On Hope and Quackery
So, does anyone have beliefs they fear may be quackery, or stories about beliefs they used to have that they think are a little silly now?
I know I have a few, so I will make this post (my 1st in over half a year...) about all this sort of stuff.
It is difficult for me remember some of what I believed when I was much younger, because I think I tend to write a self-story in my mind that says I pretty much believed then what I do now. For example, I am an atheist now, and I have this feeling like I always was, and I can even remember particular thoughts I had at the age of 8 or so that I would use to support that, but maybe I am just cobbling a false story together. To get to the subject at hand then, I will start with my middle school years.
In middle school, I am not sure the exact nature of it, but I had a little time with psychic powers. Like, I used to think that I should practice doing psychic things, and that maybe if I practiced enough, things would start happening. Basically, it was just wishing for things, like, wishing for things would make them happen, which is like prayer in some ways. So, unlike prayer though, there is no supernatural entity or force. I thought/hoped there was some sort of science to it, a net of thought that linked all people, etc. I guess you could say it was an experiment, really. I do remember giving it an honest try, but by the time I was in high school I had abandoned the idea.
In economical and political stuff, I do not know if ever subscribed to anything quacky, but maybe I had been or continue to be naive about some things, or there were times before I had exposure to certain things.
Another area I feared going for quackery was with a guy who is, or was known as a transpersonal psychologist, and is sort of a Buddhist person too, Ken Wilbur. I have read a couple of his books, starting with "A Brief History of Everything". He has this all encompassing umm, meta-theory, a framework for understanding the universe and people that I continue to find very appealing in a lot of ways. I would still read a book by him today, but he also has a lot of danger signs that blink the quack lights for me. He started an institute to develop his ideas and basically make his ideas a force or movement in academic circles across disciplines. To join his club you can sign up to a for pay web site where various experts and guru types discuss issues. One of the ideas he puts a lot of stock in is called "Spiral Dynamics" and the people involved with that have this institute where they offer to go into businesses and help managers and CEOs understand people and learn to manage them better by applying the theory. Deepak Chopra cites him. Once he said that he would rather his "students" read Michael Behe (creationist from the Discovery Institute) than Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist, atheist, proposed the idea of "memes"). He is very mystic in many ways. Given all this you might wonder what I could possibly see good about him, but I can't quite stop being curious or intrigued by him.
Then there are utopian visions. I like utopian visions. Back in 94 or so I read a book called "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps" by Marshall T. Savage. Arthur C. Clarke writes the forward. It is this vision for colonizing the oceans, cleaning up the Earth, colonizing orbit, the solar system, and eventually the galaxy. I was all about this book for a time, and even signed up to be a part of the foundation. Eventually the author moved on, and the foundation basically fell apart, even though people inspired by the book do still keep in touch on a message board. It turns out, of course, that a lot of the science and technologies described that would allow for some of these things to happen do not actually pan out. For example, in assembling ocean colonies, the author focuses on using OTECs to provide the power (a real tech that does exist, using temperature variations in the ocean at different depths), and that the structure could be created organically using "seacrete", which involves a process that uses electricity to pull certain elements out of sea water, accreting onto a frame and forming a sort of concrete. Even that technology is real, but there are problems with the time it all takes, versus the structural integrity of the "seacrete". That is just one of many little problems and some mistakes in the book. Even with the problems in the details, and with the rosy hippie influenced prose of the author, I still think there is hope for the general idea of the book. My utopian optimism.
Another much more recent book is "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" by Ray Kurzweil, which was released last September. I find myself excited by the ideas of this book too, and see his conclusions as fairly credible. It basically describes a kind of future where we unlock biology to the extent that we can drastically lengthen our lives, where we are able to augment our intelligence in an unimaginable way by interfacing with computers, and on to more dramatic conclusions. It seems to be very well researched, and addresses the points of his critics. The thing is, with any such grand a futuristic prediction, I suppose it can turn out to be completely wrong. So, in that respect there is the danger of seeming quacky in buying into the vision. Still, I find myself willing.
