a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Daniel Kahneman

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

Of course it helps to have a really stupid citizenry.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.

Does this even make sense?

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

Here? Objectivists and Kids. Though not necessarily in that order.

The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.

Here we go again: Genes more or less than memes?

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.

He's talking to you, Mr. Pedant.

Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery.

The second part being considerably more rational than the first part.

[iambiguous]

Rene Magritte

We are surrounded by curtains. We only perceive the world behind a curtain of semblance. At the same time, an object needs to be covered in order to be recognized at all.

Clearly some "general descriptions" are more relevant than others.

A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows.

Just enigmatic enough to pique my interest.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

Let's steer clear of what it obliged me to do, he thought.

I want nevertheless to add that for me the world is a defiance of common sense.

That and the military industrial complex.

Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible - and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.

And here we are obliged -- obligated? -- to react to it.

I need to see the original paintings just as little as I have to read the original manuscripts of books.

That's true...but buying or selling the original is a whole other frame of mind.

[iambiguous]

Claude Monet

To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.

Or [perhaps] here: To think we must forget the name of the thing we are thinking of.

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.

Things only artists say [and actually believe?]

All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it.

Things only artists say [and actually believe?]

Light is the most important person in the picture.

I'm a shadow man myself. The darker the better.

I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.

Well short of it, I'd say.

I would advise young artists to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly.

Not counting the Kids of course.

[iambiguous]

Harlan Coben

You can only be strong for so long.

In part because you can only live for so long.

...whenever I see a table of college “friends” sitting together they are inevitably texting with unseen others, searching, always searching, I guess, for something that might be better, a perpetual life hunt for digital greener grass, an attempt to smell roses that are elsewhere at the expense of the ones in front of you...

You can't possibly text less than I do.

With everyone else, you put up this facade so you can hide the crud and make them like you. But with real friends, you show them the crud---and that makes them care. When we get rid of the facade, we connect more.

Trust me: some crud is the exception.

Fame is more addictive than crack.

A post-modern thing let's say.

Watch out for people who belong in your past. Don’t let ’em back in your life.

After all, would they let you back in?

...the cardinal rule: You never have to take back words you don’t say.

Why do you suppose that is?

[iambiguous]

Jan Mieszkowski

Social media is something I’ll
2010: never do
2015: never leave
2019: quit twice a day

So, does posting at ILP count?

A Brief History of Philosophy
1) Yes
2) No
3) Yes and no
4) Yes or no
5) Yes if no
6) Yes although no
7) No

And this only takes us to Plato.

Russian novel: the plot kills the character
English novel: the character kills the plot
French novel: the plot kills the author
American novel: the author kills the genre

With absolutely no exceptions of course.

Parmenides: All is one.
Heraclitus: All is many.
Spinoza: The Presocratics had too many opinions.
Leibniz: How many opinions is too many?
Camus: One.

None of course.

Plato: The light of the truth
Descartes: The light from the truth
Kant: The light to the truth
Camus: Got a light?

You know, Camus actually did more than just smoke cigarettes.

Can it get any worse?
Leibniz: What do you mean by "can"?
Heidegger: What do you mean by "it"?
Hegel: What do you mean by "get"?
Frege: What do you mean by "any"?
Camus: It's worse.

Of course all this is before Don Trump.

[iambiguous]

Bob Dylan

The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.

You think?

Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to The Smithsonian. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.

Someone explain this please.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

Anyone here ever wanted to?

I kinda live where I find myself.

If you know what he means.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Especially if he understands it the way we do.

God, I'm glad I'm not me.

Let's imagine God's reaction.

[iambiguous]

Existential Comics

Avengers Endgame spoilers: it cannot ultimately distract you from the despair that haunts the core of your being.

Unless of course you're a Kid.

Philosophers: "we don't know shit."
Scientists: "empirically speaking, we don't know shit."
Some dude on YouTube who skimmed three Wikipedia articles: "yeah I'm pretty sure I've got everything figured out."

Probably you, right Kid?

