2.6.02

OY!:
"Man's view of himself is changing very rapidly. Within the next 20 years I think you'll feel its effects. After Darwinism, after Freudianism, there's now a tremendous influence of neuroscience. It's a very exciting field. It would be very tempting to go into, but if I may reduce with terrible reductiveness the bottom line of neuroscience, it is that let's not kid ourselves. We're all concatenations of molecules containing DNA, hard wired into a chemical analog computer known as the human brain, which as software has a certain genetic code. And your idea that you have a soul or even a self, much less free will, is just an illusion.

Your fate is preordained and if we had . . . enough data and sufficient parallel computers, we could predict everything you're going to do, including the fact that within the next 20 seconds you'll touch your forehead.

Somehow it reminds me of this marvelous song by the Bloodhound Gang, which says: "You and me baby, we ain't nothin' but mammals. So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel."
-Tom Wolfe, attempting to demonstrate the depths of stupidity to which he himself, and mankind in general, are able to sink. He sounds like a frat-boy.

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