> Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.

I.A.Richards recommended using a metaphor for as long as its useful then moving on, the correspondence only for a certain time and area I guess...

#ComputerBrain #MetaphorControl

> By the 1700s, discoveries about electricity and chemistry led to new theories of human intelligence – again, largely metaphorical in nature. In the mid-1800s, inspired by recent advances in communications, the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the brain to a telegraph.

#ElectricBrain #ChemicalBrain #TelegraphBrain

> By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, eventually inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. In the 1600s, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggested that thinking arose from small mechanical motions in the brain.

#MechanicalBrain #MachineBrain #InRecentTechImage #AutomataBrain

> The invention of hydraulic engineering in the 3rd century BCE led to the popularity of a hydraulic model of human intelligence, the idea that the flow of different fluids in the body – the ‘humours’ – accounted for both our physical and mental functioning. The hydraulic metaphor persisted for more than 1,600 years, handicapping medical practice all the while.

#HydraulicBrain #StalledMedicalPractice #MedicalMetaphors

@clacke
My feeling is that emacs with org-mode should be able to do everything for non-programmers. For media-literacy everyone should probably learn some html/css anyway. I guess any office or setup just needs a few people that get into css for laying out pages and spreadsheets from org.
If git or some VCS was a basic literacy thing too, an "its-all-text" approach would be very tempting to anyone whose lost a lot of work through a HD failure or some other problem...
@gnutelephony @doctormo

@gnutelephony
I'm wondering if the middle ground has to be covered by some sort of grassroots face-to-face movement. Like a barefoot doctor, or barefoot economist kind of thing. I've set people up with old PCS installed with Debian, GCompris, Tux-typing, emacs, DrRacket etc... but haven't found the right combination of place, people and time yet. It'll happen eventually though: gotta have faith!
@clacke @doctormo

@gnutelephony @doctormo @clacke
My guess is we already have the hardware and software we need. It's all laying around to be put together with enough effort: get people's old machines and put 32-bit Debian on them with Tux-Typing, emacs, Racket etc. We just need a Cuban literacy effort kind of thing where people do learning workshops everywhere: make if fun/natural to replace spreadsheets with org-mode or something. Make racket-pict memes with kids. Any libre Blub lang would work too I guess.😜

@gnutelephony
The emacs paper(?) mentioned how people that didn't consider themselves programmers (secretaries..) naturally started making their work more convenient by programming emacs. It just didn't seem like programming... Sometimes I wonder if we could start early with emacs or DrRacket or a shell and get people into a natural progression into becoming more and more able to do things on their own... It just wouldn't feel right to use clunk OSs or Office software..
@doctormo @clacke

@clacke Everyone seems beautiful to me when I'm drunk in a social setting too... It's a shame we have to get drunk to feel appreciative of everybody...

@clacke You lost me in the second paragraph. Maybe we should exchange posts again when it's not so late at night...

But your first paragraph got me thinking of Walter Wink and Non-violent resistance. He talks about how important it is to allow yourself to be vulnerable while organizing the sort of non-violent struggle for human aims that is more effective than violence... A lot of Wink's stuff seems important to think about. Neal Stephenson mentioned him in Reason(?)magazine on-line interview.

@CorneliusHecker Ans sometimes you just don't have the patience or courage to be Non-Violent the way Ghandi thought it should work. Arundhati Roy in "Walking with the Comrades"? talks about how non-violence might not work without and audience. People in the jungles getting massacred in their villages might not have the option... Norman Finkelstein's talk about Gandhi on DN! has stayed with me for years.
https://mstdn.jp/@bsmall2/107830153649060814

@thamesynne I think the Catholic Church might be consistently "pro-life" as in being against the death penalty, but the U.S.A. political attitudes are set up in a way that it's hard to see coherency...

@clacke I saw somewhere that Cuba's Havana is 110%(or so?) food self-sufficient.. But that was after they USSR collapsed and not much oil got past the U.S. embargo.. so a lot of parking lots were turned into intensive gardens with vermicomposting.. I think Cuba needed to learn a lot about AgroEcology in order to survive the embargo..

@simplicitarian @lightweight @dznz Do you have a good link that explains the Transition Towns movement. I imagine the real solutions are decent town planning, compact cities.. Something like Murray Bookchin's approach to politics.. But it's hard to get motivated to do the necessary organizing and politics.

@simplicitarian @lightweight Thanks! David Lane, but as Ali Clarke says I'm not in NZ but in Japan... And will need something in Japanese to introduce...

@clacke @strypey Somebody wrote a blog post about quitter, maybe it was medium or something. The post talked about how a quitter developer (who preferred to be called a maintainer of gnu-social and to use languages that "make sense") helped censored people start up their own instances, maybe even right-wing goof-balls... It was a fun post and called the quitter maintainer "the nicest guy on the internet"...

@strypey That view might explain the limited way mechanists use their brains??

@strypey I first noticed the term in Percy Shelly's _Defence of Poetry_ but similar uses show up in Bertrand and Dora Russell's _Prospects for Industrial Civilization_ and, more recently in Amitav Gosh's _Nutmeg's Curse_.. There seems to be a problem with looking at the world as a purposeless machine.. There has to some sort of feel for purpose, or the sacred, mystery.. Theodore Roszak in _Voice of the Earth_ works on the problem too I think.

@strypey Yes! how did you notice that. It all disappeared, But it was fun while it lasted. I can't now remember the name of "the nicest guy on the internet." They seemed to have a nice supportive group going in Sweden.

@strypey In the basic outlines of history, it seems like it's been the West that attacks (encircles) both Russia and China. For Russia we have that #Minard poster and people from Sweden (@clacke). For China I think the Opium War tells us a lot. My general impression is that the Middle Kingdom wasn't interested enough in other lands to do a lot of invading and trading. But Galeano writes that there were impressive exchanges, it's just that they didn't colonize and make genocidal history...