I cannot say why or when I originally became enthralled with the concept of wearing hats, but I have always felt a bit more like myself when wearing one. I only own a few, an Irish Flat Cap, a leather High Roller Hat (similar to the one worn by “Micky” in “Snatch”) and yes, a top hat.

I suppose in a way it helps me to separate my personal, or social life, from my professional life (I do hair)

Another thing that I thought of as I listened to the “after show”…both of you mentioned how audio books really stick with you in a way that “read” books don’t. Kevin was/is an auditory learner and I was wondering if Stephen is too.

http://www.freedomainradio.com/DesktopModules/UltraNewsArticle/Read.aspx?Portalid=1&ArticleId=2188

Between the two, and my own experiences, I think the best possible style of school would be one which teaches indirectly in that the students have projects perhaps even with real world value but which requires them to use math, science, etc to complete. Thus, they would not merely be memorizing information for its own sake, but learning information and seeing how it is useful and valuable at the same time.

I think the key to truly learning and being ‘intelligent” about a subject is simply being interested enough in it to want to learn it.

As your interviewer noted, the internet is so much about sectionalizing to the simplest variable that holy moley you mix things more multi-dimensional and people overreact.

I think the only thing I did note in your youtube response was you were talking about ASL unable to transcend its language functions into performance due to being intrinsically linked to Deaf culture, which seemed rather contradictory. Though you certainly have more vocabulary and such to digest (speaking as a hearing person who knows way less than you do, to cover my bases); I feel like that’s predominately what many ASL performers do is perform to communicate. Not necessarily a pragmatic message or anything that needs to be translated into words, but creating a collective conversation that alters and challenges people’s perceptions. Though art roots in self-expression, the definition of art in its effect of “beauty or emotional power” is the key at “power”. Power involves a dialogue internally and externally, sure there are works that are made for selfish and theraputic purposes, but artwork from any time period involves encapsulating ideas that are then displayed to a viewer in order to express an idea.

I’m just going to stop elaborating before I sound like I’m lecturing a high school art class on a 90s sitcom. But I will end on a high note saying I appreciate you being socially responsible, expressing where you come from and trying to maintain your position as someone who is learning and not a representation of the Deaf community. Do what you fucking feel like doing!

To give just one small illustration, consider all of the flippant remarks and occasional ravings about the evils of “fractional reserve banking” in this podcast. I rather suspect that most of Bitcoin’s overwhelmingly geeky boosters are familiar with the concept/practice known as “statistical multiplexing,” i.e., the thing that makes the packet-switched Internet more interesting/useful/efficient than the old switched telephone system…? If only they understood that fractional reserve banking is *the exact same practice* applied to (what would otherwise be) idle monetary bank reserves, perhaps they might recognize that they are parroting the same arguments that the telcos made back in the 1980s (when they realized that the nascent decentralized Internet threatened their cozy monopolies)… the same argument that some telcos continue to make even now, using new terms like “guaranteed QOS.” Too bad Bitcoin advocates seem to be completely unaware of the fact that in parroting this line, they are unwittingly advocating a return to the same static, deflationary, and (often oppressively) hierarchical conditions that predated the rise of modern analog and digital technology-mediated liquidity systems (e.g., monetary-banking systems and the Internet).

I share the same disgust with modern-day financial criminals that seems to animate many Bitcoin enthusiasts, but ignorance of what other/older monetary liquidity mechanisms have taught us — both in how they worked (when they worked), and how all but the current iterations ultimately failed — is *not* a virtue, especially for would-be monetary liquidity system pioneers who aspire to do better.

MH

For what it’y the fans and for the fans. s worth SDCC started off that way as well, it was all about the fans, by the fans for the fans. You can still some remnants of that around the edges of the con and in the smaller rooms. I actually think some of the more fan-oriented stuff is better than some of the big name events.

“[...] from then on, I just have been obsessed with [Bitcoin]“.

I can relate!

p.s., Did Rebecca Black rip off the Beatles?
http://music.witcoin.com/p/493/Rebecca-Black—Friday#r-1278

Unfortunately I’m a little short on time to jump into the discourse above, but I’ve got a couple of quick things to throw in.

1) Totally with Kiki. I too want to eat the world; to experience it through the medium of munch. And I believe this to be an admirable trait. Hell, even old Gran’daddy Darwin spent a reasonable portion of his life eating his subjects, rather than studying them. In fact, during his time in the Cambridge Gourmet Club, he once famously described Brown Owl as “indescribable.”

2) When it comes to eating people and the context in which such a thing might happen, let me just put this out there: If it means living another day – you’re all god damned stew to me. In the nicest possible way, of course.
I see survival and living as two very different things. (When I talk about survival here I refer to the immediate “If I don’t do this I am dead” survival and not the “if we let X happen then Y might possibly happen down the line and F up our Z” survival.) In a case of immediate survival, how can there be any time or place for morals or ethics? In living, such things are arguably vital to the protection of self, society and environment. But in a desperate, near-death survival situation, surely the refusal of a food source on grounds of “ickiness” or “immorality” would acheive nothing but validating one’s candacy for immediate Darwinian execution.

3) If you ever need a Brit on the show: I promise I come off a lot less beligerant in person than in writing. Also, Charles Darwin was British (a useless statement, given the context, I know, but Darwin had managed to worm his way into the 2 points preceding this one and I didn’t want number 3 to feel left out.)

