a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Malcolm Gladwell

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.[/b]

Okay, okay, we won’t go there.

Criticism is a privilege that you earn — it shouldn’t be your opening move in an interaction.

What crap, right, Mr. Objectivist?

People are ruined by challenged economic lives. But they are ruined by wealth as well because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-worth.

Perhaps, but I’m sure the wealthy will take their chances.

We have trouble estimating dramatic, exponential change. We cannot conceive that a piece of paper folded over 50 times could reach the sun. There are abrupt limits to the number of cognitive categories we can make and the number of people we can truly love and the number of acquaintances we can truly know. We throw up our hands at a problem phrased in an abstract way, but have no difficulty at all solving the same problem rephrased as a social dilemma. All of these things are expressions of the peculiarities of the human mind and heart, a refutation of the notion that the way we function and communicate and process information is straightforward and transparent. It is not. It is messy and opaque.

Or something like that.

Imagine that you are a doctor and you suddenly learn that you’ll see twenty patients on a Friday afternoon instead of twenty-five, while getting paid the same. Would you respond by spending more time with each patient? Or would you simply leave at six-thirty instead of seven-thirty and have dinner with your kids?

So, is this a “dumb question” or not?

…the futility of something is not always (in love and in politics) a sufficient argument against it.

Let’s consider some actual examples.

[b]André Gide

The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, “seeing that his work was good”.[/b]

Well, He is mysterious, right?

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

And fuck you if you don’t like it.
Where applicable of course.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.

You know, if you believe in that sort of thing.

The very things that separated me and distinguished me from other people were what mattered; the very things no one else would or could say, these were the things I had to say.

The perfect “general description” as it were.

The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death’s reach.

Sure, this works for some.

I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan’t be able to prevent.

Just don’t let them know that.

[b]so sad today

people just want you to be ok so you will shut the fuck up[/b]

I know that I do.

i’m an organ donor and it might be time

Go for it.

university of insomnia

Full scholarship.

[b]my daily affirmations:

  1. uh oh
  2. oh shit
  3. oh fuck
  4. hell no[/b]

[i]Or, on some days:

  1. uh oh!!
  2. oh shit!!
  3. oh fuck!!
  4. hell no!![/i]

by happy i mean moderately depressed

Doesn’t everyone?

breaking news: no one really knows why we exist

Let alone why we ought to.

[b]Roland Barthes

I have a disease; I see language.[/b]

If only all the way to the grave. Unless, of course, there’s more.

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

And then the part [here] where words become swords.

The Eiffel Tower is not a usual spectacle; to enter the Tower, to scale it, to run around its courses, is, in a manner both more elementary and more profound, to accede to a view and to explore the interior of an object (though an openwork one), to transform the touristic rite into and adventure of sight and of the intelligence.

Or just take a selfie in front of it.

It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture.

Recognizing of course that it works much the same the other way around.

The author enters into his own death, writing begins.

Unless perhaps you are doing it wrong.

My claim is to live to the full contradiction of my time.

Right, like that actually matters to anyone.

[b]Charles Seife

Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin and
yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling. The biggest questions in science
and religion are about nothingness and eternity, the void and the infinite, zero and
infinity. The clashes over zero were the battles that shook the foundations of philosophy,
of science, of mathematics, and of religion. Underneath every revolution lay a
zero – and an infinity.[/b]

There is zero chance that anyone really understands this more than everyone else.

If you want to get people to believe something really, really stupid, just stick a number on it.

For example, this thread has 267,751 views. And, over at KT, the Chimp Talk thread has 23,884 views.

We tend to shy away from data that challenges our assumptions, that erodes our preconceptions. Getting rid of our wrong ideas is a painful and difficult process, yet it’s that very process that makes data truly useful. A fact becomes information when it challenges our assumptions. These challenges are the raw material that forces our ideas to evolve, our tastes to change, our minds to grow.

Not their data though.

[b]There are many ways to generate numerical falsehoods from data, many ways to create proofiness from even valid meaurements. Causuistry distorts the relationships between two sets of numbers. Randumbness creates patterns where none are to be found. Regression to the moon disguises nonsense in mathematical-looking lines or equations or formulae, making even the silliest ideas seem respectable. Such as the one described by this formula: Callipygianness=(S+C)x(B+F)/T-V)
Where S is shape, C is circularity, B is bounciness, F ir firmness, T is texture, and V is waist-to-hip ratio. This formula was devised by a team of academic psychologists after many hours of serious research into the female derriere. Yes, indeed. This is supposed to be the formula for the perfect butt.

