Comments

  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    This thread is turning violent. Good thing our bodies aren't in the same space.

    A Panda bear rents a room at the Mandalay Bay hotel. He eats, shoots and leaves.
  • Hope is the opiate of the masses!


    What translation of the Tao Te Ching is that from?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Daniel Dennett's humorous slogan for contemplating Darwinian cultural evolution:


    A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.

    I don't know about you, but I am not initially attracted by the idea of my brain a s a sort of dungheap in which the larvae of other people's ideas renew themselves, before sending out copies of themselves in an informational diaspora. It does seem to rob my mind of its importance as both author and critic. Who's in charge, according to this vision -- we or our memes?
    — Dennett

    A joke is just a comedian's way of making comedians of us all.

    A comemian is only understood through the performative devices of its comemedy.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day


    It's more like a sad story with a thread-dependent context than a joke, I guess. Like the one about a disabling monster who amuses video gamers in a simulated trial of violence and self neglect.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    A joke tries to persuade its disabled human about how to convey itself to other humans but the joke's owner has lost its keys in a dark ally and is preoccupied.

    The joke says to its human "you don't need that comfy bed in that apartment which you feel you can't afford not to pay, just sleep on the street."

    The joke laughs at its human, "Frank would've told me at the right time and place in the right order without a hiccup. "

    "Always you and your Frank" the human says.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Nietzsche is walking along a street in Turin we he sees a cart driver whipping a unicorn.

    He embraces the horse and whispers in its ear : "Sometimes horses don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed."

  • Recommend me some books please?
    It's very short. I remember reading it, and being like :s 'why have I just read this?' — Augstino

    Story of my life. I remember working my job and was like :( why am I doing this.
  • Recommend me some books please?
    J.L. Borges fictions, if nothing else, his Library of Babel.

    The Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges is not typically classified as a philosopher, but in his short stories he has given philosophy some of its most valuable thought experiments, most of them gathered in the stunning collection Labyrinths. Among the best is the fantasy -- actually, it is more a philosophical reflection than a narrative -- that describes the Library of Babel. — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

    I wish I could see the Library of Babel through Dennett's mind.

    Books on my kindle that I may read and reread eventually:

    Finite and Infinite Games

    Mythmaker: A Study of Motif and Symbol in the Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges by Carter Wheelock

    He (Borges) has a superb conceptual grasp of what Wilbur M. Urban called "the natural metaphysic of the human mind" -- the abstracting, god making, fluid, kaleidoscopic world view possessed by primitive men for want of a body of sure and useful knowledge, and the view to which sophisticated men inevitably return when they despair of truth. The philosophy perennis formulates a circular, predestined universe, capricious and chaotic, capable of an infinite number of equally valid configurations; a world in which everything conceivable is true and where "false" can only mean "unthought." Borges looks upon modern men, with their fixed hiearchy of knowledge and an idea of being that differs radically from the loose cosmologies of their ancient forebears, as if they were a choral group that sings only one dogmatized song. — Carter Wheelock
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Buddha's Clear Liquid Self-Dissolving Solution (now comes in new bucket size).

    Do you suspect someone has been screwing your wife while you're at work? Did you lose your job due to a corporate merger and you are worried your family will now be homeless? Buddha's Clear Liquid Self-Dissolving Solution is the right solution for you.

    Simply submerge the heads of the problematic selves in provided bucket containing Buddha's Clear Liquid Self-Dissolving Solution and whoila! your problems are solved.

    From the makers of Ayn Rand's Industrial Strength Self-Galvanizing solution.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    God accidentally spills a bucket of clear liquid.

    14 billion years later he cleans it up.
  • Consumption and Capitalism: Maybe an analogy would help
    Where do you get that one market shutting down results in an unrelated other market shutting down? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

    I'm just wondering what this local manufacturing economy would look like. Maybe other markets would still exist but their prices might adjust to exclude those who have nothing worth trading. Isn't that kind of why developing nations don't really change quickly, as they have nothing to bring to the table by which they could evolve their economies.

    The surplus that is to be gained by specializing in a very desirable product and scaling up reshapes the geography around it. Going in the opposite direction (losing surplus value by which you can trade) may reshape your local geography and its available resources in a way you don't expect or are very not pleased with respect to how you live currently.



    You think we could never have enough chocolate but these workers aren't compensated so well for their goods. Would they be better off if the demand for chocolate went down?
  • Does Roundup (glyphosate) harm the human body?


