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The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.
The Magic of Reality
for the iPad
Sean Faircloth:
Attack of the Theocrats!
I was rationalising after the fact for a long time when I first heard of this problem trying to work out why my brain reacted differently to pushing the man and pulling the switch. Part of me knew they were morally the same, yet I also knew my gut reaction was different. I eventually got it down to the idea that the problem was the idea of perfect knowledge and that was what was throwing my morality and so I'd throw the fat man if I knew it would stop the trolley. I am so glad to have seen this video though, as I have thought for a long time that we have various individual processing units in our head and our so-called consciousness is only slightly aware of them individually and takes a kind of straw poll to decide what we will do. This shows it perfectly.
Permalink Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:28:00 UTC | #406107