Much love,
Taz

Making disparaging jokes does give you new insight, case in point. Isn’t it necessary to understand an erroneous point of view is in order to correct it?
When people feel sufficiently offended by humor, a dialogue is initiated ideally to attempt to reconcile the cultural values either side may or may not have. The world would be rather boring if we all agreed with each other on everything, if we knew or felt what everyone else did.

Stereotypes and simplifications themselves have never been offensive. Posing a joke is like an experiment where the subject’s reaction gives an idea of a person’s identity and experience. If they like it or chuckle, perhaps they have a tacit agreement with some part of it, or perhaps they only find it surprising or shocking. Even if they find it disagreeable, the dialogue which ensues can be instructive. Unfortunately, in many other cases where jokes come in a continuous stream, many such jokes are ignored and forgotten rather than openly debated.

Be as tolerant of absurdity as of meaning.

Matthew, I think your analysis was really interesting, and I hope you stick around, we always enjoy new perspectives that can share their point of view in an interesting fashion.

Rose, I think you did a great job saying all the things I wanted to but even better. I guess it helps that you’re actually in the field.

Ceimi, I don’t know exactly where you’re coming from with your comments regarding humor. While humor may be able to give new insight into something, making disparaging jokes does not.

If a joke points out a serious flaw in something, quickly and easily that’s great, but if it simply reinforces incorrect assumptions then you have a problem. This is the same reason that race jokes are seriously problematic. Falling back on stereotypes reduces people to those stereotypes which can have serious negative consequences for everybody. Does that mean there can not be a single funny joke about professions (or race?) No, but the context, intent and consequences are all important. Furthermore, you delve into the same issues with your last comments regarding American and British sensibilities and humor. To sum up either one as a single entity does both a disservice and I know there is certainly a lot of crossover in fans of both. There are American comedians as wide ranging as Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Demetri Martin, Sam Kenison, Don Rickles, Jeff Foxworthy, Kathy Griffin, Amy Pohler, Ellen DeGeneres, Richard Pryor, Phyllis Diller and Jay Leno to name a few. I don’t know as many British comedians but people like Eddie Izzard, Jimmy Carr, Dave Gorman, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Rowan Atkinson, Monty Python (yes, I know they’re group) and Russel Brand all come to mind. I wouldn’t want to claim that any of them have the same style let alone split them up by country.

Enjoy the complexity of life and the people found within it!

I disagree with you about the role of humor. Some forms of humor go beyond what some people feel is the border of controversy, but I think it is part of the magic of showing some local logical contradictions and new perspectives. Ricky Gervais was considered by some to be offensive at the Golden Globes, and consequently our strange obsession with these people and awards, and even comedy itself became a productive point of discussion.

Humor can on the one hand oversimplify, and on the other make a viewpoint concise and succinct. If it prompts an interesting discussion, I think it justified.

Are office managers consistently offended by the depiction of the boss in Dilbert? Should we feel offended for engineers who are represented as lazy Wally? I don’t quite understand what is meant by mean-spirited humor, perhaps a lack of context, etc can contribute to such a misinterpretation. Perhaps Americans take everything in life more seriously, every word to be persecution, every subject a victimization, and can’t stomach something like a more caustic British humor.

I’m the sister that was slightly offended by that psychology related question on BF’s formspring. Ignoring your comment about gender differences in the field of psychology, I have some points of contention with your comment.

I also would not be offended if someone had an insightful critique of the field of psychology that showed that they knew what they were talking about and thought these points were relevant, but that is not at all how I interpreted the formspring question. It seemed to me to be a jab at psychologists in general saying at the least that their occupation is worthless, and at worst that they are con-artists.

Indeed they have not proven that anything in the field of psychotherapy is effective, but psychotherapy is very different than psychology or counseling psychology. Psychotherapy is based on the Freudian theory of personality which, while innovative at the time, was flawed and now generally considered to be bunk. The client-therapist relationship was really formulated by Rogers, and is also quite removed from psychology practiced today.

Psychology today, both in its counseling and research form, has an entirely different theoretical framework that has been scientifically proven. Psychologists who do research (many of them) follow the scientific method and use the same statistical methods that researchers in the “hard sciences” do. They have been doing research for years, and many of the constructs and theories that have been formulated have been tested and re-tested to prove their validity. While getting a bachelors degree in psychology this is mainly what you learn. I have not, and probably will not take a class in counseling methods, but I have taken many classes on psychology research and have undertaken research in the field myself. It is only in graduate school that a person chooses to specialize in counseling or research, and this usually sets them off on different scholarly directions.

The counseling side is, as I have said, very different than what was practiced so many years ago when the study of psychology was in its infancy (for instance, hysteria is no longer a valid diagnosis for women or anybody as it was in the past). I myself have recently undergone psychological counseling for the very reason you say that people seem to resort to counseling. I had not developed a strong social network and I was seeking help. After a few sessions, I learned about myself and developed skills to change what I was unhappy with and now in the space of a couple of months I have started developing a social network and I no longer see a counselor. I realize that this is purely anecdotal evidence, but it is fairly common across anybody who decides to see a counselor for any reason. The way counseling psychology is practiced today is useful. The counselor does not just provide an optimistic, accepting environment in which the person can move toward self-actualization (Rogerian theory), nor does a patient lay on a couch and talk about their past and blame everything on their mother (Freudian theory – there’s more, but that’s the stereotypical view).

