From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Jan 21 2003 - 23:57:19 MST
Brett had posted a 34KB memoir on this topic, and I'm
still responding.
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Brett Paatsch
> Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 9:20 PM
> I like that movie [Gettysburg] (the one with Martin Sheen as General Lee)
> because neither side is caricatured as villains, both sides show
> essentially decent folk struggling heroically but tragically.
Realism is refreshing. Someday maybe we'll see understanding
(if not sympathetic) portrayals of Tojo, Hitler, and Stalin,
although of course they're nothing like the Southerners, and
naturally that will have to wait until everyone understands
their evil.
> Just a real darn shame the enemies we choose are so often each
> other. It's not like heroism is meaningless. Or our human
> propensity to fight cannot be redirected sometimes at least to
> good effect. Hell let's fight death - the ancestral enemy. Let's
> collectively kick it's butt around the block for a couple of
> millenia or longer at least.
Absolutely.
> > I meant to say that their basic personality dispositions are
> > hardly affected at all by how much they learn about a matter
>
> Well this is an interesting thesis.
>
> But note: affected and effected are *both* valid in your
> sentence but mean different things. I think you probably
> meant effected.
No, I absolutely meant "affected". For example, someone who
is opinionated will rarely become less so by making a thorough
study of an issue.
It wouldn't make sense to say that their personality dispositions
were effected, that is, created in some manner, by study of a
particular matter. (But yes, if one considers *everything*
they've ever learned, then their personalities are effected
at least somewhat by it, the other part being genetic.)
> But probably we are all both a bit more interested in
> ourselves and intimately acquainted with ourselves so perhaps
> we don't always give others the credit we give to ourselves.
8^D
> In fact there is a social pysch phenomenon, at least one,
> called the "fundamental attribution error" that is based
> on this theme.
>
> Social psych's found by experiment, that we tend to see our
> own behaviours as more likely to be determined by the
> situation in which we find ourselves (ie. we see ourselves as
> sensitive, adapting and reactive in a good way), whereas we
> tend to see others in the same situation where the observable
> behavior is the same as having acted the way they did more
> out of personal disposition and less out of a response to the
> particular situation in which the person finds themselves.
Good. Before, I had had explained to what the "fundamental
attribution error" was, but you've explicated it well, and
reminded me. Maybe it's not exactly what I thought.
> I agree its generally extremely difficult for people
> to be retain a dispassionate perspective about
> ideology. I think some may do it better than
> others but probably all of us do it less well than
> we think we do.
Most probable.
> Sorry for the long-windedness in this post Lee, (and
> any readers). I wanted to respond to open questions openly.
Oh, that's all right. Unlike street demonstrations, one
can always ignore posts not to one's tastes.
> Please feel free to prune this post ruthlessly for
> relevance or otherwise to the subject header.
Oh, of course. I think that that's the default assumption
around here.
Lee
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