It fact, it’s merely a formula for a perfect ass.[/b]

Anyone know the formula for the perfect penis?

See appendix A for a proof that Winston Churchill was a carrot.

Nope, didn’t feel it was necessary.

The Mayan system made more sense than the Western system does. Since the Western calendar was created at a time when there was no zero, we never see a day zero, or a year zero. This apparently insignificant omission caused a great deal of trouble; it kindled the controversy over the start of the millenium. The Mayans would never have argued about whether 2000 or 2001 was the first year in the twenty-first century. But it was not the Mayans who formed our calendar; it was the Egyptians and, later, the Romans. For this reason, we are stuck with a troublesome, zero-free calendar.

Wow, it’s a miracle we’re still around at all.

[b]Mary Roach

Gravity is why there are suns and planets in the first place. It is practically God.[/b]

Not that it explains much.

Please beware, came his reply, There are a lot of people who believe that just because we don’t have an explanation for something, it’s quantum mechanics.

And that’s practically God.

I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to be clear and sweet. More in the way of Karo syrup. The urine has been desalinated by osmotic pressure. Basically it swapped molecules with a concentrated sugar solution. Urine is a salty substance, and if you were to drink it in an effort to rehydrate yourself, it would have the opposite effect. But once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter, urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that’s not accurate. People object. They object a lot.

So, is there a rendition of this for shit?

I like the term “decedent.” It’s as though the man weren’t dead, but merely involved in some sort of protracted legal dispute.

With the Devil maybe.

For evident reasons, mortuary science is awash with euphemisms. “Don’t say stiff, corpse, cadaver,” scolds The Principles and Practice of Embalming. "Say decedent, remains or Mr. Blank. Don’t say ‘keep.’ Say ‘maintain preservation.’…"Wrinkles are “acquired facial markings.” Decomposed brain that filters down through a damaged skull and bubbles out the nose is "frothy purge.”

Frothy purge? They can’t do better than that?

Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male.

Sounds like something Satyr might make use of.

[b]God

I’m God, I know all your thoughts and prayers, and pretty much none of them are with Somalia.[/b]

Go ahead, Google it.

I’ve run out of special places in hell.

Does Satan know that?

This is all really happening, by the way.

With or without Him no doubt.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, and here we are.

Amen?

Just because a lot of people on the other side are total assholes doesn’t mean a lot of people on your side aren’t also total assholes.

That settles it then.

Most terrorists are white. Me, for example.

If only back in His fire and brimstone days.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

The woman tried to teach Winnet her language, and Winnet learned the words but not the language.[/b]

We know what that means.

Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope in the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun.

So they keep telling me.

I was in those days all about the ‘fuck you’. Fuck you for not recognising how great I am.

So, how great were you?

Every second the Universe divides into possibilities and most of those possibilities never happen. It is not a uni-verse — there is more than one reading. The story won’t stop, can’t stop, it goes on telling itself, waiting for an intervention that changes what will happen next.
Love is an intervention.

Autonomically as it were.

In the modern world there was so much safety that safety had become the chief source of danger.

We’ll need a few examples of course.

Book collecting is an obsession, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.

In other words, there’s gene for it.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

A Schopenhauer t-shirt sends a message that
a) life is pure suffering
b) time is a tyrant with a whip
c) they were out of Kierkegaard shirts[/b]

C right?

Lenin: What is to be done?
Sartre: Nothing
Camus: Less than nothing
Schopenhauer: Infinitely less than nothing
Beckett: You naive optimists!

I wonder what they’re all doing now?

[b]Monday To-Do List

  1. Pretend that the radical contingency of existence has not left me in the grips of abject terror and despair
  2. Buy milk[/b]

Or, sure, put it all off until Tuesday.

Philosophy 101: Nietzsche explained everything
Philosophy 201: Derrida explained everything
Philosophy 301: Wikipedia explains everything

Philosophy 401: Know Thyself explains everything to ILP.

Your philosopher name is your name - your name + Spinoza.

