Two talks (one actually attended)

[major_clanger]

I had hoped to be doing a write-up of Iain Sinclair's talk on 'London's Lost Rivers' at Gresham College yesterday evening. Unfortunately, it seems that Gresham rather underestimated the turnout for such an event (it was heavily trailed as part of the City of London Festival) and by the time I arrived there was a large and somewhat peeved crowd outside Barnard's Inn being told patiently by one of the organisers that the event was full and had been for half an hour. This is always the risk with free, non-ticketed events but it's a pity Gresham couldn't have found a bigger venue for what was always likely to be a popular talk.

I had better luck at my second planned talk of the night: Professor Bruce Hood at Skeptics in the Pub, talking about why people believe in the supernatural. Hood has a very interesting take; whilst he sympathises with Richard Dawkins' position, he thinks Dawkins is very mistaken in assuming that humans are a rational tabula rasa who pick up religion and superstition through a process of indoctrination. Rather, his research indicates that, especially as children, we are strongly predisposed to see purposeful and agenda-driven explanations for the world around us, and that these tendencies are as strong as the visual reflex to see faces in patterns. Interesting stuff, and once again I was very impressed to see how well-attended the London Skeptics meetings are. (Indeed, Hood admitted at the start of his talk that when invited he'd had an image of half a dozen bearded nerds drinking warm beer; an even mix of 250 men and women from teens to sixties was quite a surprise to him, and a nice example of preconception at work!)

Comments

[owlfish]

I would have loved to go to a talk on London's Lost Rivers too; I didn't know it was happening in the first place, however, so stood even less chance than you did at getting in.