children, say, can make a
> phenomenal, lasting and valuable contribution to the species, to an
> individual, to the world at large.
> ...I had hoped to avoid stooping to citing obvious and trite
> examples, but I doubt very much whether Mohandas Gandhi, Mother
> Theresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu or any of a countless number of
> well- known contributors to the social whole would score well on
the GRE. I know for certain that
> any number of people never written about in the history books, never
> trained in academic disciplines and never cited in peer-reviewed
> publications have made vast and hugely significant contributions in
> all sorts of areas.
> ...a person with an 80 IQ or whatever other packaged and quantified
> aspect of consciousness you care to name can act as teacher, mentor
> or inspiration.
> ...you obviously have a disciplined and well-ordered mind, why do
you feel the need to raise your amply demonstrated capacities above those of other people?
>
> -psypher
>

>> Forrest Gump might be a "good guy", but it's highly unlikely that a
>> real gump (lacking gumption) would have such a life, or would 
>> develop the calculus (integral or differential), or relativity 

> theory
>> (special or general), or complexity theory, or the uncertainty 
>> principle, or the undecideability theorems I or II, or fuzzy

> logic, > or phenomenology, or structuralism, or genetic
epistemology,
> or > hermeneutics, or semiotics, or memetics, any of which
contribute
>> substantially more to the species as a whole than any chocolate 
>> box park bench "philosophizing" by a kind and good-natured nitwit. 
>> I mentioned my experience with the test to show that I knew 
>> whereof I spoke concerning it.  Your need to engage in sour 
>> grapish reverse snobbery about it in your response speaks volumes.

>
>


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