Philosophers don't want to admit it, but the meaning of life is quite obviously to maximize capital gains for the shareholders.

Besides, it's in the Bible.

It's important to read French novels to know that despite the inherent absurdity of it all, we can still live a life worth living.
It's important to read German novels to know that, actually, no you can't.

Depending on the translation of course.

How do I use philosophy in my day to day life?
Well, for example, say someone cuts me of in traffic, I think to myself: "philosophically speaking, fuck that guy."

Or, philosophically speaking, don't fuck him.

The arrogance of people who say "philosophy is useless" is astounding. As though we have finished thinking, and all of our ideas are now correct.

Okay, true, but how does that make philosophy useful?

[iambiguous]

Leonard Cohen

You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself.

Of course he doesn't explain how one might actually do that. Himself, for example.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

I tried that once. But now I'm sticking with the brandy.

It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.

Cue, among others, Zorba: https://youtu.be/4UV6HVMRmdk

I guess you go for nothing, if you really want to go that far.

Either way, it's coming for you.

Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care.

Here's to them indeed.

My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.

How can this possibly be true, he thought.

[iambiguous]

Federico Fellini

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

In other words, just like the rest of us.

Marriage is a tyranny, a mortification of man's natural instincts. Man needs a multiplicity of relationships.

While [for some] forbidding women the same.

There is abundant testimony that if we choose love rather than self, we gain immeasurably.

Trust me: Not mine.

I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so.

Not to worry though, others will make them for you.

When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity...I can be sure that I am right.

People really do believe things like this.

Fate is written in the face.

People really do believe things like this.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

me: I have symptoms
doktor: you're dead
me: oh. right

Finally, proof there's an afterlife.

pardoning a war criminal is in itself a war crime

Maybe even war itself.

is it now yet?

Not to worry: it's on the way.

still human after all these years

You know, sort of.

I penned an apology to my cat for not understanding our relationship

Me too. But my dog ate it.

sunday is an existential question

If only on Monday.

[iambiguous]

Michelangelo Antonioni

A film you can explain in words is not a real film.

People really believe things like this.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

Or here [for some]: When I am posting an argument I never think about what I am posting. I simply post it.

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.

Of course we already know why, right Kids?

Life should be taken ironically; otherwise, it becomes a tragedy.

Or a farce.

The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.

Then that was the part I missed.

Often to understand, we have to look into emptiness.

We'll need some examples of course.

[iambiguous]

Lisa Scottoline

Even people who counted their blessings never counted them in the morning. For one thing, there wasn't time.

Starting tomorrow, let's make time.

Let's talk about a decision that women have to make every morning----big purse or little purse?

Is this a real thing, ladies?

There were twenty questions, and forty was the top score. I scored a thirty- eight, which means I would be graduating with honors if I majored in being a sociopath.

I scored 42 myself.

We can't control what people do or say, even if it's dumb.

So, Kids, what do you think of that?

I plan everything. I set everyone in motion, and when the moment comes, I strike. I always win in the end. They never see me coming. Know why? Because I’m already there.

Not that you can be everywhere of course.

Mary wondered when law got so complicated that even the lawyers needed lawyers.

And not just in the Oval Office.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

I can't feel my facebook when I'm with you

Twitter is still intact though.

nihilism in the kitchen with the rope

A noose actually.

last exit to jonestown

By way of Brooklyn of course.
At least in the movies.

sad when people die except for rich assholes on the top of everest

Oh, a few of them die too.

I just sneezed so hard my inner child died

On purpose in other words.

past me doesn't exist in theory

future me probably does though.

[iambiguous]

Barbara Kingsolver

I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.

That's how these fears happen, alright.

In her experience people had worries or they had tons of money, not both.

Well, there are a few exceptions no doubt.

Believing takes practice.

Either that or none at all.

Communism? Most people have no idea what it is. I do not exaggerate. Look around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working people owning the means of their own production. What do you make of that?' You know, he might be all for it.

Yeah, but then bring up the dictatorship of the proletariat.

You can't know somebody, I thought, till you've followed him home.