What offends me by the question in question and, in some ways, by your comment is that the field of psychology is still seen as useless clap-trap by so many people today. People do not approach a counselor when dealing with issues in their lives because they think seeing a “shrink” is a waste of time and money, and in some cases that it shows weakness. I believe there is a time in everybody’s life, especially the more dynamic times such as college, in which a person would benefit from seeing a counselor.

I enjoy criticism, especially in the fields of my study (I am also earning minors in History, English, and Religious Studies). Criticism brings new ideas to the table and makes a person think. I am not averse to taking a new idea in and changing my mind if I think the new idea is valid. However I am averse to people making fun of any field or occupation in what could be a mean-spirited way. The world has enough unhappiness without us adding to it.

Of course, as with all fields, psychology is not perfect. I am taking a class currently that focuses on research methodology, and there are always flaws. That is why so much research is done with different methodologies to attempt to negate these flaws. However my main dislike of the field is how it is comparatively unknown, I think that there should be more done to educate the general public on what it is now compared to what it once was.

I should qualify this entire argument by saying that I am not going to be going into a specifically psychological field in my future. I am going to be a pastor, which is why I chose psychology. My future career is going to be mainly working with people, sometimes at the worst points of their lives. I will feel confident with this undergraduate degree that I can understand people a little better, and know when it would be best to advise them to see a professional. Because I will not be specializing, I see the field in comparatively broad strokes. I do not feel I am qualified to say where it most needs improvement. However I am confident that my peers who will be specializing will all bring critical thinking to the field and I look forward to keeping up with the research done in future years. Psychology is still a relatively young science, and it has many more lanes of study in its future.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=filaskhth/s

1. Kill someone and eat them
2. Not kill someone and eat them
3. Kill someone and not eat them
4. Not kill someone and not eat them

These are your four options (unless you take the Buddhist route, and then there’s a whole cluster fuck of possibilities that we westerners tend not to posit). If we’re asking about the morality of each of these options, #4 seems like a safe way out, right? But then we have the archetype of the soldier who finds his comrade horribly injured and puts a bullet in said comrade’s head to end the suffering caused by such gruesome wounds. If we hold this archetype to be morally sound (i.e. that killing someone to end their suffering is a good act), then there are instances in which #4 is actually immoral. But we don’t care about that. We want to talk about eating people.

That doesn’t necessarily take #3 out of the running (once we do kill someone, do we have an obligation to eat them?) but we’ll just let that ruminate in the background of our other conversation.

#1 can get tricky. Presumably we want to know the circumstances under which a person was killed before we can pass a judgement. The focus here is still on the killing though; the eating is just a context. I mean, we’re presuming that people are killing others in order to eat said others, though admittedly there could be a subset that kills people and just happens to decide to eat them. We’ll ignore this subset for the sake of brevity.

For the remaining people falling under option #1, they’re either killing people because they want to eat them, or because they (believe they) need to eat them. The latter is your stereotypical survival scenario and the former is your Hannibal.

Let’s start with the Hannibal. The focus here is likely to fall on the killing again; it will only be all the more theatrical because of the cannibalism. Is it moral for a person to kill them and eat them just because they want to? Likely we’ll say that the list of circumstances under which one person can morally kill another will not become more expansive when the consumption of flesh is involved. Perhaps we say that it is permissible to kill in self-defense, to end suffering, for a death sentence, and perhaps a few other circumstances. This list likely gets smaller when cannibalism is involved. Will we accept cannibalism from someone who is claiming to have killed in self-defense? Probably not. But still, there may be circumstances in which we can kill and eat someone because we want to and be able to justify it, like if they are receiving the death penalty. (This depends on whether the eating itself is justifiable, which will be explored later.)

Alternatively, we might kill and eat someone because we feel we need to. Three people are trapped in a mine with little hope of being rescued. After going without food for some time, they decide that somebody will have to be eaten so that the other two can survive. This is a no-brainer. Of course one person should die versus three people dying. Let’s presume that all three of these people are the so-called breadwinners of their families. If all three people die, then all three families suffer immense emotional and financial damage, and they too may even starve to death. If one of the miners is sacrificed to save those other two, then sure, one family suffers grave emotional damage, but likely those other two families can pull together to support the third. The problem here is choice. How does one choose who to eat in this situation? If one person offers to sacrifice their body for the others it’s easy. If not, then do you draw straws? Do you compare the qualities and potentialities of the miners to decide which ones deserve to live most? Does the weakest one get overtaken by the others?

Eating one of them just makes sense. Whether we can, emotionally, prepare ourselves to kill and eat somone that we presumably care about is another question altogether.

Which brings us to #2. If a person dies (of natural causes), is it moral to eat them? Barring a soul, or at least presuming that what happens to the body is of no consequence to the soul, my answer is a resounding yes.

Think about it. We spend our entire lives consuming, rather inefficiently I might add. As of 2006 or 2007, 70% of our corn crops were going to feed livestock. The numbers are similar for other grains and soy. For every 30 calories we put into something like a cow, we get about 1 calorie out. We’re expending an unmaintainable amount of energy so that we can eat meat (and as mentioned in the podcast, as this continues, and as the global population and standard of living grows, meat as we know it will become rarer and more expensive). In fact, it’s estimated that if we shifted our resources away from feeding livestock and instead fed those plant crops to people, world hunger would disappear (at least, until the population grew and land area devoted to farms was diminished as a result… and assuming we cooperated well enough to get that excess food to those that need it).

After we’ve lived on this earth, consumming inefficiently for 60, 70, 80, 90, or even 100 years, they just throw us in the ground. The human animal is being raised very inefficiently, and then just thrown away.

