I'm not promoting this, just reporting it.
You also may be taking de Bono's provocative utterance the wrong
way.
It's not prescriptive, it's _de_scriptive, of the mass of people.
I have fun thinking, too. But we're atypical.
de Bono's point is that (both from watching how uncomfortable people
get when asked to think, and from what would today be found to fit nicely
with evolutionary psychology) thinking evolved (culturally and/or
biologically) as an OH MY GOD NOW WHAT operation, and the organism qua
organism is perfectly content and frequently most comfortable not using
its brain to do any more than what it habitually does--burble gently
through rivulets that become rivers. de Bono doesn't call that thinking.
I agreed with your "eek" for the right reason, honest. :)
MMB
On Tue, 6 Jan 1998 dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:
> I guess I just don't know what you mean by "thinking" here. "Loafing on
> autopilot" starts to approximate being dead if the piloting program
> gets robust enough. Way too much of my aliveness as a person comes from
> my thinking life to ever value the prospect of its effacement. I'll stick
> to my eek. Best, Dale
>
> On Tue, 6 Jan 1998, Michael Butler wrote:
>
> > I'll see your "eek", and raise you: This thread dovetails nicely with,
> > among other things, de Bono's observation that the primary purpose of
> > thinking is to abolish thinking. Crank the mill faster, get out of that
> > uncomfortable state faster, more subjective *and* objective time to loaf
> > on autopilot.
> >
> > Michael Lorrey's comment gets added to my sig quotes file.
> >
> > MMB
> >
> > On Tue, 6 Jan 1998 dalec@socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 6 Jan 1998, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> > >
> > > > People don't want to be wise, they want to be 'smart'
> > >
> > > Eek!
>
>