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To: alt.magick From: catherine yronwodeSubject: Re: Experience vs. Opinion Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 07:31:14 GMT Joshua Geller wrote: > > Are you saying that if you have not done something, you do have > experience of it? I am not Peggy (obviously) but i have a thought to add here ... A central characteristic of human intelligence is the ability to perform "as if" activities and to experience "as if" emotional states, without actually engaging in the experiences or the emotions. For instance, i know i will not like hang-gliding. I don't need to experience hang-gliding to know this. How do i know it, then? Because i did not like the following things, which i *did* experience: sudden-drop roller coasters (the smooth ones are fun, though) the egg-beater ride at a carnival the octopus ride at a carnival flying in airplanes standing at the edge of the roof of a building standing at the top of a 15' tall ladder Hang-gliding encompasses visual and proprioceptive stimulae similar to those experiences above which i did not enjoy -- hence i know i will not enjoy hang-gliding. Similarly with ... oh, let's just pick some at random: Pet axolotls -- probably a no-go for me because i bnever wanted a pet fish, even though friends raise them. Axolotls are not fish, but they are kept in tanks of water, enough of a similarity to cause me to rule them out as pets, even without trying one. CD burner -- this probably will be great because i like making compilation tapes and i like computers and CD players. Mac G4 -- i liked the Mac, Mac II, Mac Quadra, and Mac G3 so i am sure enough that i will like the Mac G4 that i see no need to test-run one before buying it. New brands of commercial salad dressing -- nope; i have never yet liked ANY brand of commercial salad dressing, so about 15 years ago i stoped trying any new ones, even though they are all supposedly different from each other. See what i mean, Josh? The human mind is capable of filling in a-yet-to-be-experienced activity from a template comprised of similar previous activities. In the case of polyamory, William Woody explained very clearly that this is something we can experience through dating, prior to having sex. In my case, i didn't like the emotionally disjointed way i felt while non-sexually dating two different boys in the 9th grade, so i could accurately assume that i wouldn't like the feeling of having sex with two different grown men in my 20s or beyond without having to "experience" it in a literal sense. I mapped my several "dating multiple boys" experiences on to of my several "having sex with a man" experiences in my mind and achieved a highly accurate sense of what "having sex with multiple men" would feel like. This is how inventors work, by the way, and creative artists... cat yronwode Lucky Mojo Curio Co. http://www.luckymojo.com/catalogue.html
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