This comes from an offhand remark I read in, of all things, Jurassic Park. A
scientist is highly dismissive of the idea of us humans as intelligent
beings, likening us to lemmings and other lower animals. The argument
against this is our supposed ability to think. But do we really?
Of course many homo sapiens are real thinkers - consider da Vinci, Newton,
Einstein, Darwin, etc... But I stipulate that many of us simply regurgitate
all that has been fed to us by our parents, our friends, our colleagues, our
spouses, the newspapers, TV, movies... many of us are not really capable of
independent thought, though we may often make a fine pretence of doing so. I
am not sure that I myself can be counted as a thinker...
The problem is that thinking is painful business - it exerts mindmuscles in
ways they have never been exerted before and starting to think is like an
overweight person started to exercise - immensely painful and potentially
damaging.
So here's a question: Do you think? Really? How do you know?
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