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Arthur C. Clarke Talks With The Onion
sootman writes "The Onion has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke in this week's issue. My favorite line: 'The asteroid [named after me] is number four thousand and something, and the International Astronomical Federation, which deals with these sorts of things and numbered it, apologized to me because number 2001 wasn't available, having been given to somebody named "A. Einstein."'" Reader ronys point out that Despite the source, the interview is not a spoof or satire."
When somebody's dead wrong, it's generally not a good idea to mod them up "Informative"... More like "Misinformative".
I'm not incompetent, but I always throw my violence in the garbage too!
Oh, you mean refuGe!... Nevermind...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Too bad for us.
2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1968 if memory serves, isn't Clarke getting a bit old?
Um...so what?
Clark is fascinating despite his age - we should treasure the elderly, there is much knowledge there to be gained, but all too often we simply shuffle them to the side like a pair of worn shoes. Enjoy his insights while you still can. He has some fascinating opinions on Martian life, for example.
Stop corporate
The man is over 85 years old. Give him a break. I'm surprised he is still alive, let alone coherent.
The first quote deals exclusively with Mars and whatever pictures Clarke has seen that appear to be vegetation. The second quote is more general about intelligent life in the universe and how we've seen signs of vegetative life on Mars.
Where does one get the idea that he's talking about pictures of vegetation from some place other than Mars?
I remember ages ago reading an EXTREMELY unflattering interview with ACC where the reviewer came away hinting (broadly) that he was a self-obsessed has-been. Looking at the onion article and seeing some of the stuff he does (name-dropping Kubrick, deciding the most important recent invention was something he predicted (satellite)
Given his close and productive relationship with Kubrick, I think one could hardly call this name-dropping (they were known to be close personal friends). Also, he didn't "predict" the communications satellite, but did in fact invent it; hardly misplaced pride in this case.
I've lost a lot of the vast respect I used to have for ACC (and that's not even mentioning the - unproven - allegations about the young boys surrounding him)
I hadn't heard that; but given that the allegations are unproven, perhaps the man has earned the benefit of the doubt.
Mouser
He didn't say anything about fish, actually. Stop putting words in the man's mouth. :-)
But seriously, that statement did strike me as an odd bit of wishful thinking overpowering his otherwise healthy sense of skepticism. Jumping to grand conclusions based on sketchy facts is the kind of thing that leads to crusades, inquisitions, and other deplorable acts he attributes solely to religion.
Nevertheless, you've gotta cut some slack for people who dare to use their imagination. So what if they're wrong much of the time? They're also right, occasionally, and in ways nobody else could have envisioned.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Sounds like about the kind of thing you'd say if you had a genetic disease that forced you to live in a robot chair.
To be pedantic, that is the contrapositive of Clark's Law. The contrapositive is a rule of inference that allows you to reverse the consequent and antecedent: if P implies Q, then not Q implies not P.
To be pedantic myself, what was wrong with what the OP said? A corollary is a minor claim which is logically dependent on a previously-established claim.
What particular rule of interference was used to deduce the corollary from the original statement isn't really important. There's nothing wrong with calling the contrapositive is a corollary.
The question is whether or not he's doing this to be considered more "serious" as a filmmaker, or if he's just becoming cynical and curmudgeonly in his elder years.
The previous poster's logic *is* flawed, but he makes the same mistake that you do: differentiating between secular humanism and religion. As religion does not necessarily require belief in the supernatural, secular humanism fits the definition (or "at least one" definition) of religion. (Maybe Clarke meant "belief in the supernatural" when he said "religion", but that wouldn't be very intellectually honest.)
Clarke's statement could be interpreted as a condemnation of zealous devotion to anything at all, but as someone who is zealously devoted to a number of different things, I don't prefer that view.
Instead, I interpret Clarke's statement as a criticism of lack of critical thinking. People often believe things for bad reasons, and it's no excuse if some of those things happen to be true. Phrased like that, I might agree; it's quite possible that bad decision-making has the most harmful influence on humanity.
Actually, I'm surprised at him, really. He goes on about "religious wars, the Inquisition, the Crusades" as justification for his point. I'd expect a man of his intelligence and insight to realise that if man hadn't used religion as an excuse for this despicable behaviour, we'd have used something else instead. It's not religion, Arthur, it's one set of people perceiving themselves as different from (and by implication superior to) another, and it's a story as old as time. I'm a bit disappointed that he's taken such a simplistic viewpoint on the matter.
I don't think that he took an overly simplistic viewpoint... he mentions racism as another example of a "mind virus," so it seems to me that he's blaming such conflicts on exactly the type of segregationist thinking that you mention. A mind virus would naturally play to the desires of its host, i.e. the idea that one is superior to everyone else, otherwise it could never propagate.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
It's different because it shifts accountability onto others. Being able to say "God told me to" makes it God's fault, whereas other excuses invariably come back to humans at some point.
