NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/postmode/2746

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-23 | 3.5 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Singularity (Gordon's idea)
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Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 16:23:10 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>[e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:
>| >>  Let's suppose a painting contains a great truth.  How do you
>| >>  tell?
>
>[e-mail] (Pellervo Kokkonen) writes:
>| >    Painting is a non-linguistic act of communication. It can
>| >    be true without you _telling_ anything.
>| >
>| >    I think the same applies to religious experience. You do
>| >    not expect an explanation from a physicist to believe.
>
>[e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:
>|   But how do you know if it's true?   If I say a painting is true
>|   and you say it's false which is it?   If your answer is "true
>|   for me and false for you" then you're saying it's subjective
>|   and that the truth or falseness is not in the painting but in
>|   the viewer.    But I say that a smallpox vaccination renders
>|   someone immune to smallpox *regardless* of whether he believes
>|   it or even knows he's been vaccinated.
>
>I wonder if anyone has ever run a test for that.  Vaccination
>is never perfect, you know.  Perhaps in some cases one's
>immune system, or the surrounding disease organisms, remain
>unconvinced of the message they have received.

  True, but it fails in a statistically understood way.  It
  would be interesting if, when other factors are controlled
  for, "believers" in viruses had a higher rate of seropositivity
  to the vaccine than "nonbelievers".   But note that most
  people in the world who got smallpox vaccinations were probably
  "nonbelievers"  (if you count the fact that people get them as
  babies then just just about ALL were) and smallpox was still
  wiped out.


>There's also a problem about the difference between subject-
>ivity and objectivity this exchange hints at.  In some cases,
>certain works of art evoke similar responses in people of
>widely differing cultures and conditions.  If a number of
>people, a large proportion of a given population, report
>these effects, even though the effects are entirely subject-
>ive, they begin to have all the attributes of objectivity.

  I agree.  And given that we all have similar nervous systems,
  etc, I would expect this to be the case.


>Thus, if a painting evokes a feeling of, say, sadness in
>93% of those who view it under neutral circumstances, it's
>doing about as well as certain vaccinations.

  Depending on how well we defined "sadness" (especially considering
  the difficulties of doing so cross-culturally) then I could
  accept that.  Note that some cultures don't "see" 2D pictures
  as representations of 3D things.  I used to know someone who
  worked for WHO and they were trying to promote birth control
  in some African society.  Since they people were nonliterate
  WHO had this idea to do it with pictures.   Except that it
  turned out they coudn't "see" the pictures as representations
  of 3D, real-world objects.

---peter