a thread for mundane ironists

[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?

[b]tiny nietzsche

a group of postmodernists is called an unsure[/b]

Nope, not in dictionary yet.

a group of goths is called a funeral

For the day as it were.

nihilism gives me a rash

What does it give you?

This feels like a good time to fake my own death

Besides, he thought, who would know?

One nice thing about being numb is I can’t tell if it’s me

Nope, never been that numb.

a deadly flu virus would really round out this year

Hard to trump that, right?

[b]André Gide

No encounter occured that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a little Homer I had not opened since leaving Marseilles, reread three lines of the Odyssey, learned them by heart; then, finding sufficient sustenance in their rhythm and reveling in them at leisure, I closed the book and remained, trembling, more alive than I had thought possible, my mind numb with happiness.[/b]

He wondered: does this ever actually happen?

There’s no better cure for the fear of taking after one’s father, than not to know who he is.

Of course some do but still don’t.

The things one feels are different about oneself are the things that are rare, that give each person their value - and these are the things they try to repress. They imitate and make out they love life!

Though, sure, we’re always the ones who decide who they are.

Long only for what you have.

That’ll never catch on.

Existing is occupation enough.

Right, like that and only that will pay the bills.

…Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap…

Oh, and don’t ever expect to get used to it.

[b]Roland Barthes

In wrestling, nothing exists unless it exists totally, there is no symbol, no allusion, everything is given exhaustively; leaving nothing in shadow, the gesture severs every parasitical meaning and ceremonially presents the public with a pure and full signification, three dimensional, like Nature. Such emphasis is nothing but the popular and ancestral image of the perfect intelligibility of reality. What is enacted by wrestling, then, is an ideal intelligence of things, a euphoria of humanity, raised for a while out of the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and installed in a panoramic vision of a univocal Nature, in which signs finally correspond to causes without obstacle, without evasion, and without contradiction.[/b]

Does Vince McMahon know that?

Above all, do not attempt to be exhaustive.

No, above all, do not let others be.

Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.

In other words, just dump them somewhere.

Grim evening at Gabès (windy, black clouds, hideous bungalows, “folklore” performance in the Hotel Chems bar): I can no longer take refuge in my thoughts: neither in Paris nor traveling. No escape.

It works much the same way in Baltimore too.

Gradually I abandon the conversation (suffering because the others might suppose I am doing so for reasons of contempt.) FMB (supported by Youssef) embodies a strong (and ingenious) system of values, codes, seductions, styles; but even as the system gains in consistency, I feel excluded from it. And little by little I cease struggling, I withdraw, without concern for how I appear to the others. Thus it begins by an initially slight disaffection for sociability which becomes quite radical. As it develops, it gradually combines with a nostalgia for what remains living for me: maman. And ultimately I fall into an abyss of suffering.

Not many languages this can’t be translated into.

I waver—in the dark—between the observation…that I’m unhappy only by moments, by jerks and surges, sporadically, even if such spasms are close together—and the conviction that deep down, in actual fact, I am continually, all the time, unhappy since maman’s death.

Death’ll do that, no doubt about it.

[b]Charles Seife

With news and data that is tailored to our prejudices, we deprive ourselves of true information. We wind up wallowing in our own false ideas, reflected back at us by the media. The news is ceasing to be a window unto the world; it is becoming a mirror that allows us to gaze only upon our own beliefs.[/b]

Ah, the Fox News Syndrome. Just ask Rachel Maddow.

A bad idea, a wrong piece of information, a digital brain-altering virus can spread at the speed of light through the internet and quickly find a home among a dispersed but digitally interconnected group of true believers. This group acts as a reservoir for the bad idea, allowing it to gather strength and reinfect people; as the group grows, the belief, no matter how crazy, becomes more and more solidly established among the faithful.

Ah, the Know Thyself Syndrome. Just ask iambiguous.

Skinnerian conditioning, crossed with social pressure, is now an ever-present invisibly hand that tries to manipulate all of your actions on the internet. This is the hand that is making you act against your own self-interest. Once you recognize it, you see it everywhere, hovering over you, trying to make you click your mouse or press buttons on your smartphone, giving up your valuable time, money, or information in return for little or nothing at all.