The answer is the get rid of livestock. They take up land and resources that are better used elsewhere. We shift to a society that raises only plant crops. We’ll have more than enough to feed everyone, and to sate our desire for meat, we’ll eat those people that die of natural causes. We won’t have to give up extra land to cattle because we’ll be the cattle. We’ll live long, happy lives, and when we die our bodies will go to nourish the next generations. Yes, human meat will still be just as inefficient to grow as beef, but that fact likely isn’t going to stop us from breeding, so we may as well make the best of it–and we won’t have the calorie degradation that we have from putting plants into animals and then animals into us… we’ll put the plants directly into us and then eat each other.

We don’t cringe at the thought of organ donation, so why should we care about eating people? It’s all a matter of harvesting bodies to preserve the living. I think it would be a good use of my body after I’m dead and have no use for it.

The problem is cultural, not moral. We’re grossed out by the thought of eating another person, just as we’re grossed out by the thought of eating bugs. Bugs are, in fact, quite tasty. Beatle larvae taste like pecans. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t grossed out when I tried it, but I recognize that it had nothing to do with the taste or texture of what I was eating; I had been inculcated from the time I was born to believe that bugs are icky.

Shifting to eating bugs, and to eating those of us humans that pass of natural causes, is the moral choice when considering the alternatives. We just need to shift how we relate to the dead as well. If we could adopt the mentality that our loved ones are living on through us when we eat them, it would help move us beyond our cultural hangups.

Since I submitted the link up there about Objectivism being a cult, I want to say I agree with the sentiment of the article, but I want to take ti one step further.

Ayn Rand is a Drug. Her writings make you feel good as you’re reading them and the buzz can last anywhere from a few hours after you finish reading to weeks, months, or in rare cases, years. Her whole shtick is that human beings are awesome (although some are more awesome than others) and the books (at least Fountainhead and Anthem, I haven’t finished Atlas Shrugged) are meant to make you feel like you could go out and change the world. It allows you to shift the blame to others: government, religion and whatnot, for creating systems that are designed to hold you back. We can all be supermen! (yes I chose a specifically gendered term, because Rand’s depiction of women is problematic to say the least)

But the thing is Everybody can’t be a superman. I suspect even Rand would admit this, probably lovingly embrace it, because it means that some people are better than others. And statistically speaking, any given reader of Rand is unlikely to be the World’s Best at anything, because there is likely someone better.

The real problem is this: What is better? There isn’t an actual objective standard for what the best thing is, no matter how much Randies insist there is. It’s the whole Mac v PC issue, or even put more simply, it’s like saying Green Socks are better than Blue Socks. Some things really come down to opinion.

I may have more to say after I actually listen to the episode. If if ever get around to doing that.

You guys did a much better analysis than I could, I just want to share what I was thinking when I read the piece.

The Mobipaks are a metaphor for the mental hardware with which we are born, the neurotransmitters which can cause us to feel love, pain, perhaps even improve our verbosity. In some sense we are regulated with physiological and psychological responses which are independent of our desire to feel certain emotions. I certainly feel like I only superficially consent to emotions or other physiological reactions, “Drip on?” “Acknowledged.” At first I thought it strange that the experimenters were allowed to consent for the application of neurotransmitters for other people. Yet I suppose as social beings we are also incapable of escaping from tampering with the feelings of others, as Abnesti was trying to force the narrator to do.

With our personal and social free agency being limited by our neurological ‘Mobi-paks’ coupled with the human suffering and anguish (Darkenfloxx), why not commit suicide?

It feels like a long time since you guys have sat down to properly tear into the meat of some philosophical quarry; and what topic to get into.

I’ve got to say, I take the other side of the topic; that the actions of Abnesti and the body he worked for are inherently wrong. I can’t help but feel that the moment tests were resumed after Heather’s death, and with an acceptance that the same was very probably going to happen to Rachel, that the program moved out of the realm of valid scientific enquiry and into the macabre horrors the likes of Japan’s Unit 731 (I concede that the level of horror and twisted humanity present in the latter exceeds that of Spiderhead, but – whether it be the death of two girls or half a million(ish) POWs in the name of knowledge and progress – the moral and ethical reprehensibillity remains the same.)

What I found more interesting, and I’m glad Kevin brought it up, was the difference between actual drugs and the Mobipak drugs. What we know as drugs tend not to, in the short term at least, change a person or dictate their actions, but rather exaggerate certain aspects of their personallity while repressing others. So, as each person is different, they’re affected differently by the same drug. a good example of this is whiskey. Given half a bottle of whiskey I become a genial and gregarious (sometimes garrulous) sort of chap. Conversely, a co-worker’s father has, on threat of divorce, been banned from whiskey because it (and only it) turns him “evil.”
The Mobipak drugs seem not to work this way, but rather override the person completely. Take ED289/290: fuck yourself into friction burn. Take Darkenfloxx: kill yourself. This is quite a troubling concept. Comparatively giving two strangers a combination of, say, MDMA and Viagra, won’t necessarily result in the two subjects rutting like wild boars – in fact, I’d wager that it’d happen very rarely and depend on some instantaneous attraction occurring before the introduction of the drugs. Not so with the Mobipak. Any and all human personallity and free will (or, debatably, illusion thereof) seems to be overridden. This raises the most interesting question of all.

