SLSL Intro "A Couple-Three Bonzos"

[MalignD at aol.com]

The Terry Reilly excerpt is useful for carrying the "Intro Not What It Seems" 
argument about as far as it can go, Pynchon replicating Orwell, imitating 
Reagan, Poindexter, etc.  Useful because it's finally so unconvincing and 
far-fetched.  It proceeds in large part by begging the question (a method 
also used by Hollander, by the way, in his coded reading of COL49)--tossing 
out a dubious premise, then using that premise as a basis to further the 
argument.

There is a fairly well-known psychology experiment that bears relevance to 
this line of argument.  I'll summarize it briefly, trusting readers will find 
it interesting, whether or not they believe it applicable. 

Two sample groups were each shown slides of human cells, some healthy, some 
diseased.  Each member of each group was told to look at a slide as it was 
shown and make a guess as to whether it was healthy or not.  He/she would be 
told immediately after each guess whether it was correct or not.  (The actual 
difference in appearance between the healthy and diseased cells was readily 
apparent (the diseased cells had large blotches or something)).  The first 
group received honest feedback and very quickly  were making correct guesses 
as to which were which--blotches/diseased, no blotches/healthy.  The second 
group members received random feedback, independent of, and irrelevant to, 
any choices they made.  As a result they constructed ever more complicated 
theories ("clearly not the blotches ...") as to what they were seeing that 
differentiated healthy from diseased cells.

Afterwards, both groups met with a monitor to discuss their findings.  The 
first group said it was easy:  diseased cells had blotches, healthy cells did 
not.  The second group offered their far more complicated and wholly 
erroneous theories.  

All of which leads to the interesting part:  which is that the people from 
the first group pretty readily abandoned their simple, correct theories for 
the more complicated, nuanced, and utterly incorrect theories of the second 
group.