"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Interesting. 84. But I think I should have received an additional bonus for not just knowing where Branson is, and not just having been there, but having worked there.
ReplyDeleteI scored 57, but I look skeptically on every section after the first. In terms of cold numbers, the rural/small town share of American population is a minority segment - it has no more claim to be a hallmark of "the mainstream" than the walkups-over-bodegas segment does. Similarly, military service is the pursuit of a tiny minority of the country, as Murray's own figures make clear. And on and on.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of Jon Rogers' complaint a couple of years ago that "More people play World of Warcraft than farm! So why aren't WoW players 'the real America?'"
But then I also wonder why Murray has a question about whether you've visited/worked in a factory, but no similar question about farms. There's no pleasing me.
I also can't escape the feeling that on questions like Branson, Murray's own provincialism may convince him it's a bigger deal than he imagines, even among country-music-loving, non-degree-having white people. Murray's heard of it, therefore it's important. Is he sure about that? The paradox of the semi-detached!
64. However, in my short life I have had quite a variety of living situations (from the big city to a rural population just over 3000) and levels of income (ranging from homeless to $100k); with the exception of the Navy, all of my jobs have been labor-intensive. I got almost no points when it came to restaurants, television and movies.
ReplyDeleteThe descriptions that he provides for your score are pretty vague and certainly don't apply to me. I grew up in a middle-class house that became upper-middle class (possibly even upper-class), yet with the exception of 2007 I have been lower-middle class (or working-class) even though I currently work in the same exact industry and position as my father did when he was middle-class/upper middle-class.