So, who's following you?

When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.

You think?

[iambiguous]

Delia Owens

I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.

Well, not here perhaps.

Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers.

Surely, women can take this too far.

Time ensures children never know their parents young.

Let's decide how important this is.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.

And then there are those who can live without those who cannot live without them.

Ya need some girlfriends, hon, ’cause they’re furever. Without a vow. A clutch of women’s the most tender, most tough place on Earth.

Don't expect some many most men to understand this.

How much do you trade to defeat loneliness?

Never been lonely, he thought.

[iambiguous]

Ted Chiang

Experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Holy shit!!!
Right?

Brain damage is never a good idea, no matter what your friends say.

Hmm. What do your friends say?

The idea of thinking in a linguistic yet nonphonological mode always intrigued me. I had a friend born of deaf parents; he grew up using American Sign Language, and he told me that he often thought in ASL instead of English. I used to wonder what it was like to have one’s thoughts be manually coded, to reason using an inner pair of hands instead of an inner voice. With Heptapod B, I was experiencing something just as foreign: my thoughts were becoming graphically coded. There were trance-like moments during the day when my thoughts weren’t expressed with my internal voice; instead, I saw semagrams with my mind’s eye, sprouting like frost on a windowpane.

This thing: https://www.languageconnections.com/blo ... eptapod-b/

In the Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead attempted to give a rigorous foundation to mathematics using formal logic as their basis. They began with what they considered to be axioms, and used those to derive theorems of increasing complexity. By page 362, they had established enough to prove "1 + 1 = 2.”

Hell, any child knows that.

The ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving in. Fermat's principle sounds weird because it describes light's behavior in goal-oriented terms. It sounds like a commandment to a light beam: "Thou shalt minimize or maximize the time taken to reach thy destination.”

Okay, but does it have free will?

Think of cocaine. In its natural form, as coca leaves, it's appealing, but not to an extent that it usually becomes a problem. But refine it, purify it, and you get a compound that hits your pleasure receptors with an unnatural intensity. That's when it becomes addictive.

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.

Let's call it the Elena Epaneshnik Syndrome.

[iambiguous]

so sad today

omg i love your opinion about bullshit

Let's see if I'll love yours.

am i dying? asking for a friend

If I had one, I would too.

one time i was optimistic and it did not go well

Well, after all, why would it?

i don’t know what i hate about you but it’s something

On the other hand, don't get me started.

i don’t need luck i have death

Good luck with that, he thought.

what should my next mistake be

I know, I'll post this.

[iambiguous]

Greg Iles

Not far away lay the big cannons that had held Ulysses Grant at bay for fifty siege days while the citizens of the town ate rat flesh and clung to their long-cherished beliefs. How many had died in that lost cause? Dr. Tarver wondered. Fifty thousand casualties at Gettysburg alone, and for what? To free the slaves who built this house? To preserve the Union? Had Stonewall Jackson died to create a nation of couch potatoes ignorant of their own history and incapable of simple mathematics? If those brave soldiers in blue and gray had seen what lay in the future, they would have laid down their muskets and walked home to their farms.

Let's just say I doubt it. Though, sure, point taken.

Because death is the end, and if a man doesn’t speak before it silences him, then the things he holds closest die with him.

But he is still dead, right?

As we move, a roar like the voice of some satanic creature bellows from the staircase. The fire’s voice. I’ve heard it in lots of places, and the sound turns my insides to jelly. There’s a reason human beings will jump ten floors onto concrete to escape being burned alive. That roar is part of it.

You know what that reminds us of.

We rarely act from logic when facing the critical choices of our lives.

Well, you know why I think so.

Kaiser and Lenz are staring at each other like hunters who have walked into a thicket after a lion and found a unicorn.

Yeah, that's crystal clear.

I’m a man, and I respond to all that you are. But I also feel things that a father feels for a daughter. Mainly, I feel very protective of you. And my first duty is to protect you from me.

Things we just don't talk about.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

So, how does yours measure up?

"Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk." Seneca the Younger

Going to war, for erxample.

