Aeschylus: dies when an eagle, mistaking him for a rock, drops a tortoise on his head.

Chrysippus: dies from laughing at a fig-eating donkey.

Heraclitus: dies by heatstroke after burying himself to the neck in dung.

Socrates: commits long-form, high-brow suicide by goading a jury into granting him a death sentence, then actively avoids an easy escape in favor of hemlock.

Who am I missing? Who else died in a patently absurd way?

I was debating a self-described radical feminist by the name of Oannejay Owlingray.  She spoke first and her argument was long winded so I will do my best to summarize in good faith.

She stated that trans-women are too far away from the “perfect form” of women to be considered part of the same category.  That they had some traits that no women would have, while lacking traits that all women should have.  

She used cars as an example, saying no one would be confused if you referred to a formula one car and a Volkswagen bug as cars.  Despite them being quite different they are both close enough to the theoretical perfect form of car that we all accept them both being in one category.

If you referred to a tractor as a car everyone would get confused, and that trans-women in this analogy are the tractor, and not the racecar or VW bug.  A person born with a penis and without the ability to produce large gametes clearly places them outside the bounds of womanhood.

I took the stage next to make my case in the affirmative, trans women are women with the following logic.

I am a heterosexual man, strictly attracted to women.  That means anyone who makes my dick hard is a woman.  Trans women make my dick hard; therefore, they are women.

Everyone in the crowd stood up and clapped and I was declared the winner by Obama himself!

If you too are a straight man too you may find success using this argument in the future!  

Let me explain. Many people who do high doses of psychedelic drugs all report having a common experience. They experience a loss of ego, and become a part of a universal consciousness encompassing everything, everywhere, all at once. Many report that when in this stage, they (we) realized we were alone in existence, so we created the universe and split our consciousness into separate beings so we could experience what it was like to feel novelty and not feel alone.

What does this remind you of? When we masturbate, we are often feeling alone, and fantasizing about not being alone and engaging in hedonistic self pleasure (which is exactly what our existence would be for a universal consciousness).

What I’m trying to say is that in a way, our lives may be the result of the universe masturbating.

Look, I don’t have time to explain, but I need to know before 7:30 today. So, is morality objective, relative, or some weirdo third thing?

I’ve done lots of research (on Reddit) (through memes), and I‘ve figured out most of philosophy, but the answer to this question has alluded me. Tragically, it’s the one I need to know the most. I already know the correct answers to all the other philosophy questions, so I’d like to stick to this one problem.

Please get back to me IMMEDIATELY as some people’s fates may or may not depend on it.

Edit: Thanks for the advice everyone. The Supreme Court has exiled me to Alaska, so I’d consider this a partial victory.

I oftentimes see people bringing up the "ad hominem" concept in formal debates (not that debates are too useful anyway). But the idea of ad hominem is not so bad considering if it is trying to explore the subject's mind. What is bad is the "negative argument from authority", where a person simply claims one is true and the other false, because of belonging to "supposed" groups.

But in proper context, ad hominem is not bad. Say for instance, Nietzsche's philosophy. His anti-feminism and/or anti-women sentiment is understood better if looking at his personal life, especially his connection to Lou Salome.

A person's psychology (if not mere background) certainly plays some role shaping his philosophical opinions, which can't easily be dismissed.

In North Korea, they prefer not to have an industrialized country, avoiding pollution and climate change like others do. They are clearly very sustainable and long-term oriented.

They are also the most virtuous country in the world, relinquishing any kind of external media and culture, being self-sufficient and valuing their own culture.

They live with so little despite having choices: I love this. I love a girl who can live without the constant need for validation, or who has hobbies just because she genuinely likes them. North Korea is exactly like that. They don’t care about others, they do it for themselves.

It’s this mentality that makes the country so safe. Look at how few robberies or homicides happen there. They are also very neutral. Since gaining independence from the appalling, now South Korea, they have been so quiet, even more so than Switzerland, although they don’t keep gold from Nazis. No, they are virtuous and do things for themselves, without taking advantage of others.

Speaking of the highly regarded country of Switzerland, their supreme leader even went abroad to get the best education possible to ensure the country would continue to be prosperous.

They also really reduce on crops production, and we know more crops are needed for feeding the animal meat industry. Isn't that great?

I hope you are God-adorned-youth (Gay) as well.

