antikoan

 |::| Friday, August 09, 2002

 |::| For Hire: Geek Liaison. Will Work For Money.  1:28:52 PM 

From the Daypop Top 40, I have taken the Polygeek Quiz [direct link] at Thudfactor.com. Verdict: I "go both ways"...

You are 46% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.

You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!

Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!

You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

 |::|   1:08:41 PM 

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
-- 'K', Men In Black

It's very easy to confuse the underlying cause for some behavior with one's reason for doing it.

Example: The underlying cause for the perpetual human search for emotional and sexual contact is the complex of instincts surrounding reproduction, in turn driven by evolutionary necessity. But that's got nearly nothing to do with my personal reasons for seeking those things. What drives me is not the underlying cause; what drives me are the superficial reasons, as "mistaken" as they may be.

It seems to me that Libertarians and Supply-Side zealots make this error most often. They think that because all human activity can be described in terms of cost:benefit or economics, that human behavior can be *understood* by in those terms. It can't; it can only be understood in its own terms. So when an Objectivist or an ideologically pure Libertarian talks about "[enlightened] self-interest" as the right and proper driver for human action, they're missing a very important point: Whether self-interest can be identified or not, it usually isn't.

Put another way: We don't rush into burning buildings to save our children in order to promote our gene pool; we do it because we love them.

Many hedonists make a similar error, though: They identify a subset of basic drives, and assume that they are fundamental and sufficient to explain human behavior and cognition. They're not. And in my experience, it's a rare hedonist indeed who is willing to really admit as much outside of their darker, more personal moments.