a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Werner Twertzog

Abraham Lincoln wrestled with depression, but that did not stop him from committing the United States to landing a man on the moon and bringing him safely back to earth.[/b]

You know, in a parallel universe.

It is important to live alone, and go to therapy, until you recover your authentic self, which, as we all know, does not exist.

He got that from me. If it’s not the other way around.

The American $1.7T student debt bubble was the end in itself, all along. Higher education is an adjunct of global finance.

You don’t get this, do you?

So I was teaching George Plimpton how to direct Kinski, but we never got past the instructions in the use of firearms, amyl nitrate, and Hershey bars.

Can you say that?

Marvel Comics should pay reparations for the harm they have done to American cinema.

True, but there isn’t enough money in the world. And we’re still stuck with all the idiots that watch them.

You think many things, and most of them are wrong.

He means everyone of course.

[b]Ted Chiang

We like the idea that there’s always someone responsible for any given event, because it helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there’s someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone’s control.[/b]

Of course we know how far one can take this.

Their righteousness could not save them from the consequences of their deeds.

Hell, even you might learn this someday.

Beauty has undergone a similar process, thanks to advertisers. Evolution gave us a circuit that responds to good looks—call it the pleasure receptor for our visual cortex—and in our natural environment, it was useful to have. But take a person with one-in-a-million skin and bone structure, add professional makeup and retouching, and you’re no longer looking at beauty in its natural form. You’ve got pharmaceutical-grade beauty, the cocaine of good looks.

Fine, but I’m sticking with “in the eye of the beholder”.

He had come to visit every day, even though she refused to see him at first, so that he wouldn’t be absent when she did want to see him.

Never could do that sort of thing myself.

If you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Let’s actually make this applicable to something.

Hillalum said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.

Technically, as it were.

[b]Mark Manson

Romeo and Juliet is synonymous with “romance” in our culture today. It is seen as the love story in English-speaking culture, an emotional ideal to live up to. Yet when you really get down to what happens in the story, these kids are absolutely out of their fucking minds. And they just killed themselves to prove it![/b]

What was Shakespeare thinking!

Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet.

Let’s refute this. You know, just for the hell of it.

But a true and accurate measurement of one’s self-worth is how people feel about the negative aspects of themselves.

You know, if they have any.

If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.

Uh, not always?

No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Actually, I haven’t found mine yet.

Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired. Be perfect and amazing and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast each morning while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two and a half kids goodbye. Then fly your helicopter to your wonderfully fulfilling job, where you spend your days doing incredibly meaningful work that’s likely to save the planet one day.

That’s worked for you, right?

[b]Werner Twertzog

Showing, once again, that, no, you cannot “get anything you want,” at Alice’s Restaurant.[/b]

I thought that burned down.

In your eyes I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. So, your place or mine?

Hey, a fuck is a fuck.

The Silent Majority typically supports genocide, as we all know.

Well, we all know now.

Listen to me: Climate change is not a “hoax.” But, on the other hand, it is important for human civilization to end, so that life on earth may flourish once again in several million years.

Having it both ways always works for me.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Also bad intentions. All intentions lead to hell. Intend nothing.

Don’t even think about it.

It is important to take your children to Disney World to teach them that they will never be happy.

You know, if you can afford to. And, if not, there are plenty of alternatives.

[b]Jennifer Weiner

They say - “they” being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld - that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can’t just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times.[/b]

Not unlike with a Pepsi machine.

When I took Psychology 101, the professor taught us about random reinforcement. Put three groups of rats in three separate cages, each equipped with a bar. The first group of rats got a pellet every time they pressed the bar. The second group never got pellets, no matter how often they pressed. And the third group got pellets just once in a while. The first group, the professor said, eventually gets bored with the guaranteed reward and the rats who never get treats give up, too. But the random rats will press on that bar forever, hoping each time they press that this time the magic will happen, that this time they’ll get lucky. It was at that moment in class that I realized that I had become my father’s rat.

So, whose rat are you?

If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?

Imagine then if she writes philosophy.

The way I see it, she began, your mother’s devoted her whole life to you kids. She said “you kids” in precisely the same tone I would have used for “you infestation of cockroaches”.

Or, worse, bedbugs.

If there had been an exercise I’d liked, would I have gotten this big in the first place?

Probably.

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” Mexican Proverb

Like that would actually matter to them.

[b]Woody Allen

There’s no way to prove that there is no God. You just have to take it on faith.[/b]

The other side of the coin as it were.

Tradition is the illusion of permanance.

Topped only by ritual.

All things are possible, except skiing through a revolving door.

My guess: There’s a video on youtube of someone doing it…naked

Let’s say there was no terrorism whatsoever and we were all very nice to one another and we were all kind, we still would be faced with an extremely cruel and hostile universe and existence and so I’m a great pessimist and I feel that it’s impossible really to be happy, and that the best you can hope for is to be distracted.

