patterns
now playing: Selena Gomez - Wolves
the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy refers to the very human tendency to see patterns where none exist by disregarding contradictory evidence; its name comes from the comic idea of someone taking shots at the side of a barn and painting a bullseye over the biggest cluster.
today, I wanna talk about Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner?, which (basically) says that an individual’s stated preferences, independent of gender, fail to predict whom they are actually attracted to.
sounds p weird, doesn’t it? there is a whole bevy of papers that delve into how what we think of as independent, structured cognition really devolves into a mess of heuristics once you get down to it.
okay actually after rewriting this section like 3 times I got bored and will be moving on
SPOILERS THE BICENTENNIAL MAN
there’s this Asimov quote that I really like; it seems basic af, but in the context of the story I think it’s beautiful:
“Dad, you don’t know him. He’s read everything in the library. I don’t know what he feels inside, but I don’t know what you feel inside either. When you talk to him you’ll find he reacts to the various abstractions as you and I do, and what else counts? If some one else’s reactions are like your own, what more can you ask for?”
(emphasis mine)
here, Andrew (the robot) is offering to buy his freedom from his owner, and it eventually goes to court:
“Why do you want to be free, Andrew? In what way will this matter to you?” Andrew said, “Would you wish to be a slave, Your Honor?”
“But you are not a slave. You are a perfectly good robot—a genius of a robot, I am given to understand, capable of an artistic expression that can be matched nowhere. What more could you do if you were free?”
“Perhaps no more than I do now, Your Honor, but with greater joy. It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.”
And it was that statement that cued the judge. The crucial sentence in his decision was “There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state.” It was eventually upheld by the World Court.
(emphasis mine)
this story is characterised by Asimov as one of his robot-as-pathos (as opposed to robot-as-menace) stories, and I really like it because it depicts the slow progression of Andrew’s social and legal standing, but also how he sees himself in relation to that (progressing from a tool, to an assistant, to an independent entity):
“No. You arrange it.” It didn’t even occur to Andrew that he was giving a fiat order to a human being. He had grown so accustomed to that on the Moon. “I want him to know that the firm of Feingold and Martin is backing me in this to the hilt.”