Again, it was Kevin who touched on questioning the reality of the emotions experienced via the mobipak: and i would like to extend this into questioning the validity of the experiences in general. Stephen briefly bought up this idea of a person being the sum of their connectome – which, if I’ve managed to garner the layman’s grasp of this, is the very architecture of their perception and reactions. If you can override a person’s perceptions and reactions to produce the uniform results described in Escape from Spiderhead, do you not change the person in toto? If so, how valid are those results if, once the subject is returned to normal, the entity created by the mobipak no longer exists?
There certainly seems to be some concession to this in the story. For instance, Jeff was supposed to have fallen completely in love, but once returned to “baseline” the memory of this seems to stir no emotion of love, not even the slightest hint of the sort of residual emotion commonly connected with memory. Whereas the emotion of another form of love experienced when not under the influence of the Mobipak, the love for his mother, seems to shine through in stages throughout the story. Especially in the penultimate paragraph. Perhaps this is waxing literal more than philosophical, but it would seem that Jeff still holds that love for his mother because it was Jeff experiencing it, whereas he retains no love for Heather or Rachel because it was not him loving them – it was something else.

Is it right to actually change a personallity? Is the instatement of a second, new personallity tantamount to the murder of the original? Who is this new person? As the product purely of concoctions alien to the body is this person actually human? and the questions continue.

All in all, a bit of a thinker and damn good show guys.
Taz.

I’ve been listening to you guys since…the New Year probably. I’m enjoying it and recently I’ve decided to try and catch up.

First, I’d like to say I’m a big fan. Second, I’d like to apologise for this entirely tangential transition, but I was listening to your older podcasts and I came across your ‘Politics, eh?’ one and, while I enjoyed it (the status quo for your podcasts), I found that there were some nagging issues which I thought could be a fair basis for…well, something: Another show, a random topic-change in another show, ignoring, which ever. (Also, I’ll apologise for commenting here when it’s an episode entirely other that I’m talking about….) The primary one which I found strange (as a Canadian myself…I should probably have prefaced this section of the comment with that fact…) was the lack of…well…Canadiana, let alone Canadians. And while it’s not entirely surprising that it dealt mainly with an American perception of Canada, it tended to drift (not entirely surprising, perhaps) back over to American politics. In the end, I found it to be…not entirely aptly named.

…Wow I can ramble…. At any rate, my point was that I think that it might be interesting to spend a show at some point in future with a Canadian talking about a more…Canadian perspective on the country, and perhaps a perspective on the US (there’s an interesting difference right there: Canadians generally never call your country ‘America’ …Sorry for that needless parenthetical comment, but the linguistics-nerd in me frequently gets the better of me). I seem to remember that you’re hoping to get a multinational show (From Prague, {insert South Korean city name here}, and the US) done in the summer, so…might I suggest a Canadian thrown in there for good measure?

P.S. While I don’t want to self-promote too much…if you can’t find another Canadian…. *waves Canadian flag*
P.P.S. Even after I just spent far too long ragging on that one show, I think I should reïterate that I’m actually a big fan, not just an angry pedant…. Pedant, frequently. Angry one? Not usually.

Look at the change percentages; seems to be a point against the “Nwespaper’s are fine” camp.

In my opinion universities becoming less…”difficult” (for lack of a better word, what I mean is the quantity part’s more probable consequences in the quantity vs. quality argument) is just a normal step in the life cycle of an educational (educating?) system. It’s kind of an historical fact, if you think about the progressive lengthening of compulsory education. As Kevin said, it’s similar to market behavior: when the offer of something goes up, the price goes down (so when a lot of people have a diploma, an employer usually expects you to have it, and in turn you are compelled to get one since you won’t be competitive if you don’t).
If the question that comes to mind is the reason for giving more and more years to schooling. The reply is, I think, that knowledge is expanding at astounding rates, and to keep up (albeit new subjects, theories and the such are not introduced instantly in the system) we have to impart as “background information” a lot more things -and thus learn them in lower-level “educational steps”-. Special relativity for example is something you now study in high school, which was not the case in 1908, as it was then cutting edge.

-I apologize my apparent inability to be clear when explaining ideas, but I’m a master in convoluting simple things-

Anyway. More information needs to be taught in the same time. That demands a reduction of the time spent on each subject, or the addition of more dedicated time. The present case is actually both, as I see it.

A solution to the having-a-diploma-feels-like-being-an-ordinary-person could reside in a complete overhaul of high schooling, maybe adding two years and not teaching things deemed unnecessary (and at the same time instructing students in a lot more universitarian subjects). This could make universities a desire only for someone really interested again, and make post-high schoolers actually competitive in the job world.

Or, you know, finding a way to instantly reach c and beginning using the benefits of slower relativistic time. That could be actually easier, maybe.

p.s.: I apologize for eventual syntactical or orthographic mistakes, but English is not my first language, so I’m not completely able to help it I tried my best though xD

in my opinion what happens is that we get a mixed response for a stimulus from our consciousness and our unconscius. We consciously know that films
and books are fiction, but what actually happens inside our mind,albeit unconsciously, is “oh hey I can create an image of this in my head, so it must have the same degree of reality as the images I get from the people I phisically meet everyday, whom I know are real”. Thus we react to fictional images the same way we react to the real images of the world we get from our eyes in everyday life.
The difference we have in reacting to book fiction and to film fiction resides, in my opinion, in the presence of other people in the context. Since we value a lot more rationality over irrationality, in a place where we know other people are present our conscious part gets ‘stronger’ and we try not to behave in a way we’re not supposed to (read: taught to). Meanwhile when we’re alone there is no point in hiding anything, and we tend to space out of the story a lot less than when viewing a film if left alone. I hope this makes sense, in my head it does xD To corroborate the point I’m trying to make I want to’ take as an example the 13th (if I remember correctly) century: back then it was perfectly natural to burn witches, and not many thought it wrong, mainly because of a radicated way of seeing reality. Today that kind of behavior would be labeled irrational and crazy, just because we’re not supposed to believe in witches and to like burning women alive.

