On Brevity

Steven Den Beste’s writing is informative, if, somewhat long winded at times.  In this piece Den Beste waxes eloquent on so called intellectuals and their propensity to obscure their subject with meaningless contusions of language.  Kim du Toit, admiring Den Beste’s prose on this subject, wacks a couple thousand words from Den Beste’s musings and sums it up nicely with this statement.

...most academic-speak is turgid bullshit.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/09 at 07:12 AM

  1. When I think about a person (Den Beste) who really thinks there is such a thing as “hive mind”, I realize that this is someone who has lost control of distinctions between metaphor and reality.

    I have never understood the buzz about that guy.

    Posted by Billy Beck  on  01/09  at  02:48 PM

  2. I’ve just thought, since I started reading Den Beste, that he could say what he needs to say in a much more succinct manner.  I’ll have to search up this “hive mind” thing though, I’m not aware of it.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/09  at  03:03 PM

  3. That would be this post:

    http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/12/Superhumanintelligence.shtml

    By the way, Beck has been mystified by me for a long time now:

    http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/12/Partlyemptyormostlyfull.shtml

    Posted by Steven Den Beste  on  01/09  at  03:30 PM

  4. Thanks Steven.  I read one post today I’ll look at the other tomorrow.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/09  at  10:31 PM

  5. I’ve read through both links provided by Den Beste, but will only comment on the “hive mind” post, above, “...superhumanintelligence.shtml.”

    The second post offered, though of interest to me, does not reference hive minds.

    Den Beste’s supposition, I think, is a hope that a “hive mind” may arise within the human population as a possible means to super human intelligence.  He then provides, as examples of hive mind in action, the world of bees, ants and termites as a means to understanding how a hive mind may function.  All well and good.  Unfortunately, I think the example hive minds, those bugs, illustrate not intelligence, but drone collectivism.

    Hoping that humankind would develop “hive minds,” to me, is backsliding into neanderthalish grunting, shuffling and wild gesticulations in hopes of communicating.  All of the insect societies that Den Beste points us to, are, in the end, only survival mechanisms.  For example, the searcher bees or ants return to the hive.  They go into the hive mind dance.  The dance only communicates that there is a food source or enemy at such and such coordinates and the insects either react enmass, say when attacking a threat, or in an orderly fashion, as when the worker bees or ants take the one communicated way to a food source.  The hive mind knows no other data except food here or enemy there, have at it.

    The development of a hive mind in a human population group, to me, is more akin to mass delusion or psychosis.  Individuality and free will are sacrificed to the hive because the requirement to think has been removed, there is only reaction, not reason.

    The swift interchange of ideas is more what Den Beste should hope for, and, the internet, has, as Den Beste noted, been a boon to just such swift interchange.  The hope for the rise of the hive mind is, to me, simply a hope that individualism will die.

    Posted by John Venlet  on  01/10  at  09:37 AM

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