I thought that was interesting, since "beholds" took me the longest to figure
out as well. It seems this is partly because the phrase "beholds with pain" is
somewhat archaic and so the context was harder to see, which is largely how we
sort out and make sense of the gibberish, it seems. When I
Steven Kotler's book, Abundance, is in pre-release ordering. Please check
it out! e-book's will be available at release.
Congratulations, Steven!
-- Forwarded message --
From: steven kotler
Date: Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 10:32 AM
Subject: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Th
Hi, all. Just want to respond to some of these points as I am very
interested in meaning making.
It [the ability to read "gibberish"] does not demonstrate mysterious skill,
> it demonstrates a (perhaps mysterious) lack of skill. The real mystery,
> if there is one, is why a person so well trained
Re "magic" explanations, I think the key here is the preference for
explanations in terms of agency.
The reason for this is that we're equipped with self-aware minds,
which makes it very easy to model other organisms by introspection of
our own mind. Clearly this works when dealing with other huma
When I spent 2 years at Syracuse University helping 273 draftees avoid
going to the failed Vietnam war, I was completely surprised by the
military: they were smart, willing to listen, and amazingly, decided to let
273 war protesters not go to the war.
This was in stark contrast with the civilian a
