The Cellar - Intro to Zombie Studies

The Cellar (http://cellar.org/index.php)

- Nothingland (http://cellar.org/forumdisplay.php?f=36)

- - Intro to Zombie Studies (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=21199)

Intro to Zombie Studies

Zombies are the new vampires. :reaper:

Just noticed that the University of Alabama has this itunes U podcast course. "why the familiarity of zombies makes them scarier and more fun to study" including: "She's Not Your Mother Anymore" and "The Living as Minority."

All free, of course. I love da internet! and my ipods!

also, a quick Google of "zombies" throws up some pretty interesting stuff. If you're into that.

just think it's cool, that's all.

Academic studies seem to like the subject. Here's one from Canada that I remember from the BBC news.

Quote:

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

...

But there is a serious side to the work.

...

In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection.

...

Even so, their analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

...

What about a zombie vaccine? Sort of the opposite of the vampire effect. You take a bit of the Zombie's blood and make a vaccine out of it. Or do zombies have blood?

Oh great, autistic zombies. :yelsick:

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce (Post 601799)

Oh great, autistic zombies. :yelsick:

I saw a guy with a button that said 'Save yourself from H1N1, lick an autistic kid'.

I lol'd. Aisle seat, please.

want college credit for studying zombies!

I, for one, can hardly wait to see "Zombieland".

Me too, Woody Harrelson is the man.
Vampires. As if.

Get the Zombie Survival Guide.

Study it. Live it. Survive an infestation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf (Post 601867)

Get the Zombie Survival Guide.

Study it. Live it. Survive an infestation.

Got iiiit!

I love the table of contents. They are a great read. :p

I wonder, is the popularity of zombies and vampires an attempt to escape the really scary things that are all around us?

I swear this is true.

My PhD Thesis is about zombies.

Absolutely really utterly true!

The title is :

Conceivability Arguments Against Physicalism,
..........................Or ,
How to Slay Zombies and Banish Spectres.

In this context, "zombie" is a short expression for "non-conscious microphysical duplicate of a conscious creature". The point is that if consciousness can be explained by science, then we should be able to derive the facts of consciousness from the microphysical facts (and thus show that zombies are inconceivable, and hence impossible); however, it is notoriously difficult to do this because the essentially first person relationship we have with our own consciousness renders it inaccessible from a scientific approach which is necessarily third-person.
I argued that it is possible to show that there will be some facts of consciousness (thus proving that zombies are impossible) by showing that some computational cognitive systems would take first person approaches to their own states.
However, this reasoning also showed that it is impossible to specify the exact nature of the conscious experience, thus allowing that "spectres" (short for "differently-conscious microphysical duplicate of a conscious creature") are conceivable. However, this conceivability can also be explained by the same reasoning, and so is not taken as evidence for possibility.

Funny, I hadn't been into this stuff for years, but just today I went to the library to get a few books out about this stuff.