Saturday, August 6, 2011

For reference

This blog is named after the notion of the Orbital Mind Control Laser from the Illuminati card game from Steve Jackson Games, a device which realigns one's subscription to various dogmas and ideologies (known as alignments in the game) and Bertrand Russell's teapot analogy:

"Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

For more, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

No comments:

Post a Comment