Ipod’s spelling suggestions are making my eyes bleed curses so I’m stopping now, I hope I was able to channel through my words the meaning of this
comment A wonderful episode by the way, one of my favourites so far! Keep on the good work, you’re absolutely wonderful!
And have a nice day

I wanted to say that I love listening to BF, it’s one of my favorite podcasts, it’s so brilliant and engaging I have no doubt it will be A Thing (it already is)!

Remember when you talked about facebook fake personas? I have a little project about that, and I thought getting you involved (obviously if you want to) could be interesting you can contact me at un.erebus@gmail.com, since I couldn’t find your (anyone’s) email on the website

Well, I’m looking forward to another great episode!

But yeah, great episode. I learned some new things from it.

If anyone wants to add me as a friend on foursquare, I’m on as ChaosPlatypus, but I think I’m already friends with Stephen, Jed, and Kevin.

Also, non foursquare related, you should all see “See What I’m Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary” when it comes to Texas. I saw it tonight and it was great, and I got to meet the entertainers who were followed, after the Q&A. Got pics and autographs. And, yes, I checked into the theater on foursquare!

Anyway, Yay Kiki!
Eheh! *flee*

Which I suppose enough to justify the day, or any holiday: people need an excuse to do things a little differently for a day, and this applies to both sides of the celebration – those in the party and those, as it were, in the kitchen. Even if we’re not privy to the festivities at the centre of holiday we will often use that exclusion as an excuse to do something a little different.
But that’s only for holiday’s in general. Much of the stuff at the centre of holidays could go to hell, and I am right with you with fist waving at commercialism (the thoughts on commercial sexism I thought particularly awesome), social response to those outside the holiday and the sexism therein.

Great stuff guys, I hope you’ll all feature more in future episodes.

DFTBA

That said, I’ve only ever had a boyfriend for one Valentine’s Day, and I feel a little sad every time another year goes around and I don’t have one. The one Valentine’s Day I did have a boyfriend, I went out and bought a big heart shaped box of chocolates, and a single red rose for him. He bought me a, umm, smaller box of chocolates and a smaller rose. I could tell he was embarrassed that I’d stolen his thunder, or something. So, even though he did the standard requirements for the holiday, I was still a little disappointed. I don’t know, I just really like going all out for things like holidays. The past two years, though, I’ve had a Valentine’s Day games night with a bunch of other single friends, where we played Apples to Apples and had all you can eat sushi at a local restaurant. Not an anti-Valentine’s Day party. Just a fun get-together with some other people who also happen not to have plans that evening.

So, in recap, I don’t avoid the holiday by any means, and I would much rather be with someone for Valentine’s Day, but I don’t let that stop me from having fun. And I discovered the 50%-75% off chocolate on Feb 15 about 5 years ago, and I get some every year. Still working through this year’s stash that I bought myself. I *heart* Russel Stover.

I spent V-day by myself reading the internet and eating stale Twilight candy hearts from December with such phrases as “Live 4 Ever” and “I <3 E C".

Great episode guys. I had to skip the previous 2 because I’ve watched neither Avatar or Doll House yet but fully intend to soon.

And before I go: such is my irrational fear of the Zombocalypse that a few months ago I came ridiculously close to purchasing a couble of crowbars, a step ladder as well as planning the most efficient way of disabling my stairs.
Max Brooks is a great man.

What you all are doing is amazing. Please keep it up and keep having fun with it. Your podcasts make my insomnia so much nicer to cope with.

Thank you.

I love Bobby Darin, especially the song “Artificial Flowers” (upbeat depressing songs are awesome!), and the conversation in this BF reminded me of a scene from the movie “Beyond the Sea”, which is the Kevin Spacey movie about the life of Bobby Darin.

Bobby has recorded “Dream Lover” and “Splish Splash”, and he’s a big rock and roll hit with the teens. But he’s not satisfied. He tells his manager he wants to be a star.

His manager says, “You don’t have to prove anything! You’re a star already!”

“Is that what you think? Hold on a sec.” Bobby turns to a delivery guy passing in the hall. “Hey, kid! I just have a question, c’mere. Will you look at me?”

“What?”

“Just look at me. Do you know me?”

“What?”

“Do you recognize me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do I look familiar to you?”

“No, you don’t. I don’t know you. Will you leave me alone? I got things to do.”

“Thanks pal.” Bobby turns back to his manager. “When the delivery guy knows me, then I’m a star.”

I think that scene is a good example of the levels of fame, and how someone can go from one level to another. Back then, he wanted to go from only being known by teens, to being known by the general populace. Now, it’s people who want to be known by everyone, rather than just being known on the Internet.

I also thought I’d mention that I’m seeing Jonathan Coulton live for the first time on this coming Sunday. I’m excited! Even though I have to be in the crowd, with all the other plebeians, rather than on stage, like the great and wonderful Stephen Torrence, who looks down on all the rest of us from high above.

