a thread for mundane ironists

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9781

[b]Steven Pinker

Chomsky’s writings are ‘classics’ in Mark Twain’s sense: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.[/b]

Like my writings here?

Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all.

No, really, think about that.

I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out.

Okay, let’s say it’s about sex and power.

The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, at least not if you want them to listen to you.

Let’s make that the default here, okay? :laughing:

As technology accumulates and people in more parts of the planet become interdependent, the hatred between them tends to decrease, for the simple reason that you can’t kill someone and trade with him too.

Define “tend”?

The first step toward wisdom is the realization that the laws of the universe don’t care about you.

I’ll leave his second step out.

9782

[b]Existential Comics

I’ve been studying philosophy for over 15 years now, and I still have yet to hear a single good justification for posting.[/b]

Here of course justifications are completely moot.

Crypto appeals to libertarians because investing in it has the potential to fulfill the ultimate libertarian dream: becoming a wealthy parasite on society without even the pretense of having contributed anything useful to the world.

Crypto? Should I know about this?

Yes, I want to de-fund the police.
No, that doesn’t mean I want to get rid of police departments entirely. I just want them to work more like fire departments.

Let’s discuss.

Anyone who challenges their opponents to a debate rather than invites them for a discussion is not interested in the truth.

Yo, ecmandu!

I genuinely hope that computers are conscious, because that leaves open some possibility that printers have the capacity to suffer.

Nothing worth printing here of course.

What’s weird to me about the coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse is that people often like to bring up theoreticals like “what if he was a left wing protestor?”

Yeah, what about that, Mr. Pinhead?

9783

[b]Yuval Noah Harari

Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures.[/b]

See, I told you.

We should never underestimate human stupidity.

See, I told you.

[b]When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. ‘Science cannot explain the Big Bang,’ they exclaim, ‘so that must be God’s doing.’ Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of ‘God’ to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces. ‘We do not understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.’ Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behaviour.[When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. ‘Science cannot explain the Big Bang,’ they exclaim, ‘so that must be God’s doing.’ Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of ‘God’ to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces. ‘We do not understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.’ Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behaviour.

Back to this, perhaps: “We should never underestimate human stupidity.”

Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.

That and the stories crammed in their heads by others.

In essence, terrorism is a show. Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our imagination and makes us feel as if we are sliding back into medieval chaos. Consequently states often feel obliged to react to the theatre of terrorism with a show of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves.

I know, I know: What if that’s true?!

Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products - contributing to economic growth twice over.

Of course he’s only paraphrasing Adam Smith.

9784

[b]Doth

Take a moment to apologize to your body for your brain’s bullshit.[/b]

A moment? It could take hours.
Right, Mr. Pinhead?

Let an ancient demon take over your anxiety for a while, you’ve earned it.

Sure, ancient demons, come on in.

Embracing my demons. French kissing them. Might fuck them.

Stay tuned, I’m sure.

Sure sex is cool, but have you ever pulled an old book off a bookcase, opened a secret door & were never seen again

Yes. But only twice.

The meaning of life is probably something fucking stupid

After all, wouldn’t it almost have to be?

Being alive is a lot, didn’t ask for this.

What a coincidence. Me neither.

9785

[b]Emile M. Cioran

I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me.[/b]

You tell me: it’s so deep it’s meaningless?

Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.

On the other hand, this might make no sense to you.

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

It was a normal day…

I would like to explode, flow, crumble into dust, and my disintegration would be my masterpiece.

It was a normal day…

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

Well, obviously.

When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.

Next up: those that don’t.

9786

[b]God

I could exist if I wanted to.[/b]

Let’s just hope He never does.

I am always here for you.
Too bad you’re there.

Thank goodness for death then.

Today’s sermon will be “How Saying You Believe in Jesus Lets You Get Away with All Kinds of Shit”.

Here for example you can be a pinhead.

Fuck about half of you.

You know, on any given day.

At this point the idea I would ever “bless America” is so absurd it’s funny.

Yo, Urwrong! :laughing:

I love you, but I’m not in love with you.

Gay or straight.