What I would call an optimist.

Geez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.

You know, philosophically.

There is something about big cities that turns me on, and for whatever mysterious reason, places like New York and Paris inspire me. I think it’s because cities represent civilization, and as crime-ridden and broken down as some of them are, it’s still better than skipping through a meadow.

Of course it does help to be rich and famous. Even skipping through a meadow.

[b]Elin Hilderbrand

When you peered into the windows of someone else’s life, you could only guess what was going on. [/b]

Next up: You guessed wrong.

If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. But this, of course, was bullshit. If you loved something and let it go…it would – hello! – find something else to love.

Of course that works when you’re let go too.

All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began.

Talk about “human all too human”!

To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten.

Now a postmodern tradition.

It was like we had known all along that the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be surprised.

So don’t forget to practice.

What happened when we died? How were we to know that death wasn’t as profound an adventure as life was?

Well, among other things, none of the dead have come back to confirm this.

[b]God

There is life in outer space, and it’s intelligent, and that’s why it’s staying far away from you.[/b]

So much for SETI.

Is life fair? Short answer, no. Long answer, nooooooo.

Obviously, the long answer.

Fuck these fucking motherfuckers.

Of course he’s just paraphrasing the Old Testament.

[b]Rainbows are My way of reminding humanity of three things:

1. They’re here.
2. They’re queer.
3. Get used to it.[/b]

I certainly am.

Never let the fear of failure keep you from failing.

Starting with Him for example.

Alexa, end it all.

Nope, it’s still here.

[b]Joni Mitchell

Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?[/b]

Look no further than the Oval Office, he thought.

I don’t like being too looked up at or too looked down on. I prefer meeting in the middle to being worshipped or spat on.

She got that from Aristotle.

I’m a little young for retirement.

That was then. Now she’s a little young to be dead.

If you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and so on around you.

Especially on the Fourth of July.

I never loved a man as far as I could pitch my shoe.

On the other hand, how far could the men pitch theirs?

I’m a fine artist working in a commercial arena, so that’s my cross to bear.

Another poet and she knows it.

[b]Daniel Kahneman

The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.[/b]

Deaf and dumb too.

An inability to be guided by a “healthy fear” of bad consequences is a disastrous flaw.

Topped only by an unhealthy fear for some.

We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.

For example: knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

There’s a lot of randomness in the decisions that people make.

In fact you might even call it a pattern.

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling.

So, what do you think, blah, blah, blah?

…declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.

In other words, an incoherent story.

[b]Edgar Degas

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.[/b]

Work, right? Well, if you’re a gifted artist.

The frame is the reward of the artist.

I challenge you to explain that.

Taste! It doesn’t exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

I challenge you to explain that.

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there’s no point in working.

I challenge you to explain that.

What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I am inside my studio, what use is my mind? I have my model, my pencil, my paints. My mind doesn’t interest me.

He can’t possibly know what he means.

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.

Hitler had one of those, right? His own truth for example.

[b]Jan Mieszkowski

The German word for there not actually being a German word for what you’re thinking about.[/b]

The German word for everything: Dasein.

You are born free but…
Rousseau: live in chains
Lacan: love in chains
Sartre: die in chains
Camus: chain-smoke

All of the above. You know, if we live in a wholly determined universe.

Ontology: Be it
Epistemology: Know it
Ethics: Judge it
Aesthetics: Love it
History: Live it
Politics: Break it

So, don’t forget to vote!

Aesthetics: You’re beautiful!
Ethics: You should be beautiful.
Psychology: You’d like to be beautiful.
Statistics: You’re probably ugly.

Actually, you’re probably not either one.

[b]Top Reasons To Become A Philosopher

1. The tranquil bliss of wisdom and insight
2. The joy of making the world a better place
3. The unlimited opportunities for self-delusion[/b]

No doubt about it: 3
And probably not just here.

British philosophy: You’re too young to understand
French philosophy: You’re too old to understand
American philosophy: You’re exactly the right age to understand, but you don’t

We’ll need a context of course.

[b]Harlan Coben

Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal.[/b]

Or, for some of us, almost anything.

The hunchback sees the hump of others—never his own.

For example, if they have one.

Well, if you did, you’d be wrong. It is much, much smaller. Try this: Imagine you’re still holding that tiny grain of sand. Now not just the beach you are on, but all the beaches all over the planet, all of them, all down the coast of California and the East Coast from Maine down to Florida and on the Indian Ocean and off the coasts of Africa. Imagine all that sand, all those beaches everywhere in the world and now look at that grain of sand you’re holding and still, still, our entire solar system—forget our planet—is smaller than that compared to the rest of the universe. Can you even comprehend how insignificant we are?

He got that from me of course.

The rule of thumb in student files seemed to be, If you have nothing negative to say, don’t say anything at all.

That does work here, right?

When you’re young you don’t get how great it is to be loved unconditionally.

