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May. 3rd, 2008 05:47 pm500 words of White on White today. That's 1500/4000. Coming along nicely.
May. 3rd, 2008
Reading the fascinating A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by V.S. Ramachandran, with its accounts of strange neurological conditions, and finding various SFnal connections.
( SPOILERS for Torchwood 2.4 Adam )
In Ringworld, one of Larry Niven's cowardly aliens, the Puppeteers, explains why his species have no sense of humour: "Humor is associated with an interrupted defense mechanism... no sapient being ever interrupts a defense mechanism." Until now, I had no idea what this meant, but Ramachandran argues for exactly this theory when describing a patient who responded to pain with uncontrollable laughter. It can't just be the a-ha effect, he points out, or every great scientific discovery "would be greeted with hilarity". Instead, "laughter is nature's way of signalling 'that it's a false alarm'": someone slipping on a banana peel is funny if they're not actually hurt. (This would explain my outbursts of hysterical relieved laughter during Countrycide and also the Voyager episode The Thaw). Ramachandran suggests his patient's brain also had a cut connection: "one part of the brain signals a potential danger but the very next instant another part... does not receive a confirmatory signal, thereby leading to the conclusion 'it's a false alarm'". For Puppeteers, I guess, there are no false alarms.
(Lots of stuff on synaesthesia, which I'll scribble about in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
door_of_time.)
( SPOILERS for Torchwood 2.4 Adam )
In Ringworld, one of Larry Niven's cowardly aliens, the Puppeteers, explains why his species have no sense of humour: "Humor is associated with an interrupted defense mechanism... no sapient being ever interrupts a defense mechanism." Until now, I had no idea what this meant, but Ramachandran argues for exactly this theory when describing a patient who responded to pain with uncontrollable laughter. It can't just be the a-ha effect, he points out, or every great scientific discovery "would be greeted with hilarity". Instead, "laughter is nature's way of signalling 'that it's a false alarm'": someone slipping on a banana peel is funny if they're not actually hurt. (This would explain my outbursts of hysterical relieved laughter during Countrycide and also the Voyager episode The Thaw). Ramachandran suggests his patient's brain also had a cut connection: "one part of the brain signals a potential danger but the very next instant another part... does not receive a confirmatory signal, thereby leading to the conclusion 'it's a false alarm'". For Puppeteers, I guess, there are no false alarms.
(Lots of stuff on synaesthesia, which I'll scribble about in
door_of_time.)