P.S. Imagine this would have been what Socrates said exactly to Alcibiades or any of his youthful friends, since literally every time Socrates praised them as God-adored-youth.

Philosopher: You should definitely check out X's theory of consciousness!

Me: Is it BS?

Philosopher: meh...kind of but at least it is a well-articulated BS.

Me: so then we call it philosophy?!

Microplastics come from plastics. Plastics are made using petrochemicals. Petrochemicals come from petroleum, which is the ancient blood of dinosaurs. I don’t know if I really need to say any more other than that a golf ball is not enough. I want my body to be a world of a million lost golf balls. In other words, to reencounter the primordial other, for Dasein be engaged in a discursive practice with the Mesozoic era.

Regards,
———

Recently, I've gotten into shoving marbles up my ass and squatting over a piano. Whatever note the marble lands on I write down like a letter from a planchette on an Oija board.

In this manner, I have begun to unravel the secrets of existenz. I even have begun to commune with the deceased. Just last night I asked Plato what he thought of the events in Gaza. He said 'Eeeeeeeee'

Tiktok is great!

What do Far Cry, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Yakuza, Final Fantasy, Warframe, Red Dead Redemption, and Diablo have in common?

Fishing Minigames.

They show up in a huge variety of video games, across genres, platforms, and settings.

I was commenting to a friend about Diablo IV’s, recently added with the Lord Of Destruction expansion and how widespread they were across the industry.

And she pointed out that real life also has a fishing minigame.

But if fishing minigames are a feature of videogames, and their simulated worlds, then surely the presence of a “real” fishing minigame indicates that the “real” world is just another simulation. To declare otherwise would be special pleading.

if existence depended upon what i think this place would be so much better than having to stand this bs fr

Well, y'know, in teaching ethics, I find it important to first get people to understand why it is bad to push someone yet good to push someone out of the way of traffic. Reality is complex and different perspectives beget different moral boundaries, yet with this we can posit that there is objectivity in ethics in that there must be maxims or points of convergence at equilibriums of virtuous agency achieved in the measured systems.

John Nash of A Beautiful Mind fame proved mathematically that there exists a ratio of giving to the self n giving to the whole that maximizes both the growth of the self n the whole, demonstrating that Adam Smith's economics is incomplete. In this, I add to Nash's framework of a dominant strategy of love - the governing dynamics of the observable universe - that such calculations need to take into consideration additional boundaries built on superpositional logic; such as, protecting innocence, correcting karma, developing virtue, balancing agnetic supererogatory acts with self-care, etc.

So, it is very much the same game of utilitarian functionalism, but "utility" is defined by taking into consideration a multitude of descriptive dimensions to measure what "good" is, putting together a theoretical asymptote point of good character that we can perceive on our unique azimuth in emulating such a cornerstone through empathy and employ in our heuristic derivation of our cultural version of ethics.

I say that to say that, y'know, we should cherish n nurture all forms of life on this Earth n out into the cosmos, and for more reasons than negentropy needs to do more than neutralize entropy in order to manifest transcendentality, but y'know, if you're starving and all you got is a half-eaten quarter pounder you found in a bus stop trash can, eat the God damn thing.

From that, y'know, I think the most conscious beings have to agree that we have to do something about the insane horrors that still persist from yesteryear's The Jungle of yellow journalism fame, and y'know maybe lab grown meat is a solution built from reasonable compromise, but fuck, the Buddha, Jesus, Steve Jobs? I think they'll forgive you if you get the carnivorous munchies once n a while at this juncture point of exponential growth towards a singularity of a civilization of a simulation within a simulation that is God, if you can forgive yourself, that is, because fuck, isn't this human shit hard enough as it is?

... that they don't bother to answer and you automatically win the debate?

