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cover of episode 40: Introducing The Portal Essay Club - What if everyone is simply insane?

40: Introducing The Portal Essay Club - What if everyone is simply insane?

2020/8/12
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The Portal
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Arthur Koestler
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Eric Weinstein
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Eric Weinstein: 本期节目探讨了科斯勒1944年发表的著名文章《现实的噩梦》，文章的核心观点是：许多人生活在一种自我麻痹的梦境中，选择性地忽略残酷的现实，即使面对像大屠杀这样规模的事件，也难以唤醒他们的认知。文章通过梦境、呐喊者与旁观者、以及对心理学实验（米尔格拉姆实验、阿希从众实验、斯坦福监狱实验）的分析，揭示了人们在服从权威、从众心理和现实错觉等方面的人性弱点。这些弱点导致人们难以面对真相，甚至将揭露真相者视为疯子。文章还探讨了信息传播的局限性，以及如何才能打破这种认知障碍，让更多人意识到真相。 Weinstein认为，科斯勒的文章具有永恒的意义，它揭示了人类认知和感知的局限性，以及人们在面对残酷现实时所表现出的麻木和逃避。他将文章中的“呐喊者”与现代社会中那些试图揭露真相的人们联系起来，指出他们常常被主流社会视为异类，甚至遭到打压。他呼吁人们打破思维定势，勇敢地面对真相，承担起自身的责任。 Arthur Koestler: 文章以一个反复出现的噩梦开篇，梦中作者在丛林中被杀害，而路上的行人却视而不见，嬉笑而过。作者认为这个梦境是人类面对死亡和宇宙暴力时的普遍孤独感和无力感的象征。文章的核心论点是，那些试图揭露暴行的“呐喊者”，例如作者自己，常常被大众视为疯子，而大众则生活在一种被屏蔽的幻想世界中，选择性地忽略残酷的现实。作者认为，这种现象并非仅仅是由于大众的愚钝，而是根植于人类心理机制的深层问题，即人类认知和感知的局限性。人们难以同时兼顾宏观和微观的视角，难以将抽象的统计数据与具体的个体生命联系起来。面对绝对性的概念，例如死亡和永恒，人们的认知能力会进一步下降。文章最后，作者呼吁人们打破这种认知障碍，勇敢地面对现实。

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Eric Weinstein introduces the concept of The Portal Essay Club, discussing the underappreciation of essays and other intellectual formats compared to books.

Shownotes Transcript

If you have ever wondered whether you were crazy when everyone else claims to see things differently than you do, this is the episode for you.

Book clubs are everywhere and we are always asked for book recommendations. But what about the great Essays, Interviews, Conversations, Aphorisms, Shaggy Dog Stories, Lyrics, Courtroom Testimonies, Poems, Movie Scenes, Jokes and the like? Sadly, there is almost never a club in which to discuss them. Yet there are Essays and offerings in other intellectual formats that are just as profound and meaningful as any book while having the advantage of being much more in keeping with modern attention spans. The Portal seeks to fill this obvious lacuna. 

We thus finish out the regular first year of the Portal Podcast with an inaugural episode of an experiment: The Portal Essay Club. In this episode Eric reads aloud an astonishing essay from 1944 by Arthur Koestler which changed his world. In the essay, Koestler wrestles with a difficult question that has plagued independent thinkers for ages: what if everyone who is supposedly 'normal' is actually a maniac living in a dream world? What if the only sane ones appear crazy just as the crazy appear sane? 

During the episode, Eric first reads aloud the essay "The Nightmare That Is A Reality." and then discusses paragraph by paragraph what makes this one of the most profound yet often forgotten essays to have appeared within the twilight of living memory (1944 as it happens). We hope you will enjoy this experiment and let us know what you would like to see appear next in this series. 

Thanks for a great first year. 

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