"Cinema plus Psychoanalysis equals the Science of Ghosts.” Jacques Derrida

Yep, sounds like something he'd say.

“Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.” Jacques Derrida

Well, after "nothing left to lose" maybe.

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.” Jacques Derrida

And not just the Nazis.

I still do not know for sure, if people change or they just reveal themselves." Clarice Lispector

More to the point [as often as not], they don't either.

[iambiguous]

Taylor Jenkins Reid

But at some point, you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall and that's all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or, maybe not that. Maybe it's more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own, knowing they might well drown and you'll have to watch.

Or, no doubt, something like that.

It’s like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams.

Either that or running from them.

The sun rises the next day after mothers lose their babies, after men lose their wives, after countries lose wars. The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise. So you can’t go around assessing love by whether or not the sun rises. The sun doesn’t care about love. It just cares about rising.

At least it cares.

If there are an infinite number of universes, I don’t know how I got so lucky as to end up in this one. Maybe there are other lives for me out there, but I can’t imagine being as happy in any of them as I am right now, today. I have to think that while I may exist in other universes, none is as good as this.

I've never thought that. Not even once. Or once and long forgotten.

Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.

She means a gold star of course.

I’m not scared of flying. I’m scared of sharks, hurricanes, and false imprisonment. I’m scared that I will never do anything of value with my life. But I’m not scared of flying.

And who doesn't have their own rendition of that.

[iambiguous]

Janis Joplin

Maybe my audiences can enjoy my music more if they think I'm destroying myself.

He wondered if he did.

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I.

I once flew over Texas so I know what she means.

I'd rather not sing than sing quiet.

And weren't we the lucky ones.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.

You know, after He feeds all the starving children.

Don't go looking for Mr. Right. Look for Mr. Right Now.

On the other hand, how dangerous can that be?

I had a lot of hurts and confusions. You know, it's hard when you're a kid to be different. You're all full of things, and you don't know that it's about.

The me, myself and I syndrome.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." Blaise Pascal

Imagine him explaining this to Don Trump.

“It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams.” Don DeLillo

A hell of a lot simpler.

“Facts are lonely things.” Don DeLillo

And, no, not just your facts.

“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.” Don DeLillo

Not unlike what we do here.

“California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.” Don DeLillo.

Not that it all isn't true.

“The future belongs to crowds.” Don DeLillo

Or, in the red states, mobs.

[iambiguous]

Woody Allen

Standing in a garage no more makes you a car than standing in a church makes you a Christian.

Wow, he figured that out.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

That's actually the equivalent of two or more regrets for most of us.

Skeptic that I was as an adolescent, I had recently come to believe in a Supreme Being after thumbing through a Victoria's Secret catalogue.

As God intended no doubt.

I carry a bullet in my breast pocket. Once, a crazy evangelist threw a bible at me, which would have gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.

Not only that but I wasn't there to witness it.

I've become the person I've always hated, but I'm happier.

Not in a million years, he thought.

I see the glass half full...but of poison.

Or: I see the glass half full...and of poison.

[iambiguous]

Daniel Kahneman

Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.

Imagine then how strange it is to me.

A general “law of least effort” applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.

Cue my groots, right?

The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little.

And, sure, especially when they see a lot.

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.

And then objectivists among us who know everything. Claiming there was never any chance that they wouldn't.

...we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

In other words, blindness all the way down.

The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.

But, if your mind works wholly in sync with nature, it doesn't have to make sense at all.

[iambiguous]

Nein

Your own. Personal. Complete and utter loss of faith in anything you still might have somehow been naive enough to believe in.

On the other hand, what else is new?

We regret to inform you that we will not be informing you.

Again in other words.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Monday to Friday.

Only now it includes the weekend.

If we could signify nothing, we would. If we could. But we can’t. So we won’t.

Unless we can but choose not to.

May. Turning ever so slowly into What Might Have Been.

Then cue all the other months.

Congratulations, graduates. We regret to inform you that your alma doesn’t mater.

Unless of course it actually does.