S&S vs. SF in BotNS

Jeff Wilson · 22 Dec 2011, 20:07 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at clueland.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:07:07 -0600
Subject: (urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS
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On 12/21/2011 10:29 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> Jeff Wilson wrote:
>> On 12/21/2011 10:58 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>>>
>>> "psi" is a fancy word for magic.
>>
>>
>> Outside the context of speculative fiction, perhaps.
>
> More specifically, outside the hobbyhorses of John W. Campbell, who
> also took up Dianetics, the Dean Drive, and the Hieronymus machine. He
> was a nutbar in his later years, but still a pretty good editor.
>
>
>> It was intended to mean
>> a physical process that could occasionally be mistaken for the magic of myth
>> and legend but could be studied objectively  They have very different
>> connotations and spiritual implications.
>
> More to the point, it was intended to give the impression that such a
> physical process was being discussed. However, no serious physical
> mechanism was ever proposed (beyond unspecified "brain mutations" with
> no mechanism attached to _them_).

You speak as if it's necessary to have actual science behind one's 
appeal to its authority.

"Ever" is overstated, IIRC Wheeler conjectured at length that 
micrtubules within brain cells were at the correct scale to yoke 
conscious states' biological processes to quantum events.


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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