He means + Nietzsche of course.

Philosophical Growth
18: I’m the next Nietzsche!
24: I’m the next Deleuze!
30: I’m next in line for the Taylor Swift tickets!

Let’s debunk this.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

Last week he tried to commit suicide, one waiter said.
Why?
He was in despair.
What about?
Nothing.
How do you know it was nothing.
He has plenty of money.[/b]

There are other reasons though.

For one person who likes Spain there are a dozen who prefer books on her.

Or is that as it should be?

It’s this way, see—when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn’t get any; then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer’s any good, he doesn’t get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.

Fortunately, I was never a good writer myself. Perhaps even unfortunately.

Creation’s probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.

Indeed. But you can’t help but wonder how the Lord might respond.

Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I’ll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate.

Just short of actually beaming Him.

Everything kills everything else in some way.

Or another.

[b]Darren Aronofsky

As filmmakers, we can show where a person’s mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it. [/b]

Pi for example.

I couldn’t sleep one night and I was sitting in my office and I realized that I was an independent filmmaker.

This might even be a true story.

I’m Godless. I’ve had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking.

Our God then being philosophy. Well, the best of us.

I think video games and that stuff should be as violent as possible, but age-appropriate. It should be realistic. When it’s not realistic you run into kids running around shooting people and not realizing the consequences.

Of course it could backfire.

For too long we have been taking, and the Earth has been giving. But that free-for-all, that all-you-can-eat buffet, it’s over. The salad bar is closed.

And, by the turn 22nd century, we’ll know for sure.

At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.

And then some: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darren_Ar … ture_films

[b]Neil Gaiman

Are all people like this?
Like what?
So much bigger on the inside. [/b]

Surely, she means smaller. Or I surely would.

Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they’re scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too.

But not you, right?

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

The real world. It’s true. It’ll do that.

I’m not blessed, or merciful. I’m just me. I’ve got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we’re talking, I’m there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I’m in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I’m there for all of them.

And he means it.

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

On the other hand, not much has not been said.

[b]Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it’s a bad thing. As if “escapist” fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.

If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn’t you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.

As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.[/b]

Let’s just say that, as with most things of this sort, you can take it too far.

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

Once upon a time, USDA inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about thirty years ago, the poultry industry convinced the USDA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a “cosmetic blemish.”.[/b]

I smell crony capitalism, don’t you?

It’s true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do?

It does though, doesn’t it?

I decided then and there never to become someone who told jokes when explanations were impossible.

What the hell does that even mean?

Someone needed to invent a way to be close to people without having to see them, or talk to them on the phone, or write (or read) letters, or e-mails, or texts.

Any particular reason why?

I couldn’t explain my need to myself, and that’s why it was such a beautiful need.

Either that or terrifying.

There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists.

Yep, I think he nailed it.

[b]Terry Pratchett

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.[/b]

Still, I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest the possibility it is a complex intetwining of both.

The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about “a handsome prince”… was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for “a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long”… well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told…

Cue, among others, the media industrial complex.

I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.

That can’t be good.

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as “Is this the laundry?” “How do you spell surreptitious?” and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.”

You know, if there are any librarians left.

Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.

See if you can think that through.

…and the funny thing was that people who weren’t entirely certain they were right always argued much louder than other people, as if the main person they were trying to convince were themselves.

Of course sometimes it’s not really funny at all.

[b]C.G. Jung

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.[/b]

And then [as often as not] one is the winner, one is the loser.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Or not.

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

Right, like the two have nothing in common.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

If you think this may well be bullshit, honk three times.

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

Go ahead, tell me that this isn’t true.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Or, rather, you go to shrinks and let them do it.

[b]Joseph Heller

They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady.[/b]

Still, she either takes you with her or she doesn’t.

The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him. They hurled lights in his eyes to see if he could see, rammed needles into nerves to hear if he could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pendantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.

Nothing at all like Obamacare. Let alone the shit from Trump.

But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.

To the best of his knowledge. That’s the rub, isn’t it?

He made so many people uneasy. Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything.

Here, that might be you.

People have a right to do anything that’s not forbidden by law, and there’s no law against lying to you.

Unless of course you are testifying under oath. To, among others, Robert Mueller.