9787

[b]Dave Grohl

The human element of making music is what’s most important.[/b]

Not much that can’t be misconstrued to mean.

Never lose faith in real rock and roll music. Never lose faith in that. You might have to look a little harder, but it’s always going to be there.

Next up: real philosophy.

Just the other day someone threw a bra duct-taped to a tennis ball. I just stood there, playing guitar, thinking how this was totally premeditated. Some girl sat around inventing a way to get her bra onstage from 40 rows back.

Next up [of course]: her panties.
You know, if you’re a rock and roll star.

What we feel most comfortable doing is playing loud, screaming rock songs.

Unless of course you’re more comfortable committing suicide.
Or committing murder?

It’s not until recently that I could even imagine myself as an adult. But these kids today, they look at me like I’m Neil Young. Nirvana is the band their parents listen to.

Who do they look at Neil Young as then?

Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. If you really feel like that barrier is gone, you become Freddie Mercury.

So, who is the Freddie Mercury here?

9788

[b]tiny nietzsche

the ocean saw me naked[/b]

Just the Indian Ocean though.

it’s beginning to look a lot like nihilism

Or at least it should be.

I know you exist, but what am I?

Unfortunately, this is no longer the place to find out.

tell your mom I unblocked her

Or the equivalent of that here.

the screaming of the bees

Bumblebees to boot.

I made an nft. it’s a piece of toast. probably going to eat it

Start here? cnn.com/style/article/nft-w … index.html

9789

[b]Henri Cartier-Bresson

Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.[/b]

Or, here, when to click on “submit”.

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

Or, here, your first 43,000 posts?

Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.

So?

Life is once. Forever.

Next up: Not forever.

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

Or, sure, utter insignificance.

Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.

Let’s try that here.

9790

[b]so sad today

am i supposed to, like, do stuff[/b]

Yes, but, like, only until the day you die.

well well well if it isn’t excruciating self-doubt

The nerve of it!

i’m obsessed with sleeping

Mind if I join you?

my feelings are never not hurt

Go ahead, try to hurt mine.

if there’s one thing i dislike it’s the consequences of my actions

Indeed. Why should there be any consequences at all?

no i can’t just “believe in myself”

Imagine me trying that!!!

9791

[b]Charles Baudelaire

No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.[/b]

Mine here certainly did. And then some, Mr. Pinhead.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.

Or thereabouts.

It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.

Or thereabouts.

Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem.

Next up: the goal of philosophy.

I felt passing over me the wind of the wing of madness.

Would that I could be so lucky.

The beautiful is always bizarre.

Next up: what that makes the ugly.

9792

[b]sad socrates

Sadness is my final form[/b]

Well, not counting “new experiences, relationships or information and knowledge” of course.

I actually have no idea what I look like.

I have some idea myself.

Weird Twitter is dead, among other things.

Next up: weird ILP.

Life is so great until you have to live it.

If only starting at conception.

There is only everything and less.

More or less less as it were.

Make believe, not art.

Like there’s a difference.

9793

[b]Joe Abercrombie

An open mind is like to an open wound, growled Glokta. Vulnerable to poison.[/b]

There is that part.

‘Strange, isn’t it,’ mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. ‘Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you’re the most powerful man in the world. The next you can’t even breathe by yourself’.

Stranger for some than for others.

What do the dice say?
Dice say nothing. They are dice.
Why roll’em, then?
They are dice. What else would I do with them?

Not unlike flipping a coin.

A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.

Not counting Harry and Sally of course.

But you love to play the good man, don’t you? Do you know what’s worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he’s a hero. A man like that, there’s nothing he won’t do, and he’ll always find himself an excuse.

Sieg Heil.
You know, existentially.

People have often accused me of inconsistency but I feel that i have always, at any given junction, done the same thing. Exactly what I pleased.

You know, if, for you, that’s actually an option.

9794

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.” Baruch Spinoza[/b]

Does that sound like something he’d say?

“Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” Baruch Spinoza

Of course, he’s only paraphrasing me.

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” Charlotte Brontë

Of course, she’s only paraphrasing me.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Ray Bradbury

Unless you’re only burning the bad ones.