    Ecologies are all connected from the bottom to the top. It's all enormously complicated.
  • Does Roundup (glyphosate) harm the human body?
    The average diet (excluding the consumed residues of glyphosate) is probably far worse via the "gut flora" influence than a healthier diet with average glyphosate residues, though this is just a guess.

    Coca-cola sells a product which causes immense harm directly (diabetes) and indirectly (raising cost healthcare insurance), though this is probably disputed. Gut flora might actually have a big role to play in our inability to act against what harms us, even though we may intellectually understand what harms us.

    What is good for the gut is good for the body. What is bad for the gut is bad for the body. But what is good for the gut?

    What is good for the mind is good for the body. What is bad for the mind is bad for the body.
    But what is good for the mind?

    Somewhere and everywhere we end up making trade-offs. What is good for the mind is bad for the body. Oh well... But if it is bad for the body, is it not also bad for the mind?
  • Moderation Standards Poll


    What are you trying to do on this site?
  • Consumption and Capitalism: Maybe an analogy would help
    Learning to be self-reliant / self-sufficient and only entering formal markets when it is one's only choice (you can't fly your own aircraft, so you hire an airline to fly you somewhere; you can't mine your own minerals, so you buy them from a mine operator, etc.) is what would be revolutionary. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

    I sense a contradiction in this paragraph. How would someone determine when entering a formal market is their only choice? Wouldn't such a decrease in the demand to travel outside of one's own geographic locality make air travel too expensive for the average joe. Air travel wouldn't be there as choice. Whatever the old market was it wouldn't be there anymore and the new kind of market would be the formal market(?)
  • What are you listening to right now?


    Through the dawning age
    We go walking together
    Toward the yawning grave
    Braving dangers, we make our way
    We'll leave our bones in the dust
    An untold legend is lighting up

    What if I was the last sight you ever saw?
    Would you die with a smile on your face?

    Well, don't even try to say you will
    'Cause you'd hardly recognize the sight
    Young are getting old and the summer is cold
    And all the birds've been singing at night

    When we're dead and gone
    Will the mountains remember?
    Or just carry on
    Moving slow as the forest grows?
    And turn our bones into dust
    An untold legend is lighting up

    When will I reach that light that I'm running to?
    When I die will it turn out forever?
    There's a fire burning inside of me
    When I die will light burn out forever?

    Well, don't even lie, I know it will, babe
    'Cause the darkness doesn't need the light
    All the young are getting old and the summer is cold
    All the birds've been singing at night

    Well, don't even try to save me, friend
    'Cause I know it ain't worth the fight
    All the young are getting old and the summer is cold
    All the birds've been singing at night

  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    If you just copy the joke you can change it yourself.



    He doesn't own the version of his joke unless his joke is his bread and butter. As an aside, he can live without butter. It is better to live without butter. You can't believe it's not better.

    Edit: It is better to leave our history unrevised. But you can't believe it's not better because there was only margarine in George Orwell's 1984. Big Brother's marketing campaign: "Margarine is Butter"
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Long ago I danced for a King named Clark,
    Who frowned and began to bark.
    He sold me away,
    To a tyrant they say,
    Who cut out my tongue as a lark.
  • Consumption and Capitalism: Maybe an analogy would help
    "It's not the consumers' job to know what they want", said Steve Jobs.

    This reminds me of that script that cashiers ask but hope you don't have a problematic answer to:

    "Did you find everything you need?"

    This always becomes a philosophic question in my mind, that buckles at its restricted consumer context, but I'm bound to a conventional "yes" or "no."

    A a version of the Steve Jobs meme : "It's not the consumers' job to know what they need."

    I know what I want not what I need. Nothing really needs anything unless it is inseparable from want. I don't need to be alive but I want to be alive.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    "The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to write terrible jokes. "

    "Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of his own terrible jokes."

    "Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad humor.


    Almost Baruch Spinoza (tweaked parts in italics), famous Jewish joke critic and stone polisher.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    One of the definitions of humor:


    "comply with the wishes of (someone) in order to keep them content, however unreasonable such wishes might be."

    Philosophical Humor (collected by David Chalmers)
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Just ignore me.

    The demon Cantor and a polytheistic shaman, Quag, are having dinner. Cantor asks "Can every number count towards infinity?" The shaman says "No, but if they all set themselves up in a row, they could collaboratively count in any direction."
  • Russian Philosophy - How Would You Respond?
    Slavery is wrong. Is this statement true of false?

    Who do you need to convince otherwise and once they are convinced, will they demonstrate it by their actions?

