Around campus today, a group is handing out copies of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. I think this is pretty awesome.

The problem is that I'm so conditioned to think that if someone's handing me a free book it's either a Bible or some nutty religious literature *about* the Bible. Therefore, when someone tries to hand me one of the most important books ever written, before I can fully consider this fact, I've already rudely spurned them.

This will lead to an unfortunate end result. The Darwin hander-outers are going to get jaded by day's end. They'll still believe in the cause, only they'll realize that people don't like having random books shoved in their faces. As rational folks, which it stands to reason most Darwin readers are, they'll think, "Well, I just felt pushy and crazy doing that. I probably won't take that approach again." Ironically, it feels wrong because it's just like something that a bunch of crazy people do, so the decidedly not-crazy Darwin pushers won't like the association. It seems the crazies have already ruined people on the "let's just hand our literature out to people on the streets" approach.

The same thought filter does not occur to the crazies. They will also still believe in the cause, but the difference is they either won't realize or won't care that people don't like having random books shoved in their faces. Crazy campus preacher guy doesn't believe it's crazy to shout Bible verses at everyone, so there's nothing to stop him from continuing to do it.

So, two groups of people start handing out literature, an annoying and nutty thing to do. One group thinks it's too weird to continue, so they stop. One group is too annoying and nutty to realize that what they're doing is annoying and nutty, so they continue. In a sense, this IS in fact how natural selection works. A crazy environment self-selects those who are crazy, and selects against those who are not.

I hope everyone will grasp the meta-lesson here.