Me, too!

This reading mainly discussed the idea of conceptual spheres. Hofstadter describes these as being formed by the central idea or theme at the core, with variations of the theme, or generalizations, making up the outer layers of the sphere. The examples he gave were very interesting. He was trying to demonstrate how it can be difficult to judge when an idea gets stretched so far that it no longer actually has anything to do with the original theme or event. The examples mainly dealt with how people react to given events and if their reactions are really appropriate. The best example, I thought, was how the FDA responded when there was a serious of deaths due to tampering with Tylenol. The FDA, at first, only decided to mandate new regulations for drug bottles, with deadlines given sooner to drugs that are most similar to Tylenol.

At first glance, this seems completely understandable, but does it actually make sense to target drugs that are simply more similar to Tylenol? Surely food or drugs not related to Tylenol could have been tampered with as well, but this is how the FDA reacted.

Apart from this, the most interesting part of the reading was his discussion of how “Me, too” fits into human tendency to generalize. Often times, when someone says “me too,” they do not actually mean they will be doing the exact same thing, as shown in many of the examples he gave. This is of course interesting because everyone probably hears someone say this at least once every day.