Too cynical? Or not cynical enough?

The justice system can’t be totally free of lies and distortion; after all, courts are chock-full of lawyers.

The Supremes for example.

As mathematicians were uncovering the connection between zero and infinity, physicists began to encounter zeros in the natural world; zero crossed over from mathematics to physics. In thermodynamics a zero became an uncrossable barrier: the coldest temperature possible. In Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a zero became a black hole, a monstrous star that swallows entire suns. In quantum mechanics, a zero is responsible for a bizarre source of energy-infinite and ubiquitous, present even in the deepest vacuum-and a phantom force exerted by nothing at all.

Zero in philosophy. Any thoughts?

Digital information has an unbelievably high R0 [basic reproductive rate], and this means that it’s hard to stop once it emerges. It spreads from person to person - even those at a great distance - incredibly quickly, thanks to its high transmissibility and the high interconnectedness of digital society. Once it escapes into the wild, it’s all but impossible to stop its spread. This is wonderful, so long as the information is correct and useful. But if it’s wrong, if it alters our brains for the worse, if it makes us make mistakes and think incorrect things, it’s a scourge.

Not to worry. He means them not us.

[b]so sad today

need a new crush to distract me from the old crush that distracted me from death[/b]

I’ll volunteer.

if you won’t reject me i’ll do it for you

Not to mention the other way around.

anxiety comes to those who wait

Count on it.

my most endearing quality is not talking to anyone

Give or take 27,500 tweets.

i’m aware of what i’m doing but not enough to stop

Let’s all work together to change that.

confusing sexual attraction with love and it’s fine

Not counting the baby of course.

[b]Jeanette Winterson

Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone.[/b]

Among other things, fuck that.

Physics, mathematics, music, painting, my politics, my love for you, my work, the star-dust of my body, the spirit that impels it, clocks diurnal, time perpetual, the roll, rough, tender, swamping, liberating, breathing, moving, thinking nature, human nature and the cosmos are patterned together.

Or, sure, not.

Her suffering was her armour. Gradually it became her skin. Then she could not take it off.

How sick is that?

Whelks are strange and comforting.
They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly.
But they have a strong sense of personal dignity.
Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar there is something noble about a whelk.
Which cannot be said for everybody.

Do they know that?

When you are born–what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own–stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalization have to say.

Just short of racism one hopes. Or some do.

The important things happen by chance. Only the rest gets planned.

In other words, just vague enough to be plausible.

[b]Existential Comics

When the news trots out a dude to explain why having huge corporations pay less is actually good – remember, the news IS a huge corporation.[/b]

And haven’t I been pointing this out now for years?

Sorry I’m late. I was causally predetermined to be, by a prior chain of events leading back to the big bang.

The all-pupose excuse!

It’s counter intuitive, but it’s important to remember that important people aren’t actually more important than unimportant people.

Tell that to their bankers.

Philosophy is asking “why” until you can’t answer anymore, and then asking “why not?”

Either way the answer is “because”.

The way I figure it, you’ve only got one life, so you might as well be as melodramatic as possible.

In other words, not just the Kids.

Business proposal: we will walk hand in hand in solidarity—for the cause of humanity, and wash away oppression from the Earth.

You know, after Trump drains the swamp.

[b]Mary Roach

The V-2’s directional system was notoriously erratic. In May 1947, a V-2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles. The Mexican government’s response to the American bombing was admirably laid back. General Enrique Diaz Gonzales and Consul General Raul Michel met with United States officials, who issued apologies and an invitation to come to “the next rocket shoot” at White Sands. The Mexican citizenry was similarly nonchalant. “Bomb Blast Fails to Halt Spring Fiesta,” said the El Paso Times headline, noting that “many thought the explosion was a cannon fired for the opening of the fiesta.[/b]

Actually, I didn’t know that.

