Amarillo’s ABC affiliate reports: The Grinch tried to steal Christmas. Dressed as The Grinch, David Grisham carried a sign during the morning drop-off at Sleepy Hollow Elementary in Amarillo, Texas that read “Santa is Fake. Jesus is Real.” Parents, as you might imagine, were not happy to see him. One dad grabbed the sign and …
  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    Thank you for your candor! And no, I don’t believe in freewill either.

    Ever read Dr. Peter Watt’s novel Blindsight? Fiction of course, but written by a very smart biologist. Two of the main questions are, is freewill real? And, what is the use of consciousness?

    Both absurd questions on the surface! But are those really dumb questions?

    It’s a first contact novel, and the captain of the ship sent to investigate is a vampire. Really. Using current human and discovered DNA, we’ve resurrected extinct hominids from the Pleistocene. Book does a great job examining what an obligate homo sapien carnivore would look and act like, how they might evolve. It also examines near post-human possibilities and what those might look like.

    I’ll stop now. If I start quoting the cool parts, I’ll just end up quoting it all. Worst complaints I’ve heard are people not relating to the characters. Well, they’re not “baseline” humans, they’re cutting edge so to speak. We’re not meant to understand them completely. And the narrator is unreliable. People have bitched about that, but he pretty much admits it from the first chapter.

    Anywho, it’s free to read/download from the author’s site. If you like that one, the only sequel, Echopraxia is a worthy follow up.

    Give the prologue a spin y’all. If that doesn’t suck you in, no hurt feelings.

    • investorsexchange@lemmy.caEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      Excerpt From The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr.

      Beneath the level of consciousness we’re a riotous democracy of mini-selves which, writes the neuroscientist Professor David Eagleman, are ‘locked in chronic battle’ for dominion. Our behaviour is ‘simply the end result of the battles’. All the while our confabulating narrator ‘works around the clock to stitch together a pattern of logic to our daily lives: what just happened and what was my role in it?’ Fabrication of stories, he adds, ‘is one of the key businesses in which our brain engages. Brains do this with the single minded goal of getting the multifaceted actions of the democracy to make sense.’ …

      Our multiplicity is revealed whenever we become emotional. When we’re angry, we’re like a “different person with different values and goals in a different reality than when we feel nostalgic, depressed or excited. As adults, we’re used to such weird shifts in selfhood and learn to experience them as natural and fluid and organised. But for children, the experience of transforming from one person to another, without any sense of personal volition, can be deeply disturbing. It’s as if a wicked witch has cast an evil spell, magicking us from princess to witch.