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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Books As "Smart Pills"
Message-ID: <1995Jun10.164354.28553@media.mit.edu>
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Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <3r8vg1$pkp@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <3rben8$90u@crl12.crl.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 16:43:54 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <3rben8$90u@crl12.crl.com> dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) writes:
>rmjon23@aol.com (RMJon23) writes:
>
>>Reading some of these postings reminds me of a passing thought I had the
>>other day: if I had to choose one book that SEEMED to boot-up my
>>intelligence, what would it be? After a while I settled on an early
>>popularization of Korzybski's work in General Semantics...The book was
>>called The Tyranny of Words.The author: Stuart Chase.I'd be interested to
>>read of other's experiences with books that seemed to act as
>>more-than-ordinary catalysts in their intellectual growth...
>> 
>
>This is an important issue. If we had to chose one document to bootstap
>I-net into intelligent life; what would it be?
>
>Some would argue Dawkins and the selfish meme gene paradigm.
>
>It would be nice if rmjon23 would explain why "General Semantics"
>is the ideal system design theory.

In college in the 1940s, one statement by Korzybski stuck in my mind:
"Whatever you say something is, it isn't".  I think this promoted a lot
of critical thinking, and in my mind it eventually turned into this
Dawkins-like idea: 

   "When a great many people all seem to believe the same thing, this
    might be merely a symptom of some contagious mental disease".