“Honest people don’t hide their deeds.” Emily Brontë

Well, these days they’d better learn to.

“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” Carl Jung

It’s always important to bring this one back around.

9795

[b]Thomas Ligotti

There is nothing like fear to complicate one’s consciousness, inducing previously unknown levels of reflection.[/b]

If not the utter lack of reflection altogether.

The attic is not haunting your head – your head is haunting the attic. Some heads are more haunted than others, whether they are haunted by ghosts or by gods or by creatures from outer space.

And then the spooky stuff that I suggest.

The major part of our species seems able to undergo any trauma without significantly re-examining its household mantras, including “everything happens for a reason,” “the show must go on,” “accept the things you cannot change,” and any other adage that gets people to keep their chins up.

Or sends it crashing to the floor.

…optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind…

Any bonehead optimists here?

We are only chance visitants to this jungle of blind mutations. The natural world existed when we did not, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. The supernatural crept into life only when the door of consciousness was opened in our heads. The moment we stepped through that door, we walked out on nature. Say what we will about it and deny it till we die–we are blighted by our knowing what is too much to know and too secret to tell one another if we are to stride along our streets, work at our jobs, and sleep in our beds. It is the knowledge of a race of beings that is only passing through this shoddy cosmos.

Let’s blame God, okay?

The finest people, as people go, cannot help but betray a fair portion of fear and insecurity, even full-blown panic.

I’m always doing my bit here.

9796

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.” Carl Jung[/b]

Yo, iambiguous!

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” Carl Jung

Either the world or, here, our very own Coalition of Truth.

“All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.” Felix Frankfurter

That and wealth and power.

“Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.” Willard Van Orman Quine

Objectively, for example.

“There are two days in the year that we cannot do anything, yesterday and tomorrow” Mahatma Gandhi

And you can take that to the grave.

“The reason I am a political radical is that I work on syntax. If I worked on semantics, I’d be a good Thatcherite.” Noam Chomsky

Hmm. Anyone here able to explain that?

9797

[b]Fernando Pessoa

Could it think, the heart would stop beating.[/b]

Next up: the penis.

Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.

Well, back when he was still around to have them anyway. But point taken.

To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves.

So far, I’ve lucked out there, he grimaced.

Ah, it’s my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!

And then one day it just stops. At least he hoped so.

The beauty of a naked body is felt only by the dressed races.

And even then only if they are blind.

The human soul is an abyss.

The other abyss let’s call it.

9798

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” Buddha[/b]

Let’s try to imagine his reaction to my take on that.

“Men are trapped in the inescapable net of ruin by their own lack of wisdom.” Aeschylus

Or bring ruin to others trapped in their own nets.

“Even the king in his riches does not escape death.” Aeschylus

On the other hand, let’s not forget the part before it.

“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Trust me: not always.

“Love is a kind of warfare.” Ovid

We’re fucked then?

“Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.” Thucydides

So, just out of curiosity, what story did you first hear?

9799

[b]Clarice Lispector

And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.[/b]

Well, I suspect that some poor people have known sadness.

And I want to be held down. I don’t know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.

Cue, among others, Erich Fromm.

And now – now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me? Don’t forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries.

I certainly fit in there somewhere. How about you?

Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.

Me, I’ll need some actual proof here.

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

Writing and reading here.

I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?

That’s what sells though.

9800

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.” Niccolò Machiavelli[/b]

Not many contexts that doesn’t include. Right, Mr. Pinhead?

“Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.” Niccolò Machiavelli

Wow, yet another opportunty to bring to your attention the “URwrongx1000 If You Are Not In My Coalition Of truth” dittoheads here.

“To determine the intelligence of a ruler, look at the men he puts around him.” Niccolò Machiavelli

Some call this the Deranged Trump Syndrome. Including, for example, me.

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” Albert Camus

Yo, Mr. Chickenshit! What’s yours?

“Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Said Adolph of the Jews. You know, among others.

“Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future.” Sophocles.

Anyone here that describes? In, for example, spades.