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Apr. 12th, 2004 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
confuseacatToday was mostly a fun day. I woke up, went to psych where we talked about cults for a while. Then I came back to my dorm and listened to a ~2 hour NPR special on the Jonestown cult back in the 70's, where the psycho leader got over 900 people to kill themselves. (http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1509317) Wow, was that powerful and scary. Over the whole program, they get you to understand the extreme complexity of the social situation the Jonestown members were placed in. You understand why they're saying they want to kill their family members, why they're willing to die, why they're willing to live in the jungle 250 miles away from civilization. You understand how their entire frame of reference was shifted by this one man so that most people did this under "free will." To them, their actions made sense. But in the end, one crazy man got hundreds of parents to feed their children kool-aid laced with cyanide before drinking it themselves. Worth a listen to if you're interested in social psych and have 2 hours free.
Yeah... It's a bad thing to lose critical thought and give your mind to someone else's keeping. Doesn't matter if you're talking about a cult, religion, a shrink, a doctor, pseudoscience, our president... You can get screwed really quickly if you let someone start manipulating you, even if they're not doing it on purpose.
So then I was going to go to a really cool sounding lecture on the shape of space: "During the first half
of the presentation, computer games will introduce the concept
of a "multiconnected universe". Interactive 3D graphics will
then take the viewer on a tour of several possible shapes for space.
Finally, we'll see how the latest satellite data are providing
tantalizing clues to the true shape of our universe."
it was at 4pm. I got very pissed at myself when I woke up an hour late from my nap and missed it. :-( I need more sleep.
Oh, and I did something different and followed an online banner ad today. The quiz it sent me to says I have a 139 IQ. ^_^ I wouldn't really trust it though, and IQ doesn't really mean a whole lot anyway. But it's always nice for someone to tell you you're above average, even if it's just a website that's trying to make you feel good about yourself so that you'll buy a personalized 15 page test results report for $14.99. ^_^
Aww well. Time for homework, then daily show, then bed.
Yeah... It's a bad thing to lose critical thought and give your mind to someone else's keeping. Doesn't matter if you're talking about a cult, religion, a shrink, a doctor, pseudoscience, our president... You can get screwed really quickly if you let someone start manipulating you, even if they're not doing it on purpose.
So then I was going to go to a really cool sounding lecture on the shape of space: "During the first half
of the presentation, computer games will introduce the concept
of a "multiconnected universe". Interactive 3D graphics will
then take the viewer on a tour of several possible shapes for space.
Finally, we'll see how the latest satellite data are providing
tantalizing clues to the true shape of our universe."
it was at 4pm. I got very pissed at myself when I woke up an hour late from my nap and missed it. :-( I need more sleep.
Oh, and I did something different and followed an online banner ad today. The quiz it sent me to says I have a 139 IQ. ^_^ I wouldn't really trust it though, and IQ doesn't really mean a whole lot anyway. But it's always nice for someone to tell you you're above average, even if it's just a website that's trying to make you feel good about yourself so that you'll buy a personalized 15 page test results report for $14.99. ^_^
Aww well. Time for homework, then daily show, then bed.