The M16 has a scope with a small red arrow in the center of the sight. You align the arrow with what or (jeez) whom you wish to shoot and squeeze the trigger. Both “squeeze” and “pull” are exaggerations of the motion applied to this trigger. It’s a trivial, tiny movement, the twitch of a dreaming child. So quick and so effortless is it that it’s hard for me to associate it with any but the most inconsequential of acts. Flipping a page. Typing an M. Scratching an itch. Ending a life wants a little more muscle.

I was an expert marksman with my own M16. It’s right there on my DD 214.

It tastes like water spiked with strange.

Like Squirt for example.

Kinsey wanted Dellenback to film his own staff. There are three ways to read that sentence, all of them true.

Two ways, sure. But what’s the third?

Sometimes courage is nothing more than a willingness to think differently than those around you. In a culture of conformity, that’s braver than it sounds.

She means me of course. Groots and all.

US government button specifications run to twenty-two pages. This fact on its own yields a sense of what it is like to design garments for the Army.

Not counting the table of contents or the index.

[b]Alan Guth

The Big Bang theory says nothing about what banged, why it banged, or what happened before it banged.[/b]

Let alone the banging of dasein.

It is said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch.

You know, for 70 odd years.

It turns out that the energy of a gravitational field—any gravitational field—is negative. During inflation, as the universe gets bigger and bigger and more and more matter is created, the total energy of matter goes upward by an enormous amount. Meanwhile, however, the energy of gravity becomes more and more negative. The negative gravitational energy cancels the energy in matter, so the total energy of the system remains whatever it was when inflation started—presumably something very small. …This capability for producing matter in the universe is one crucial difference between the inflationary model and the previous model.

Of course that’s just common sense.

We should not act like we know that the universe began with the Big Bang…we’ll see that there are strong suggestions that the Big Bang was perhaps not really the beginning of existence, but really just the beginning of our local universe, often called a pocket universe.

I know: What was God thinking?!

The conventional Big Bang theory says nothing about where all the matter came from. The theory really assumes that for every particle that we see in the universe today, there was, at the very beginning, at least some precursor particle, if not the same particle, with no explanation of where all those particles came from.

Obviously: the Christian God.

A very plausible choice for when inflation might have happened would be when the energy scales of the universe were at the scale of grand unified theories…which unify the weak, strong and electromagnetic interactions into a single unified interaction. We’re talking about energies which are about 1016 times the equivalent energy of a proton mass. The initial patch would only have to be the ridiculously small size of about 10-28 cm across to be able to lead ultimately to the creation of everything that we see on the vast scale of which we see it.

Let’s get out our slide rules.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.” Epictetus[/b]

It is best perhaps not to dwell on this too long.

“Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything” Immanuel Kant

It is best perhaps not to dwell on this too long.

“You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am.” Immanuel Kant

Categorically and imperatively as it were.

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Napoléon Bonaparte

At the time, his in particular.

“Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?” Diogenes of Sinope

Right up to the point that you get banned.

“Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.” Plutarch.

Ought Aristotle to then be ashamed?

[b]Ernesto Che Guevara

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.[/b]

Not nearly as many around like that today.

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.

Nope, I haven’t found that yet.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.

Hate, on the other hand, is right up there. Or it certainly was for me.
Back then in other words.

Be realistic, demand the impossible!

Come on, how reasonable is that? But point taken.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

But only if you stick around to hear it.

And then many things became very clear…we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.

No, really, that was once thought to be true.

[b]Ernest Hemingway

There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing![/b]

You rewrite mine, I’ll rewrite yours.

Every true story ends in death.

If it ends at all.

The priest was good but dull. The officers were not good but dull. The King was good but dull. The wine was bad but not dull.

Of course that’s only natural.

The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish

Unless, of course, there’s a full moon.

I don’t know, I said. There isn’t always an explanation for everything.
Oh, isn’t there? I was brought up to think there was.
That’s awfully nice.

Comforting, he means.

He could beat anything, he thought, because no thing could hurt him if he did not care.

Let’s just say this is easier said than done.

[b]Neil Gaiman

I’m going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.[/b]

Of course that might not work.

I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.

Not that it makes any difference to gravity.