Arthur, it's one set of people perceiving themselves as different from (and by implication superior to) another
Yes, but the problem is that nearly all religions actually encourage people to perceive themselves as different, or superior, if they belong to that religion.
if man hadn't used religion as an excuse for this despicable behaviour, we'd have used something else instead.
Really? So the Crusades, for instance, would have still happened if there wasn't a religious basis for it? I doubt it very much.
I seriously doubt he has such a simplistic view of it. He's doing a light interview and it was an offhand comment. I'm sure when we all get as old as he is we'll have little patience for rattling off the same crap over and over for a new audience of noobs.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
For the love of Bowman, be sure that the DVDs have the right region encoding.
Minor nitpick - race is predominantly about genetic stock than religion, although those of particular genetic stock may have large numbers who are of a particular faith.
However I agree with you - race is how many group themselves, and seeing how ingrained religious identity is to some, how 'important' it is to them, often means it is the most harmfull kind of grouping.
Not all grouping is bad, rather it works on a sliding scale. Many people who live in America come from vastly different genetic stock and still see themselves as 'Americans'. This grouping can be harmful (makeshift patriots labeling anything against the Bush administration anti-patriotic) and positive (find an example dave).
Clarke is oversimplifying in this interview yes, buy it is doubtful he has this simplified view.
--
Mainstream religious people are ignorant,
Athiests are arogant,
I'm undecisive, dithering agnostic who can't make up his mind to make up his mind.
Clarke goes into the idea behind his book about Fermat's Theorem, and while I like the idea, he should change the CIA to the NSA in the book. The CIA deals with crypto quite a bit, but the worlds largest employer of mathemeticians (or so I have heard them called) would be far more likely to scoop up someone who made a breakthrough in prime number theory: the NSA.
It just seems they would make much more sense for his book.
Of course, there are some evil atheists. But the 'people will find an excuse' argument is just weak. You might as well defend racist beliefs on the basis that 'Southerners would have found an excuse to string up black people anyway'.
Religion, in general, is a system of false beliefs that cause people to behave badly. Just like racism. EOT
Well national socialism (as I guess you're referring too) wasn't just a political view. A belief in the manifest destiny of the arian race and the natural superiority of that race made it a lot more akin to a religion.
I can't look at "Triumph des Willens" (Triumph of the Will) without seeing a religious gathering rather than a political one.
I'm not trying to equate modern day, mainstream religion with naziism, but calling nazis atheists doesn't really fly either, and the deeper religion (and the feeling of being righteous whatever you do) goes, the scarier the comparison becomes.
What a rotten party, have we run out of beer or something?
Hell, by your definition Christianity is probably the smallest religion that ever existed.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
"...does not necessarily require belief in the supernatural..."
/exactly/ what he is quoted as saying: religion is ultimately a very bad thing, when it's good and bad points are balanced.
Uh, sorry? Could you expound on that? I'd think that religion by definition deals with something beyond the natural. Unless of course you take the view that this 'god' thing is natural, and therefore is not supernatural or whatever. Even zen (the only religion I'm aware of lacking a god) is supernatural, in that the final attainable state is beyond this earth (although of course a taoist would say tht it is the ultimate acheivable form of nature).
Anyway, you are missing the obvious here: maybe mister Clarcke means
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
To quote from the Council for Secular Humanism:
"Critics often try to classify secular humanism as a religion. Yet secular humanism lacks essential characteristics of a religion, including belief in a deity and an accompanying transcendent order. Secular humanists contend that issues concerning ethics, appropriate social and legal conduct, and the methodologies of science are philosophical and are not part of the domain of religion, which deals with the supernatural, mystical and transcendent."
Power and riches were the basis for the crusades, like all wars. Religion was a pretext. France made preemptive strikes against Arab encroachers who had already conquered Spain. It was as much about religion as W's war was about WMD.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
Oh please.
A group can define itself as anything it wants. A lot of religions don't consider themselves "religions." A google search for "is not a religion" turns up pages that say:
1. Christianity is not a religion.
2. Buddhism is not a religion.
3. Scientology is not a religion.
4. Ahimsa is not a relgion.
5. Hinduism is not a religion.
et c., for Creationism, evolution(ism, I guess), Ba'Hai, Wicca, Yoga, Zen Buddhism, Falun Gong, and Alcoholics Anonymous -- just to use the first two pages of results. So, you're going to have to do better than to say that Secular Humanism doesn't consider itself a religion to prove that it's not.
And to make matters worse, it's not God's fault because God is faultless.
irb(main):001:0>
Exactly, so the system just drives the thought process in circles.
The way I see it, there are two basic types of wars... The first type is where you kill the other people for the sake of taking what they have. The second is killing for the sake of ridding the world of a certain kind of people. I think that religion has little influence on the first kind, but much influence on the second kind. People aren't automatically racist and hateful at birth, in fact children are usually the best at getting along regardless of race. So it's the belief system that shapes those things, and religion is usually at the core.