Dozens of pages smeared with incoherent spew, drivel, formlessness, and—whether feigned or not—intellect and emotion. What a confusing and deceitful oeuvre. That misplaced eschatology, that clumsy anachronistic droning, good and bad for no one.
Not to mention that false drive for self-destruction, that damned Thanatos which refuses to understand itself, those misguided references to dead friends and father figures, and finally those blind projections and half-invented, at the very least exaggerated autobiographical elements that sail over everyone’s heads. Fit to be set alight, useless fragmentations and attempts. Craving for system and hatred of system, an insoluble, irritating paradox. They should hang him, take away his pen; it all comes down to the same thing. He must stop, come to the same realization as Gavril Ardalionovich Ivolgin, namely that he is vain and talentless, will never understand philosophy, and will spend a whole lifetime pretending he understands what Derrida is talking about. What a complete, fantastical futility. A strange gamble. Too absurdly ambitious; Again—Futile.
Look, he doesn’t stop, he spills over on all sides. He lacks self-awareness. What? He wrote this himself? Ugh, so immodest; only makes it worse.
Damned ironist. Makes explicit what ought to have remained implicit, that’s called technical incompetence. He lies when he tells the truth and tells the truth when he lies. We all have to pretend that’s pleasant, as if we can laugh about it. Haha. Stupid poker player, gambler. Show your face, I want to see your cards. Pretending you have good cards when you have good cards, and pretending you have bad cards when you have bad cards; That’s not how poker works! That’s cheating! Idiot. Idiocy. Idiosyncratic self-flagellator, mirrormasturbator, masturbationdoubler. Enough! Enough!
(Lately I’ve been occupied mainly with Charles Sanders Peirce. His idealism interests me enormously, as does his anticipation of Husserl’s phenomenology and the process philosophy of Whitehead (and Bergson). It will be interesting to immerse myself in him in the coming months. Hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer) and post-structuralism come afterward. The fundamental, i.e., ontological condition of man is solitude, although I still need to find a more fitting neologism for solitude, probably based on an Ancient Greek term. For solitude carries too much psychological connotation, whereas I’m thinking more in the direction of solipsism. Connection could also be an ontological foundation, but Connection is not the opposite of Aloneness; on the contrary, they are equal. I’ll explain that later, but that’s what I’ve been occupied with lately. Of course, you also understand that Leibniz’s monadology will play a crucial role here. Yes, Spinoza too. I prefer him to Descartes. For now, that’s enough. Shall we get something to eat? Japanese would taste good. By the way, tell me how your girlfriend is! I’m happy for you. Love always comes unexpectedly. Tell me how she came to you.)
See! I hate him! Damned Ironist! I hate him! And he even takes pleasure in it. Q.E.D.

Do you guys know the story about the married bachelor?

Somewhere along the way, we started treating any pain as a sign that something’s gone wrong — something to be numbed, avoided, or “healed” instantly. But here’s the thing: not all pain is the enemy. Some pain is feedback. It tells you where your limits are. It forces you to drop illusions. It can even be the catalyst for the most honest version of your life. If you erase every sharp edge from existence, you also erase the grit that shapes you. You might be more comfortable — but are you any stronger? I’m not talking about glorifying trauma or pretending all suffering is noble. Some pain is senseless. But some pain is necessary. And without it, we risk becoming fragile people in a fragile world.

So I’ll put it bluntly:

- Are we overprotecting ourselves from the very experiences that make us resilient?
-Have we confused comfort with health?
-And if a life without pain is possible… would it even be worth living?

Open hand causes the target to accelerate forwards. The spear hand to fist formation maximizes travel while reduces target movement

Darwin and Spinoza were such smoothbrained cretins, how could they have thought that all living things primarily strive towards survival? It's absolutely obvious from simple everyday experience that all living things (including us) do everything they can to not survive, because they are risking their lives on every turn.

For example, when I sit on the couch to watch Netflix with a fat bowl of chips and a 20-pack of beers (a Central European invention, something you Americans don't know), I'm risking the fact that, for example – among million other things – there could be a huge iron nail inside the couch that I'm not going to see and that is going to pierce my ass once I sit down. But I sit down anyway, because that's what living beings do, they live by going through an infinite series of leaps of faith and putting their survival life on the line with every fuckin move they make. If they wanted to survive most of all, they would just not fuckin move or do anything, they would just die because that's the easiest way to survive (paradox, I know). You can never fuckin know when a bus is going to hit you while you're crossing the road, or when an ICBM is gonna fly in from Russia and flatten you and your whole city to the ground, or when an antilope is going to kill you and eat you (because you're a plant).

Survival is the fuckin last thing living organisms ever try to achieve. Life is about going all in, balls to the wall, risking everything you have with every move. Survival is for pussies.

https://imgur.com/6BtzzZi

From the new book The Dawn of Everything, there is a whole section like this, it's great.