- the hazing: this is more pre-foundation, and the way he's building this up is to describe humans as not obeying mathematical laws, which i think is correct. i mean, if you can reduce things to hormones, fine. but, there's no evidence at all that you can predict how humans are going to behave, or coerce them into doing things as individuals - in aggregate, statistically, at the population level, perhaps, but, then you're dealing with statistics, not humans; that works due to the laws of probability, like quantum mechanics, and not due to a deep understanding of the subject matter. so, he's deriving this imaginary idea of psychology as a hard, mathematical science and then insisting it applies to every other intelligent species except us. so, what he's doing with this is taking a joke and running with it, out into right field, until he's run so far that he's forgotten why he was running - and dropped the fact that it was initially intended as satire. and, is there some basis to this? i think the argument he persistently makes, as this unfolds, is the opposite - that there isn't, that mathematical psychology really is crazy talk. and i think he's mostly right. again - if you can reduce it to chemicals, to hormones, fine. but, our neural system is so complex....

as before, though, this story has no actual point. i do agree that landing on a planet in a spaceship would make the natives think you're a god, and have hypothesized that this is what our concept of god actually is. but, he doesn't go anywhere with it. again.

there's lots of ideas here in these little stories, but very poor development of them.