Yossarian - the very sight of the name made Colonel Cathcart shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word “subversive” itself. It was like “seditious” and “insidious” too, and like “socialist,” “suspicious,” “fascist” and “Communist.” It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, a name that just did not inspire confidence.

So, how many subversive esses in your name?

[b]Steven D. Levitt

When Al Gore urges the citizenry to sacrifice their plastic shopping bags, their air-conditioning, their extraneous travel, the agnostics grumble that human activity accounts for just 2 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, with the remainder generated by natural processes like plant decay.[/b]

Let’s file this one [here] under, “fucking liberals!”

So it may be that going to the hospital slightly increases your odds of surviving if you’ve got a serious problem but increases your odds of dying if you don’t. Such are the vagaries of life.

That and the politics of health care.

The data don’t lie: a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one.

If not both.

The gulf between the information we proclaim & the information we know to be true is vast. In other words: we say one thing & do another.

On the other hand, that’s every American’s right.

Most people are too busy to rethink the way they think—or to even spend much time thinking at all.

On the other hand, that’s every American’s right.

Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about.

Starting with yourself perhaps.

[b]Existential Comics

I don’t get people who aren’t interested in philosophy. You are just gonna live life without knowing about synthetic a priori knowledge?![/b]

Hell, we don’t even discuss that [much] here.

The Ancient Greeks had the right idea. One outfit and one haircut for like 600 years straight: Togas. Bangs. Beards.

Let’s revive it!

Raccoons are my favorite animal. I can’t say I 100% trust them, but I’ve been lucky enough so far to not be in a position where I have to.

It doesn’t get better than that, does it?

Question: what is the meaning of life?
Answer: a malformed question.

Works for me.

Despair in the year:
400: I have lost my honor
800: God has forsaken me
1600: there is no God
2017: I forgot to charge my phone last night

And, no, you can’t borrow mine.

Friedrich Nietzsche seems like the kind of guy who would quote himself in daily conversation.

Indeed, and deservedly so.

[b]Stephanie Danler

You’re all terrified of young people. We remind you of what it was like to have ideals, faith, freedom. We remind you of the losses you’ve taken as you’ve grown cynical, numb, disenchanted, compromising the life you imagined.[/b]

We meaning me in particular.

That was the morning I committed the first sin of love, which was to confuse beauty and a good sound track with knowledge.

That’ll do it.

You knew what was playing at Film Forum, and you corrected anyone who lumped Godard and Truffaut together.

Me? I just know what I like.

It was Simone who used to say, on her better days, “Don’t worry, little one, none of this will leave a scratch”.

Of course at the time it’s a cut all the way down to the bone.

No, cool is fine, he said. Yes, it’s a cool place. It was much cooler seven years ago, and it was actually cool ten years ago, before I even got to the city. You see, what those kids over there"—he pointed at the empty booth—"don’t realize is that cool is always past tense. The people who lived it, who set the standards they emulate, there was no cool for them. There was just the present tense: there were bills, friendships, messy fucking, fucking boredom, a million trite decisions on how to pass the time. Self-awareness destroys it. You call something cool and you brand it. Then—poof—it’s gone.

Cool? I’ve always hated – loathed – that word myself. But point taken.

It’s an epidemic with women your age. A gross disparity between the way that they speak and the quality of thoughts that they’re having about the world.

Worse still: men of your age.

[b]Malcolm Gladwell

Testers for 7-Up consistently found consumers would report more lemon flavor in their product if they added 15% more yellow coloring to the package.[/b]

You’re shocked, aren’t you?

It is a strange thing, isn’t it, to have an educational philosophy that thinks of the other students in the classroom with your child as competitors for the attention of the teacher and not allies in the adventure of learning?

Cue Boris and Peggy. Among others.

What Hartshorne and May concluded, then, is that something like honesty isn’t a fundamental trait, or what they called a “unified” trait. A trait like honesty, they concluded, is considerably influenced by the situation.

In particular when money is involved.

A vervet, in other words, is very good at processing certain kinds of vervetish information, but not so good at processing other kinds of information.

Of course lots of others species are like that too. If not all of them.

Gifted children and child prodigies seem most likely to emerge in highly supportive family conditions. In contrast, geniuses have a perverse tendency of growing up in more adverse conditions.

Let’s pin this down: genes or memes?

In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.

Let’s pin this down: genes or memes?