Sociological Aspects 
as we are built at present we do demand something of that sort, 
and if we don’t have the tiger in the neighbouring jungle, or a 
man shooting at us, we will make something else to frighten 
ourselves with. 
My recipe for happiness is very simple. I could not keep 
up with modern technology, especially electronics, so I moved 
to a situation where the technology is at about the same level 
of development as it was when I was 20 years old, and I am 
extremely happy and comfortable in it. 
MacKay made an extraordinarily good point about the 
machine whose prediction affects the future. I do not believe 
it is an insoluble problem, but that does not mean that I have 
the solution to it. Bertrand Russell might; he solved the problem 
of what it means when someone makes a statement such as “All 
statements on this blackboard are untrue’’. ‘That has been 
worrying people since the time of Epimenides the Cretan, and 
Russell went far towards solving it. I suspect that the problem 
of the machine whose decision alters the future is soluble on 
somewhat similar lines. It may be beyond mechanical ingen- 
uity, but I don’t think it is beyond human ingenuity. 
MacKay: Russell'said that sort of statement was improper— 
it mustn’t be made. It is indeed possible for a prediction to 
secure its own fulfilment (unlike the Russell statement, which 
ensured its own falsification). Either way, I am only pointing 
out that publishing the statement is instrumental, rather than 
simply informative. Like Dr. Comfort, I am very much dis- 
turbed that we have no safeguards at the moment against a 
scientist, or even a pollster, equipping himself with this kind 
of manipulative power, and so in effect holding many votes in 
his own hand, without being answerable for the exercise of 
it. 
Coon: I agree with everything Haldane said, up to a certain 
point. In fact I got a considerable pleasure out of combat 
myself, I must admit, though it was probably naughty of me to 
have done so. But I did not say religion was based on fear—I 
said fear and deprivation of interaction. It is when you have 
nobody to talk to, when you are left all alone, that you really 
Any 