So, how about you, dear readers? Any ideas you have or had that you either totally dismiss, or at least find yourself skeptical of today?
I know I have a few, so I will make this post (my 1st in over half a year...) about all this sort of stuff.
It is difficult for me remember some of what I believed when I was much younger, because I think I tend to write a self-story in my mind that says I pretty much believed then what I do now. For example, I am an atheist now, and I have this feeling like I always was, and I can even remember particular thoughts I had at the age of 8 or so that I would use to support that, but maybe I am just cobbling a false story together. To get to the subject at hand then, I will start with my middle school years.
In middle school, I am not sure the exact nature of it, but I had a little time with psychic powers. Like, I used to think that I should practice doing psychic things, and that maybe if I practiced enough, things would start happening. Basically, it was just wishing for things, like, wishing for things would make them happen, which is like prayer in some ways. So, unlike prayer though, there is no supernatural entity or force. I thought/hoped there was some sort of science to it, a net of thought that linked all people, etc. I guess you could say it was an experiment, really. I do remember giving it an honest try, but by the time I was in high school I had abandoned the idea.
In economical and political stuff, I do not know if ever subscribed to anything quacky, but maybe I had been or continue to be naive about some things, or there were times before I had exposure to certain things.
Another area I feared going for quackery was with a guy who is, or was known as a transpersonal psychologist, and is sort of a Buddhist person too, Ken Wilbur. I have read a couple of his books, starting with "A Brief History of Everything". He has this all encompassing umm, meta-theory, a framework for understanding the universe and people that I continue to find very appealing in a lot of ways. I would still read a book by him today, but he also has a lot of danger signs that blink the quack lights for me. He started an institute to develop his ideas and basically make his ideas a force or movement in academic circles across disciplines. To join his club you can sign up to a for pay web site where various experts and guru types discuss issues. One of the ideas he puts a lot of stock in is called "Spiral Dynamics" and the people involved with that have this institute where they offer to go into businesses and help managers and CEOs understand people and learn to manage them better by applying the theory. Deepak Chopra cites him. Once he said that he would rather his "students" read Michael Behe (creationist from the Discovery Institute) than Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist, atheist, proposed the idea of "memes"). He is very mystic in many ways. Given all this you might wonder what I could possibly see good about him, but I can't quite stop being curious or intrigued by him.
Then there are utopian visions. I like utopian visions. Back in 94 or so I read a book called "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps" by Marshall T. Savage. Arthur C. Clarke writes the forward. It is this vision for colonizing the oceans, cleaning up the Earth, colonizing orbit, the solar system, and eventually the galaxy. I was all about this book for a time, and even signed up to be a part of the foundation. Eventually the author moved on, and the foundation basically fell apart, even though people inspired by the book do still keep in touch on a message board. It turns out, of course, that a lot of the science and technologies described that would allow for some of these things to happen do not actually pan out. For example, in assembling ocean colonies, the author focuses on using OTECs to provide the power (a real tech that does exist, using temperature variations in the ocean at different depths), and that the structure could be created organically using "seacrete", which involves a process that uses electricity to pull certain elements out of sea water, accreting onto a frame and forming a sort of concrete. Even that technology is real, but there are problems with the time it all takes, versus the structural integrity of the "seacrete". That is just one of many little problems and some mistakes in the book. Even with the problems in the details, and with the rosy hippie influenced prose of the author, I still think there is hope for the general idea of the book. My utopian optimism.
Another much more recent book is "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" by Ray Kurzweil, which was released last September. I find myself excited by the ideas of this book too, and see his conclusions as fairly credible. It basically describes a kind of future where we unlock biology to the extent that we can drastically lengthen our lives, where we are able to augment our intelligence in an unimaginable way by interfacing with computers, and on to more dramatic conclusions. It seems to be very well researched, and addresses the points of his critics. The thing is, with any such grand a futuristic prediction, I suppose it can turn out to be completely wrong. So, in that respect there is the danger of seeming quacky in buying into the vision. Still, I find myself willing.
So, how about you, dear readers? Any ideas you have or had that you either totally dismiss, or at least find yourself skeptical of today?