http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/nov/04/seanpenn.madonna

Oh, the hypocrisy.

I think you’d have some trouble running that by any competent Paleoanthropologist.

There would certainly have been a peer leader, or a tribesman with advanced skills that all the other apes looked up to. What about that great hunter warrior in the tribe who brings home a whole mammoth single-handedly? The one who all the babies look like him and all the other men want to.

evolutionary pressures acting on a tribal group of protohumans instilled in us an instinctive need to listen to authority figures, and that’s been short-circuited in our recently-developed upper brains which causes us to reverse the authority-is-famous connection to be famous-is-authority.

This may not be entirely true. Hunter-gatherer societies don’t have “authority figures” in the same sense that complex societies like ours do.

A better explanation might be that we evolved a capacity to learn, a capacity to imitate, and a tendency to conform. More importantly, we tend to imitate things that appear to work. Since celebrities are rich and successful, there might be a stronger psychological urge to listen to them and imitate them.

And how do you know he doesn’t?

It is not pretty for the person who claims that they only eat ‘organic’ foods in front of him.

The start of it is that some of the most toxic chemicals we use are basically ‘organic’. The rant goes on from there but I don’t remember a lot of it.

You forgot to mention Oprah.

GAry 7

Ahem.

She has a whole book out about this celebrity culture nonsense and you can hear her pushing it quite amusingly on the BBC’s Start The Week at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00jh4f5 .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hTtsqiFCc

The celebrity endorsement: it’s a bait-and-switch. An argument from authority from a non-authority. They did something to be noteworthy, ergo it translates across to everything they do. Kind of like statements we often hear prefixed with “As an Electrical Engineer with fourteen years experience, I can tell you that blonde women are prettier.” A non-relevant element held up to support an opinion with a shaky opinion-based pedigree.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/03/26/expert-but-bad-financial-advice-turns-off-decision-making-in-the-brain/

It seems that being told something by an ‘expert” actually shuts down activity in the
anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, where decisions are made and probabilities are calculated.

Pete

On an unrelated note, I watched three episodes of firefly tonight…just thought I’d let you know

Pete

That’s silly, but it is essentially what we’re saying here. I find it funny that this seems to apply only to actors, but never to people in other fields. Like somehow by choosing a profession in the arts you’ve lost your right to speak your mind and hold opinions on a host of matters. This is why Cleon has it right. Listen to the message and forget about just attacking the messenger.

Eat biological foods? Hey! It sounds great to me – in fact that’s my only recommended cure for starvation – eat biological foods. Yes Gwyneth, eating mud and other non-biological foods is a mental disorder; it even has a name: pica. [OT] I must admit that while most people love organic food, I have a special interest in non-organic food. My favorite is a carving of a cloven head of Chinese cabbage produced from a single block of jade. Unfortunately I can’t find any links to it on the web. Needless to say, you can’t eat inorganic food – you can’t even eat all organic food – paraffin fruits taste awful.

Fantastic article – I wish we’d see more like it ridiculing the blonde leading the blonde.

he same Kurzweil that’s cheering for the Geek Rapture

Eh, isn’t that the guy who claims that exponential trend curves [insert non-mathematical magic here] gives singularities?! Is that a mistake a geek is likely to make?

I propose we name it Freak Rapture.