    That there are no problems in the world, that nothing is broken, that you don't need to go anywhere or do anything, not even eat food, is a kind of horribly freeing or depressing untruthy truth.

    Must the truth bear any relation whatsoever to what is good, and if so, why? Is what is good for you good for me in a poker game?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Dennett'sho (Dawken'sho)

    You say potato, I say potato.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    What do you call an ensho that copies itself by a praxis?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Do you mean that I've ruined the thread because my jokes are actually funny? — T Clark

    Hey! Calm down, I'm joking.

    Your jokes were great. I only wish mine were as good as yours.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    I think we should blame T Clark for ruining this thread.

    Just remember I didn't do anything wrong. I'm totally innocent. You all participated against the wills of the better angles of your nature. T Clark should be banned not me.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    I hope you're thinking what I am thinking.

    Knock knock! — praxis

    Who's there?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    If someone knocks on a door and nobody's home can the knocker hear himself knocking?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    I challenge you to demonstrate the claim that my jokes don't make sense. I accept they aren't funny or don't make you laugh or are not jokes but not that they do not make sense.

    If something doesn't make sense then how can we sense it?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    A man walking next to the Bedlam and Son's Open Source Asylum for Cognitive Surfeit hears another man shout down to him from a top a wall.

    "Hey! Are there many of you in there?"

    The man shouts back:

    "No! I am one of a kind."
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Don't ruin my illusion. I was imagining they are deeply meaningful comments on the absurdity of existence. — T Clark

    You are continually trapped in a repurposing of my references Sir. I meant venereal diseases by "they" and "they" are not illusions, unless your ontological schema treats of phenomenal reality as an illusion.

    A strange proposition to be sure: venereal diseases are actually meaningful comments on the absurdity of existence.
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    So far, your jokes have left me scratching my head. — T Clark

    Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Itching of the head is a common symptom of a venereal disease. Is there any swelling or discharge? One too many times with Sophia, eh?

    They are pretty bad, I agree.
  • Colors for the Apollonian and Dionysian
    Wine and blood (redness), part of the Dionysian inventory, convey the violence of necessary facts of life, consuming what releases you momentarily from want, the spirit we can't stop.

    My current mythic play image is the blue tetrahedron which eats people in order to get work done, just like the hateful pressure washer that my boss makes me use. It eats up my patience. It is blood hungry, wants me to caress it for its evil (non) purposes. Men are bottles of wine to it. I feed it grapes as a means to someone elses end. Smash it to pieces I say.
  • How did languages develop gendered words?
    Also, why gender non-gendered objects anyways? That seems like an odd way to relate to the world. I don't even get why non-scientific societies would think in those terms. Language does not have to have gendered words, but some do, and it became the convention. So odd. — Schopenhauer1

    It's not odd at all. It's as odd as metaphor or analogy which becomes standardized (all too familiar).

    What is hot (trending) right now?

    Damn, you folks are embarrassingly brilliant (intelligent) and light on your feet (gracefully quick).

    The Mother is the ground from which men emerge.

    My father is my mother.

    Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a banana is just a banana.

    A duck's vagina is a twisted labyrinth of dead ends.

    Are all labyrinths then secretly contextualized by a duck's vagina? Who told me that a duck's vagina is like a labyrinth? Who told me what a labyrinth is like?

    Who or what is impregnating me with meanings?

    No thing is like anything else, except where we cherry pick our likenesses, for some aim. Language is full of historical accidents and arbitrary uses probably.

    We do what works. But does it work for you?

    Does the basket hold your berries?

    Does an Iphone hold, store or contain your pictures?
  • Philosophy Joke of the Day
    Werner Heisenberg was speeding in Death Valley when a car pulls up to match his velocity and rolls down a window. The driver yells "Excuse me sir, I seem to be moving. Also, do you know where I am going to stop?" Heisenberg says "How the hell can I predict where you are going to stop, asshole, what kind of question is that."

    Botlzmann's Dog probably killed Schrodinger's Cat but no one could be absolutely sure even after they opened the box which Billy had mischievously stuffed them into.
  • How did languages develop gendered words?
    The most intimate nouns are gendered. Man has a penis. Woman has a vagina. These things become analogical/metaphorical scheme by which we try to apprehend the world.

    Folks still gender objects in terms of stereotyped or personal associations.

    If we are sorting guns and flowers into gendered categories, where do we put them?

    Raw categorizing in terms of belonging to male or female is expected.