And, lastly . . . where on Earth did Banana Pancakes come from?! Now I want pancakes . . .

ChaosPlatypus: Scientists have overwhelming evidence about Earth’s poles. You can actually track the switching of the poles on the ocean floor. Learned that in geology and it’s something learned over and over again in my science classes.

Liked this episode though. I personally like the thought of robots taking over the world. Simultaneous flash floods was one I’ve never thought of before. It was an interesting thought. I also liked the earthquake theory. Maybe there will be a mass combustion at Earth’s center and something with lava and magma will occur and earthquakes will happen and all that bad stuff.

Is it irrational to react to fiction? With fiction so common, these reactions must be normal, but is this normal thing irrational?

People flock to fictions via libraries, theaters, dreams, and even businesses work out what-if scenarios when they decide where to put the security cameras and write up business policy. This business example seems to use fiction as a tool in preparing for an uncertain future. What about my friend’s addiction to romance paperback novels? She’s a widow, so how is that a tool?

I think we have the habit of surrounding ourselves with fiction because we like to feel the emotional reactions. I think emotions are to feelings as paintings are to eyesight or music is to hearing or food is to hunger. I think we like to choose our feelings the same way trick-or-treating children sift through their candy hoard seeking favorite flavors. Fictional actions give us emotional reactions. We don’t need fiction to feel emotions, but if we want to feel emotions more forcefully or more frequently than they normally unfold in a normal average day then what’re we going to do about that?

I’ll say it is possible to use self-control or mental tricks to engage in the feeling of an emotion at will. I’ll say it isn’t something that I learned quickly. I think it’s simpler to watch a favorite show or read a favorite story or remember a favorite thought at such times I hunger for a particular flavor of emotion. It is primarily my preference for feeling emotions that keep me from liking Buddhism. I’m not ready to get off the wheel; I like to feel.

Separation of philosophy from religion, is that an eastern and western difference? It may be, but philosophy if being a love of truth and religion if being a conviction that a set of beliefs is true, these are not dissimilar topics.

Remixing old stuff, yup, I was surprised. What do we hear about eastern? The My Name is Earl show did remind the general public about the concept of Karma. The Beatles reminded the general public about the concept of Karma. The New Agers are repackaging the same material as the Theosophists, who were repackaging the Hindu writings, Mahabharata, Upanishads, Vedas.

That young prince living the protected childhood, not knowing anything other than the controlled surroundings he was given, seeing an ill old person, was way messed up from seeing that. It was an impossible puzzle to his upbringing, but it was a puzzle that stuck in his mind and he pondered life as he knew it and life as he discovered it and the result was Buddhism. This was Buddhism in India. I couldn’t help thinking of Gautama when I first heard about Skinner and that bothered me.

The cleverness of a bumper sticker is in its ability to say much in few words. The koan has this same restriction. The few words of the koan are selected for the purpose of causing the person hearing this koan to pause mentally before thinking, “oh, yeah, I was missing that whole point and now I get it.” A properly worded koan is likely going to be a non-sequitor.

I’m sorry, I’ve been awake a long time and I’m rambling and I owe it to you folks to have a sit and a listen and give a kind and thoughtful feedback. I’m falling asleep. I’m sorry. I’ll pay close attention and write good stuff…soon.

I love your shows. Please, do, continue.

Always glad to have a new fan! As you’ll probably find out as you make your troll through our archives, we’re not all actually philosophers. (Stephen is, and some of our occasional guests are as well.) Instead, we’re just folks who like to talk about the bigger things in life. I like to thinks that our lack of real philosophy training is part of what makes our shows unique.

So, if you’re all philosophers, how come nobody made the connection between the definition between the Sanskrit word Om (or Aum) and what happens “when the fat lady sings” after the final note fades?

Also, this isn’t strictly speaking about the End of the World, but I was informed in a science class once that the magnetic poles are not fixed points, but instead very slowly, but perpetually, moving, so that one day the North Pole will be the South Pole, and vice versa. And in the hundreds of years when the poles are in the middle of the shift (so N and S poles are in the E and W), you’ll be able to see the Northern Lights from NYC every night. Of course, this process would also destabilize the planet a bit. But I think we, as humans, will be advanced enough by that time to use technology to compensate for any ill effects. Since hearing that, I’ve thought that this would be an awesome setting for a SciFi story. Not a story having the switching of the poles as a plot point, but just having this idea of the poles switching, tech compensating, and the Northern Lights seen every night from North America, as a background setting for the plot to take place in.

Hey, if we didn’t have tech to compensate, that could probably count as a type of apocalypse with a post-apocalypse to follow.

(Yeah, I watch the episodes on the Stickam site when they’re video only, and then think of what I want to say so I’m ready to comment when the episode finally gets officially posted on the BF site. I also just like to talk a lot.)

“I see cannibals munchin’ a missionary luncheon
The years may have flown but the memory stays
Like the hopes that were dashed when the stock market crashed
Ha ha ha ha
Those were the good old days”

Great episode!

Sodawater Rhubarb.

Play on, Maestro!

I suspect that you won’t be reading this any time soon, as I’m responding nearly six months later. I don’t remember exactly what was going on when this episode was recorded, but I’m pretty sure I had been doing some extensive traveling and that unfortunately made me a little more lethargic than my usual self. Hopefully you’ve stuck around and are still enjoying my ongoing rant against the world.

