Mark Olson shared some quick thoughts on 21st century demons. I responded. He responded to the response. Jason Kuznicki noted both, and made another point in harmony with mine.
But while I'm still formulating my thoughts, a quick hypothetical.
Suppose your friend calls you over to his house, jabbering excitedly about his PC's recent bizarre behavior. (Insert Mac or Linux joke here.) It's spewing vile messages all over the screen, horrible profanities, scurrilous epithets, obscene innuendoes, sometimes in other languages. When he tries to hop on the Internet and google a quick fix, Internet Explorer (insert Firefox joke here) takes him straight to porn sites, which begin popping up uncontrollably. He's forced to reboot, but the problem doesn't go away.
By the time you arrive, your friend is in a state of panic. "Stephen King was right," he breathlessly exclaims. "My computer is possessed!"
You calmly mutter something about security holes and sloppy coding, whip out an antivirus CD, boot into safe mode and pinpoint the problem: the DemoniACK virus. Solved in three minutes. The computer returns to normal, and your friend commences replacing torn out hair on his already balding pate.
"Now, wasn't that silly, suggesting your computer was demon-possessed?" you offer, bemused.
Your friend frowns. "No, not at all," he counters. "It's just because demons are limited by their software substrate. They have to act within Microsoft's programming constraints."
Your jaw slackens, and you set about convincing your friend that no, there was and is no goblin in his GUI.
My question for all interested parties: How do you do it?
"Look over at the kind of people inclined to side with you on this one. They talk nutty and don't occupy positions of authority with respect to the knowledge at issue. Now look over at the people who will side with me. QED." That's all you can do, unless you're prepared to give a lesson in computer science. Even then you'll have to appeal to testimony and credibility in third parties, because some info will be proprietary trade secrets, unless you're not dealing entirely with open source software and hardware. Still, it's turtles all the way down. You have to agree on a lot of assumptions to satisfactorily explain anything to anybody without appealing to authority.
ReplyDeleteYou could always appeal to the truth of naturalism. =)
ReplyDeletemurky thoughts, I think that's the tactic most would take given time constraints. But philosophically, or on principle, how does one respond to an ad hoc, unfalsifiable position? That's what the hypothetical is all about.
ReplyDeleteandrew b, of course, since it's true and accepted by everyone.