youmans

in the midst of an ongoing debate about everything, kiye told me to watch an episode of the pbs show "the human spark" which takes us into alan alda's brain. i am pretty sure kiye put me onto the show to illustrate the evolutionary superiority of mind-reading accommodationists to whistle-blowing militants, but then i am not a good mind reader so i will let kiye speak for himself. 

in the middle of the show (23:30 remaining) a 6 month old bebe is shown a circle with with googly eyes moving up a slope. a triangle comes from the top of the slope and pushes the circle down to the bottom. the circle starts back up the slope and then a square comes from behind and pushes it to the top. when bebe is given a choice between the triangle and the square, almost 100% of the time bebe chooses the square, having a preference for the character that 'gives you a leg up' over the character that 'keeps you down.' anyway. what neither the show nor the scientists comment on is the mere fact that bebe identifies with the circle and not the other shapes. this is not so surprising since the circle is the central character in the drama and we know how ego is. but still, what would happen if in the second phase of the experiment, they gave some back story: like would bebe react differently if the circle climbed to the top and knocked the triangle off? if the circle was black and the triangle was white? what do we have to do to make babies notice that context is missing. what do we have to do to make babies always ask questions with periods on the end.

anyway i am going to invite kiye to post on 'the human spark' so he can truth modulate. more soon on the whole human/animal thing.