"Wilson, Robert Anton - Prometheus Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Anton)

The Thinker can think about virtually anything. History shows that it can think the earth is suspended on the backs of infinite turtles or that the Earth is hollow, or that the Earth is floating in space4,1 comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal (the reincarnation model) or even as nonexistent (Buddhism). It can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universeЧamong many possibilities.

As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick, and can even think itself well again.

The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover will prove it. It will find evidence that the

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Millions of people believe that (including the present author).

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poorest Jew in the most run-down ghetto has hidden money somewhere. Similarly, Feminists are able to believe that all men, including the starving wretches who live and sleep on the streets, are exploiting all women, including the Queen of England.

If the Thinker thinks that the sun moves around the earth, the Prover will obligingly organize all perceptions to fit that thought; if the Thinker changes its mind and decides the earth moves around the sun, the Prover will reorganize the evidence.

If the Thinker thinks "holy water" from Lourdes will cure its lumbago, the Prover will skillfully orchestrate all signals from the glands, muscles, organs etc. until they have organized themselves into good health again

Of course, it is fairly easy to see that other people's minds operate this way; it is comparatively much harder to become aware that one's own mind is working that way also.

It is believed, for instance, that some men are more "objective" than others. (One seldom hears this about women...) Businessmen are allegedly hard-nosed, pragmatic and "objective" in this sense. A brief examination of the dingbat politics most businessmen endorse will quickly correct that impression.

Scientists, however, are still believed to be objective. No study of the lives of the great scientists will confirm this. They were as passionate, and hence as prejudiced, as any assembly of great painters or great musicians. It was not just the Church but also the established astronomers of the time who condemned Galileo. The majority of physicists rejected Einstein's Special Relativity Theory in 1905. Einstein himself would not accept anything in quantum theory after 1920 no matter how many experiments supported it. Edison's commitment to direct current (DC) electrical generators led him to insist alternating current (AC) generators were unsafe for years after their safety had been proven to everyone else.'

Edison's pigheadedness on this matter was partly the result of his jealousy against Nikola Tesla, inventor of AC generators. Tesla, on the other hand, refused the Nobel Prize when it was offered to him and Edison jointly because he refused to appear on the same platform with Edison. Both of these geniuses were only capable of "objectivity" and science in certain limited laboratory conditions. If you

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Science achieves, or approximates, objectivity not because the individual scientist is immune from the psychological laws that govern the rest of us, but because scientific methodЧa group creationЧeventually overrides individual prejudices, in the long run.

To take a notorious example from the 1960s, there was a point when three research groups had "proven" that LSD causes chromosome damage, while three other groups had "proven" that LSD has no effect on the chromosomes. In each case, the Prover had proved what the Thinker thought. Right now, there are, in physics, 7 experiments that confirm a very controversial concept known as Bell's Theorem, and two experiments that refute Bell's Theorem. In the area of extra-sensory perception, the results are uniform after more than a century: everybody who sets out to prove that ESP exists succeeds, and everybody who sets out to prove that ESP does not exist also succeeds.

"Truth" or relative truth emerges only after decades of experiments by thousands of groups all over the world.

think you have a higher "objectivity quotient" than either of them, why haven't you been nominated for a Nobel prize?

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In the long run, we are hopefully approximating closer and closer to "objective Truth" over the centuries. In the short run, Orr's law always holds: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove.' And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.