From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Wed Sep 15 1999 - 23:57:58 MDT
> Chris Watkins wrote: on TV a while back commemorating the
> thirtieth anniversary of the moon landings, culminating in a rather odd
> discussion panel in the early hours. The panel consisted of people
> convinced, to various degrees, that the moon landings were faked.
In my childhood I recall hearing a minister assuring his flock that
the moon landing would be a mysterious failure because god would
never let man's sin be spread to another planet (?). When the
landing was successful, I wondered what would be said. The
minister himself never mentioned the incident, but a small group
of believers suggested at that time the landing must be bogus.
This thread brings up an interesting observation however. In the
case of the programmer putting foil on the walls, and other examples,
there are people that are highly advanced in certain technologies
that hold to the silliest superstitions.
We had a thread about a year ago regarding tetradotoxin, the poison
distilled from tree frogs by Haitian witchdoctors. Dr. Wade Davis
of Harvard eventually bribed one of the locals out of the secret, but
the witch doctor considered the chemical as only a part, perhaps
only a minor part, of the zombie-making spell. The witchdoctor
explained how certain magic words must be chanted, along with
introducing the poison, in order to make a zombie. He observed
that Dr. Davis was uninterested in learning the words, and insisted
the poison would not work without them. The witchdoctor was
more advanced technologically in making that particular poison
than was his Harvard counterpart.
The programmer with the foiled walls may have had some superstition,
perhaps instilled in his childhood before he had developed and memetic
immunity, that led to his actions, yet one must grant he was technically
advanced. Modern technologists and even many modern scientists carry
superstitious religious memes.
What I find the most disturbing of all is that superstition does not
seem to be dissipating nearly as quickly as I would have expected
with the advance of science and technology. Superstition seems
to be a stubbornly persistent aspect of human nature, one that will
be carried into the next century.
dammit. {8-[
spike
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