Kevin

I won’t speak for the other folks who do the show, but some of the things you criticize are what I think makes Bad Philosophy what it is. The show really is us talking off the top of our head, which I feel gives us more of a conversational tone. We’re all relatively intelligent folks and letting our minds and thus discussion go where it will gives us new opportunities for discovery that may not occur if we stuck to a more strict outline style. Keep in mind the show is called Bad Philosophy, and we never really try to hide that. We intentionally go down those rabbit trails and where they end up we can never predict.

Some of our episodes are better than others, I won’t deny it, so you may want to try and sample a few before you make a final decision. I strongly suspect that this particular episode would be more enjoyed by our long term listeners as it had a lot of in jokes and references to last year’s new year’s show. Off the top of my head you could try Reading Rainbow (ep 51), Bach in Business (ep 45), Eight Buffaloes in a Row (ep 36) Or you could go way back in the archives and check out The Jolly Llama (ep 14 and one of our best early episodes) and if you wan to know how bad BF used to be, check out MyJority Rules (ep 0, recorded almost accidentally.)

All that being said, BF ain’t for everybody so it’s no skin off my nose if it don’t scratch your back the way it scratches mine.

And your best bet to find info on the stuff we talk about on the show: Google.

However, I think I’m going to start at trying to reconcile the difference (if any) between the investments we make in fictional and non fictional characters and or circumstance. With only a brief moment’s thought it occurs that there is little difference in how rapt we may become over the fictional or non fictional item, which suggests that looking at characters, events, lore or circumstance alone may be reductionist, that what truly matters is the story in toto.
I also can’t help but think about the potential similarity in our responses to stories, be they fiction or not. But a thought occurs in that if we become excited or chilled during the unfalsified and unexaggerated regailing of a true story, does that make said responses and more or less real/ rational than the counterpart reactions to a tall tale?

I apologise, this is literally just a bit of off the cuff cognitive splat. In amongst any real thought I’m getting conceptual interference, by which I mean concepts like “escapism,” “subjective universes,” and “imagination traits” and other crap keep jumping up, asking to be looked at.

Any, I apologise for being about 6 weeks late to the game on this one; work’s been insane, but I’ll promise to get to catching up. In the meantime thanks for this f*#!ing amazing episode; I fully expect to lose some sleep across the next few nights.

Taz

Some of the predictions were slightly amusing (remove your underwear without removing your pants? I predict we will have light sabers before that happens,lol) but I still found myself distracted despite downloading the episode I usually do so I can clean house while listening to them on my PSP.

May I be so bold to suggest a partial script? Not a full rehearsal mind you, I am in college too and the coursework can be quite demanding (Ethics,Geography,Art history,Economics,Biology, oh my) but something like writing questions and topics down before starting and trying your best to cover them before starting. And if possible, providing links that pertain to the discussion, like tech articles about Apple’s projects, or a research blog when talking about the mind and/or body.

That’s just my silly opinion, I’ll still have the RSS feed bookmarked-the least I can do for taking your time to entertain us on youtube. ( The kids I watch at the after school program like your performance of ‘Fireflies” better than the girls that have done it.)

Though, I have to say, I’m a visual person and it’s hard for something to keep my attention when there’s nothing to look at. I start listening to one of these episodes and the next thing I know I’m flipping through websites and puttering around the apartment and such, and not really fully paying attention to what you guys are saying. However, the ones that have the video option, even though it’s just video of you guys talking, completely hold my interest. Is it possible to upload videos more often?

And, hell, I might as well mention that my Twitter account is @ChaosPlatypus. If only because I just recently started using it again, after the obligatory “I used it for a week, got bored, and ignored it for the next 10 months,” and since none of my friends really use it, I only have 4 followers. It’s a lot easier to get in the habit of writing 140 character updates about life if it seems that someone is listening.

It’s not anymore of a question because we’re talking about people’s homes. Whether you consider yourself an “environmentalist” or not, it’s still not okay to kick people out of where they live. It wasn’t okay during the Trail of Tears and it’s not okay in Central and South America today.

I had an idea for a future Bad Philosophy episode. It’s actually more of a Psychological topic than a Philosophical one, but . . . My friend and I were listening to Jonathan Coulton’s Skullcrusher Mountain and we started trying to see what psychological disorders we could and could not diagnose about the narrator, strictly by the song lyrics. For instance, he’s clearly schitzophrenic, due to the line in the chorus about “the voices that control me from inside my head say I shouldn’t kill you yet”. However, he also believes that he’s capable of making mistakes, unlike many supervillains who believe they’re infallible, and you can tell this from the line, “Maybe I used too many monkeys.” Anyway, I thought it would be funny to see you guys psychoanalyze the various narrators from JoCo’s music.

A person who thinks they have seen a ghost in real life will most likely be more scared (or duped,I would say) at the movie Paranormal Activity than I would.

My wife and I enjoy a good scary movie, but for me that is difficult, my deep and beloved skepticism makes it difficult to be blindly afraid as I should be. I sometimes ruin a movie by pointing out that certain things could never happen in our know world. Still, if the movie is superbly written I will suspend my disbelief and skepticism so I can enjoy it the same way as my neighbors do.

Also, some movies do not work trans-culturally. I love British humor but some of my friends don’t get it and by explaining it, it kinda gets ruined.
Japanese horror movies are most successful in Japan because they are based off of the beliefs and fears that country holds. Same is true for India, France, Canada etc.

A true paradox will happen when a movie causes a great emotional reaction to all people all across the globe, that will be an interesting thing to dissect.