I always thought Donald and Daisy looked alike…

24. I’ve been doing a lot of research into incest recently, because it’s strange to me how ingrained our aversion to incest is, and how we always attempt to justify it by saying it’s just ‘icky’ or wrong. I’m also interested in the ‘moral’ and evolutionary psychology behind cannibalism, contamination, and religion. See Haidt, et al.

I’m going to take a page out of RaJ’s book and ask you all about this. Click the image to make it bigger, read it, then think about it for a bit:

How exactly can you tell if something is incest? Does the porn show you their birth certificates, or are you just supposed to take their word for it? And what is animated incest? Am I really supposed to infer that the two cartoon characters are related?

… curious…

Last Year: Philosophers eat their young, Shh!! He'll hear us!
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Garfield Minus Garfield

10. When I was ten, I thought about Superman and the movie Contact and wondered whether it was selfish for humans to assume that we were created in God’s image. It was a slippery slope from there.

This just hilarious.

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An elephant divided against itself cannot stand

It surprises me how nobody in the blogosphere or the media has noticed this very interesting foible about the shape the presidential field has taken. I’m writing this before Rudy Giuliani gets third place in Florida, but I don’t really see a need to wait.

As soon as Giuliani drops out of the race, there will be only four candidates left vying for the Republican presidential nomination: Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul.

Each of these candidates speaks to a different wing of the Republican party. Mitt Romney, a businessman, has taken firm command of the issues of the economy, effectively representing the part of the party that seeks low taxes and a free market. John McCain, a war hero, has taken the issue of national security as his own, along with the section of the party that thinks global terrorism is the most important issue. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has appealed to the religious right and evangelical base, but precious few others. Ron Paul, meanwhile, has breathed life into the previously moribund libertarian wing of the party.

Each candidate appeals to a distinct section of the party that had previously been united. In essence, the party has been split in four.

Whoever wins the nomination will only win because he managed to get the most delegates, not because he unified the party. And without a unified party, the Republicans have no chance of taking the presidency this November. This is just conventional wisdom, what isn’t (yet) is what a fitting metaphor it is that these four candidates are the four candidates that are left. Essentially, this race has turned into a metaphor of itself. How perfectly amusing.

I hope someone else picks up on this.

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I’m incredible, arrogant, and deluded, but not for the reasons you argue

Dear Anonymous,

Wow, I haven’t had an anonymous comment in a while. I’d actually grown to miss them! And I’m not even being facetious. I like anonymous comments. I even argued for them here.

Anyway, here’s the comment. I’ve split it up to respond to each part.

Forgive my sounding like a jerk, please, but you can’t be serious.
If you claim to know the answers to all of these questions, you are incredibly arrogant and deluded.

You don’t sound like a jerk and I’m not really serious. The post was mostly tongue-in-cheek. I was trying to come up with a list of 100 things and ended up locking myself into that style. I realized my list should have included much more history, but then I realized how little valuable history I knew.

More than anything, the post was an attempt to show that— no matter who we are— our education could always be improved. I was trying to list human realizations, accomplishments, and discoveries that people should be aware of as part of our cumulative heritage. Does that seem fair enough?

“What is a black hole?” Really? You know? Publish!

A black hole is an area of condensed mass so great that even light cannot escape. Extra credit would go to anyone who used the terms ‘Hawking radiation,’ ‘quantum mechanics,’ ‘general relativity,’ ‘quantum gravity,’ ‘event horizon,’ or ’spaghettification.’ Double-extra credit for the last one. My post didn’t ask for precise knowledge, only working knowledge, which I have just provided.

“What do Muslims/Christians/Hindus/etc believe?” You think that they all believe the same thing?

They should if they’re being logically consistent with their beliefs. But even though most people cherry-pick their faith, there are core tenets of certain faiths that all members have in common. For instance, I cannot call myself a Muslim while simultaneously believing Mohammed was a wanker who conned everyone. I can have Muslim-like beliefs, but Islam-proper is removed from my grasp. I have no problem with people believing different things than other members of their faith, I just want people to have a general outline of what these faiths imply because I think it’s important to know your world.

“What is gravity?” What is a force? Please tell us.

Gravity is the force mass exerts on other mass in the form of pull. The net result is always that the smaller object gets pulled into the larger object. Force is mass times acceleration unless you’re being ‘deep,’ in which case I have no idea what you’re aiming at.

“Explain quantum theory” Wow. This just shows your ignorace. (sic)

If you didn’t get the joke, how could you single out the punchline? I know nobody can explain quantum theory just like I know nobody (myself included) has full knowledge of all the things on that list. That’s why it’s on there: to call attention to itself and the absurdity of the list. Sorry if that went over your head, perhaps I should have been less subtle.

I’m sure you get the idea. Give me a break.
And you clearly need to do some reading on metaphysics–you don’t know what “is” means. Get rid of this list and start back there–look up “ontology”.

That’s rich. You realize I’m a philosopher, right? “Is” is a form of “to be.” Aristotle specified two forms of “is” into qualitative identity and numerical identity. To say that something is something else is to imply that it has properties similar to the other thing (qualitative) or that it is necessary and sufficient to form that thing (numerical). I think you imagine me to be using the second form, when in reality I’m using a more colloquial speech to better suite my readers. I could use a more precise formal language, but that seems counter-productive.

Ontology is the study of being. I always remember by thinking of the exact opposite as “Offtology,” ha ha. I’m not sure why you mentioned ontology at all. It’s tangential at best, irrelevant at worst. If you’ll tell me, I’d gladly respond.

I imagine you’re an undergrad at York University interested in philosophy of science and checking your favourites tab from your work in an office or something. I don’t think you really want to get into a flame war. You probably just took the previous post too literal and too arrogant, then mistook my personality from that post and commented in an attempt to show me the ‘light.’

How far off am I?

—Pixelation Qyw Styx

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I knew it! You had the good old days in your pocket all along!

My tentative prediction for the nominations:

•  Obama/Bloomberg or Biden
•  McCain/Bloomberg or Lieberman

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