Shadow had heard too many people telling each other not to repress their feelings, to let their emotions out, let the pain go. Shadow thought there was a lot to be said for bottling up emotions. If you did it long enough and deep enough, he suspected, pretty soon you wouldn’t feel anything at all.

Here you might as well just flip a coin.

Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?

And not just the ones in Hollywood.

I really don’t know what “I love you” means.
I think it means "Don’t leave me here alone.”

And that certainly comes close enough for some.

Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.

That’s obvious isn’t it? Though, sure, maybe not.

[b]Jonathan Safran Foer

I trust that you have a good purpose for your ignorance.[/b]

No, I don’t trust that you do at all.

There’s nothing that could convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.

Let’s call this, among other things, human nature. Though, sure, check with Satyr first.

I did not feel that he owed it to me. And I did not feel like I owed it to him. We owed it to each other, which is something different.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But point taken.

She always saw through him, as if he were just another window.

And then, out of the blue [sort of], he was banned.

Rabbi, I feel no despair anymore. For seventy years I had only nightmares, but I have no nightmares anymore. I feel only gratitude for my life, for every moment I lived. Not only the good moments. I feel gratitude for every moment of my life. I have seen so many miracles.

In other words, blah, blah, blah. Though not for him of course.

There was nothing, which would have been unfortunate, unless nothing was a clue. Was nothing a clue?

Maybe. But it’s something that’s for sure.

[b]Terry Pratchett

It was sad, like those businessmen who came to work in serious clothes but wore colorful ties in a mad, desperate attempt to show there was a free spirit in there somewhere.[/b]

Somewhere between sad and pathetic perhaps. We’ll, until we hear their side.

Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They’d been brought up to it, and weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights. And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else.

Somewhere between sad and pathetic perhaps. We’ll, until we hear their side.

Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think.

Out loud for example.

My name is immaterial, she said.
That’s a pretty name, said Rincewind.

Hmm, now that you mention it…

Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.

Someone’s truth anyway.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

You know, after you teach him how to fish.

[b]Nein

Sorry, time. I need some space.[/b]

How about for all of eternity?

It’s not you. It’s your ruthless critique of all that exists.

No, it’s that too.

Your rage, sir. Please: not against the machine.

May I suggest Trumpworld?

It’s not that after reading Moby Dick you want to die. Or are ready to die. But when the time comes, maybe you’re more ready to want to die.

Anyone here able to explain why?

Sorry, we’re out of context. But perhaps I could interest you in a fundamental misunderstanding.

In other words, before one of us gets banned.

A beautiful day to change color. Fall gently to the ground. And make a charming little spectacle of your decay.

Not only that but it’s nature’s way.

[b]C.G. Jung

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.[/b]

I like that. And god knows it is appropriate here.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.

I know: define “addiction”.

As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

Well, not as a child perhaps, but I am more than making up for it now.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

Let me guess: You know what that means.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Let me guess: You know what that means.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

So, did he?

[b]Sad Socrates

No one will ever love me as much as I hate myself.[/b]

Let’s confirm that.

If it weren’t for bad ideas, how would we suffer?

Or, as we say here: “I suffer therefore I am”.

I’d rather hoot with the owls than endure the programs of existence humanity has constructed to oppress us.

I guess that’s true.

I would hate to be a star, imagine dying for millions of years.

On the other hand, do they know that?

I don’t care about who I am.

Or, rather, just enough to point it out.

Don’t worry. Don’t be happy.

How’s that working out for you?

[b]Joseph Heller

Oh, I´m not complaining. I know there´s a war on. I know a lot of people are going to have to suffer for us to win it. But why must I be one of them?[/b]

For the Vietnam war, you have to double it. At least.

I really do admire you a bit. You’re an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I’m an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I’m in an ideal position to appreciate it.

The new yin and yang.

The night was full of horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts…

Of course he’s just paraphrasing the Bible.

[b]What the hell are you getting so upset about? he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. I thought you didn’t believe in God.

I don’t, she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.[/b]

Let’s file this one under, “covering all the bases”.

He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom.

You know, as a last resort.

Maybe I am senile already and people are too kind to tell me…Maybe people have told me, and I’m too senile to remember.

That does narrow it down.