Giant brains; or, Machines that thinkBerkeley, Edmund Callis
Science
Giant brains; or, Machines that think
Berkeley, Edmund Callis
Computers -- Popular works
Prejudice is frequent in human affairs. For example, in some countries,
but not in all, there is conflict among men, based on their religious
differences. Again, in other countries, but not in all, there is
wide discrimination among men, based on the color of their skin.
Over the whole world today, there is a sharp lack of understanding
between conservatives, grading over to reactionaries, on the one
hand, and liberals, grading over to radicals, on the other hand. All
these differences are based on men’s attitudes, on strongly held
sets of beliefs. These attitudes are not affected by “information”;
the “information” is not believed. The attitudes are not subject to
“judgment”; they come “before judgment”: they are prejudices. Even
in the midst of all the science of today, prejudice is widespread.
In Germany, from 1933 to 1939, we saw one of the most scientific of
countries become one of the most prejudiced.
Prejudice is often difficult to detect. We find it hard to recognize
even in ourselves. For a prejudice always seems, to the person who
has it, the most natural attitude in the world. As we listen to other
people, we are often uncertain how to separate information, guesses,
humor, prejudice, etc. Circumstances compel us to accept provisionally
quantities of statements just on other people’s say-so. A good test
of a statement for prejudice, however, is to compare it with the
scientific view.
Prejudice is most dangerous for society. Its more extreme
manifestations are aggressive war, intolerance (especially of strange
people and customs), violence, race hatred, etc. In the consuming
hatred that a prejudiced man has towards the object of his prejudice,
he is likely to destroy himself and destroy many more people besides.
In former days, the handy weapon was a sword or a pistol; not too much
damage could be done when one man ran amuck. But nowadays a single use
of a single weapon has slain 70,000 people (the atom bomb dropped at
Hiroshima), and so a great many people live anxious and afraid.
What is prejudice? How does it arise? How can it be cured, and thus
removed from obstructing reasonable control over robot machines and the
rest of today’s amazing scientific developments?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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