Totally logical?

Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Tue, 25 Nov 1997 02:01:02 -0500


I was in the midst just now of reading "The Media Equation", a
book describing how people treat media socially as if it were
another person, when I came to a chapter describing praise.

Humans seem to be hard-wired in how they deal with praise and
other social behaviors; for instance, people care much more
about praise from other people than they do from self-praise.
Reading that, it struck me just how illogical that is- I
am generally the best judge of myself and my abilities (as
long as I'm honest :-), and therefore praise from myself
should be "worth the most".

I'm wondering if it is possible for regular humans such as
ourselves to transcend these stupid genetic behaviors and
live more logical lives? Can it be done by strict self-
monitoring, or are there limits to how far we can progress?
Any books written on this subject?

-- 
The future has arrived; it's just not evenly distributed.
                                                       -William Gibson
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