You know, if you can call that love.

Sitting for an hour without reading material meant he had to think.

A philosopher in other words.

[b]Bob Dylan

My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it…[/b]

That’s what I call rubbing it in.

I believe that instinct is what makes a genius a genius.

But that’s all genetic, isn’t it?

Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours
I said that.

If only in a song.

What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big.

Or, sure, for everything else, the other way around.

It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be.

Especially when you’re knockin’ on Heaven’s door.

I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn’t allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.

Hell, he might even mean it. On the other hand, any women here believe that it’s true?

[b]Blake Crouch

We’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.[/b]

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches off into a new world.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.

This ever happen to you? Though maybe not as a fish.

We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.

Clearly, me more than you.

I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them. But the truth is, they’re measured by their consequences.

Worse [sometimes], when they are both.

Never assume you know where someone else is coming from.

Even you yourself are suspect.

[b]Existential Comics

people are out there saying stuff like “all we need is science, philosophy is useless” like some scientist discovered concepts like democracy, justice, and equality by looking in a microscope.[/b]

Let’s just say that you can take this too far.

people are really out there thinking we can stop fascism by pointing out that they made factually inaccurate statements somewhere along the way

Indeed: youtu.be/BCb2Le3wtIk

one cannot live on bread alone, we also need people to shut the fuck up once in a while

And here you can actually make them. You “foe” them.

Yes, philosophically speaking all tweets are bad, but to be fully human is to rebel against this fact – to send our terrible tweets out into the universe anyway.

Anyone here know where they actually end up?

God: dead.
Life: meaningless.
Death: inevitable.
Mood: eh, not too bad, at least it’s Friday.

That never works for me. Today for example.

philosophy was great until the fucking nerds took over and started putting math symbols every other sentence just to try to sound smart

On the other hand, how come that almost never happens here?

[b]Neal Stephenson

Which path do you intend to take, Nell? said the Constable, sounding very interested. Conformity or rebellion?
Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.[/b]

What say you, Mr. Objectivist?

Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time.

And let’s not forget women.

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

Worse, when they think they know why.

But then, Cap’n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken treasure related shapes that the cereal aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard -to-pin-down striated pillow formation.

Of course that’s just common sense.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

Indeed. So, why doesn’t that ever come up here?

Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.

Fortunately, for them, majority rules.

[b]Michelangelo Antonioni

Nothing regarding man is ever inhuman. [/b]

Uh-oh.

All I know is that we are loaded down with old and stale stuff — habits, customs, old attitudes already dead and gone.

Like [some day] the new stuff will be.

I don’t want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society … these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.

That’s actually a boast, isn’t it?

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

Of course we’re philosophers, aren’t we?

I want an actor to try to give me what I ask in the best and most exact way possible. He mustn’t try to find out more, because then there’s the danger that he’ll become his own director.

Let’s decide: Is this a good thing or not?

The public buys “art” - but the word is drained of its meaning.

The money is still good though.

[b]PJ Harvey

I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives. [/b]

Really well put.

I enjoy looking like a tart and thinking like a politician.

He thought, “Shut up and sing.”

Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

Me too. If only the same words over and over and over again

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.

Hear the same words too.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don’t think that’s possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.

She got this from me either before or after I got it from her. Telepathy I think it was.

I try to see as much dance, theatre and films as I can because all of it feeds me in a way that I need feeding for what I do.

You know, when she’s not reading philosophy.

[b]Existential Comics

The “marketplace of ideas” is a great name because a tiny number of people monopolize the national conversation with the stupidest shit imaginable, while our real intellectual needs get ignored because it doesn’t generate profit for the people who own the media.[/b]

Thank God for ILP, right?!

Kant: “you should never lie.”
Person: “what if a murderer asks you where their victim was hiding?”
Kant: “even then!”
Person: “what if your ex is doing super well after they dumped you and they ask how your life is going?”
Kant: “alright, well, there are limits to everything…”

Let’s decide how facetious this is.

What authors put in their novel to shock you:
Russian novel: a murder.
American novel: a rape.
French novel: a suicide.
British novel: someone suggesting that their daughter marry below their station.

What say the Brits here?

Nietzsche described the “last man” as the most contemptible of all people, who live only for pleasure, who believe technology can invent happiness, while hiding their bitter resentment that they’ve become incapable of any act of self-creation.
Today we’d just call them “gamers”.

And, as we all know, gamers are Kids.

Joe Biden:
Do I work with racists? Absolutely.
Do I respect racists? Of course.
Do I like racists? Big time.
Do I admire racists? Heck yeah.
Do I pass racist legislation? All the time.
Am I a racist? First of all, how dare you…

What’s that make Trump then?

One time, as a joke, I tried to live a meaningful, authentic existence where I pursued my real passions in a genuine expression of my freedom.
It was pretty funny.

Anyone here ever try that?