The first, having been programmed to avoid looking weak in front of your fellow primates, and the second which was able to reason that shooting the elephant would be unnecessary and cruel. So, what I think is striking about this story, what I want to highlight, is how clearly we can see these two separate decision-making systems, both wrestling for control of George Orwell’s decision. And again and again, until he finally gave up and left it there to die a slow and painful death. Eric Blair later adopted the pen name George Orwell and he wrote about his experience in an essay entitled, “Shooting the Elephant,” and this is the last line of the essay: “I often wondered whether any of the others had any inkling that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” And second that the crowd of now roughly 2,000 people behind him, waiting and watching, expected him to shoot the elephant, but if he didn’t he would look foolish and weak.Įric shot the elephant in the head. ![]() ![]() And when he saw it he realized two things: first, that the elephant was now calm and posed no danger to anyone, and that he had neither the justification nor the desire to kill it. When he finally found the elephant, it was grazing in a field. So Eric got his gun, went off in search of the beast, and as he tracked it through the town he amassed a crowd of interested onlookers who were all following him eerily awaiting the confrontation. A work elephant had broken free of its chains and was on a rampage in the town and he was needed to track it down and if necessary subdue it. And so I fly back to New York every month and a half to record a bunch of podcast episodes and pass them out.Īlright, I think my story is about to begin. It is! My story begins in Burma on a hot day in the late 1920s where a young British officer named Eric Blair was stationed. I am the host of the podcast “Rationally Speaking,” which is sponsored by the New York City Skeptics, but I’m also more recently the president of a new organization called the Center for Applied Rationality, so I’m no longer based in New York, I’m living in Berkley, California running this new organization more than full time. So, my story begins…my story *will* begin…While we’re setting up, I’ll just tell a little more about myself. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?Īudience: Yes. Presenter: You may know our next speaker from her podcast, “Rationally Speaking” or her blog, “Measure of Doubt”, Julia Galef. ![]() What follows is a transcript and video of Julia’s talk from SK5, super special thanks to Karou Negisa for typing them up for us!
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