Dirtside's Journal: The Salmon of Unverifiable Concepts

I read "The Salmon of Doubt" this weekend, which is a collection of (mostly) short pieces by the late Douglas Adams. Newspaper articles, speeches, miscellaneous writings, and also eight or so chapters of what was to become either a Dirk Gently novel, a Hitchhiker's Guide novel, or something else entirely. In the presented form (which was culled from several different versions), it's mostly a Dirk Gently story, although it doesn't have much time to get anywhere before ending.

Adams was a self-described radical atheist; a couple of the pieces in the book discuss various reasons for it. He was able, in a way so eloquent as to make me look upon my own writings with shame, to clearly and concisely explain some of the ways in which atheists find fault with religious beliefs. Acceptance of gods was something which Adams thought of as a vestigial notion from humanity's younger days. He gets into far more detail, of course, and I recommend reading the book if for no other reason than to learn about how much Adams loved knowledge and understanding. I get a warm fuzzy glow reading about the respect he had for those concepts.

The book is not very long, and I distinctly recommend it.

Why do most people get so attached to particular beliefs? Not just religious, but political, economic, scientific... there's a thread on Slashdot today about genetically modified food. Virtually every (substantive) post falls into the following categories:

1. Genetically modifying food/animals is dangerous.
2. Humans have been genetically modifying food/animals for thousands of years, and it's gone just fine.
3. What humans have been doing is selective breeding, which takes a long time, and allows for natural equilibria to arise; direct genetic manipulation may not be as safe, since it can cause much more rapid changes per unit time.

And all of them are vociferous. Everyone seems to strongly believe that whatever they believe is the right way, the truth, etc. I've read more articles and debates about GM foods than I can remember, and I honestly have no idea where I stand. Both sides have plausible arguments; both sides present data, facts, and so on. I guess I'm inclined to think that, like any other manipulation of matter, it has the potential to go wrong, or the potential to be a valuable tool for humanity. The influence of money will corrupt things, as it always does; the influence of ideals will (hopefully) help make things better for everyone, rather than a selective few who have the power. Issues that are cut-and-dry are cut-and-dry. Nobody gets into religious debates about whether airplanes can fly, because it would be inane, in a particularly egregious way, to deny that that is not really an airplane flying up there. But people get into (essentially) religious arguments about things that are not so clear, like whether GM foods are "good" or "bad" (should you desire to place the topic into such an easily-labeled box), or (inanely, but in a less egregious way, since it takes millennia to occur, so I can't just point to it happening, and say, "See?") whether species of life arise from elder species via natural selection.

People seem to feel that they have to take a stand -- you can't be indecisive about something; you can't accept that an issue is complex with a lot of gray areas. Everything has to be black or white. Why? Do most people simply lack the energy required to maintain such a quantum-like state of dynamism? After a long day at work, do most people really just not have the mental energy to think about complex world issues? Or are incredibly complex issues like racial politics actually a simple, black-and-white (no pun intended) affair, with clear-cut answers?