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Do you prefer the extended summer thread format? This poll is closed. |
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| Yes |
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126 | 44.21% |
| No |
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39 | 13.68% |
| I'm Scottish |
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120 | 42.11% |
| Total: | 285 votes | ||
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Jakabite posted:What the heck is up with all this scallions business? They’re spring onions you traitors As a Norn Irn man i refuse to use the imposed veg name of the vile foreign oppressors (says ironically in english). 
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Jul 7, 2021 10:22
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Just Another Lurker posted:As a Norn Irn man i refuse to use the imposed veg name of the vile foreign oppressors (says ironically in english). Go on home British onions, go on home
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Jul 7, 2021 10:24
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therattle posted:Did you maybe continue a transaction someone had already begun with a pork belly? no it was the last item on the receipt lol and yes the word is scallions you hallions
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Jul 7, 2021 10:33
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crispix posted:no it was the last item on the receipt lol It was probably a conspiracy with Big Pork. It’s spring onions. It’s a BRITISH word for a BRITISH vegetable.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:41
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Scallions are green onions, Welsh onions, bunching onions, Allium fistulosum, they grow in bunches and will not form large bulbs no matter what time of year it is or how long you leave them in the soil. Spring onions are wee onions that look a bit like an onion does in spring. 
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Jul 7, 2021 10:42
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Guavanaut posted:Scallions are green onions, Welsh onions, bunching onions, Allium fistulosum, they grow in bunches and will not form large bulbs no matter what time of year it is or how long you leave them in the soil. My mind is blown. I didn’t even know the bulb forming sort was a thing.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:45
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Oh dear me posted:But this all seems like something I could say without any input from absurdism etc at all, just from having a rather traditional attitude to ethics. I suppose finding a meaning is finding an answer to the question 'what is the point of you?', and if someone asked me that, I would cite my (obviously inadequate) efforts to improve the lot of various sentient beings, i.e. my virtuous actions, such as they are. The kind ditch-digger and the altruistic activist are both fine from this perspective, but if someone said their meaning was just to enjoy themselves, or to acquire as much stuff as possible, I would think that was bad and it would be better if they didn't think they had a meaning, because then they might feel compelled to find a more ethical one. Another trap that some people (hi) fall into with deriving meaning from doing good is that it's hard to justify the stuff that you do just for you. To my mind, you've basically got four choices: just ignore the problem (then become miserable because your life lacks meaning by your own measure); just don't do stuff for yourself (then become miserable, burn out, ultimately do less good, become more miserable); justify it on the basis that you've done your part so you're entitled to it (the danger here is that, if you're the reflective type, you might recognise the potential for motivated reasoning and so err on the side of not seeing value in doing things for you, become miserable, burn out, &c); or, justify it on the basis that it's essential maintenance in order to make it so you are capable of doing good at other times. The problem with the last one (in my extensive experience thinking like that) is that it's bad for your self esteem to just see yourself as a "tool" to be "maintained", rather than having intrinsic value anyway & doing stuff just for you to have intrinsic worth. Then, that lack of self-esteem makes you miserable, &c. These problems become especially hard if you just can't do much good for whatever reason. Maybe you just get old, & regardless of what you've done in the past it's hard to see your continued life as meaningful. Or some people might have disabilities and just be incapable of interacting in the world much at all, for good or bad. Absurdism allows them to find meaning in just spending months building a kickass dwarf fortress settlement or w/e. To take a less extreme example, you agreed that the kind ditch-digger's life has meaning - but, what if that person was generally kind-hearted, but just antisocial, so didn't particularly do any good? Or, if they saw value in doing good, they might feel that their life lacks meaning as compared to the activist, because they just aren't able to do that kind of (more far-reaching) stuff. I don't think any reasonable system of morality would judge any of these people harshly, but it's an easy pitfall in judging your own actions by reference to whether or not you make the world better, because of the core problem in judging your own moral worth: Josef bugman posted:I can want to be a good person and still make folks uncomfortable or upset. If you just make up your own meaning then what if you are wrong Like I don't mean to poo poo on your worldview here, like I said, if it works for you, great. It definitely did not work for me though. I identify a lot with the kinds of examples that I've given here, so embracing absurdity and finding meaning in obviously pointless activities makes me much happier, and, therefore, much more able to actually do good things. Oh dear me posted:Oh, ok. Fair enough, but this is surely standard atheism - or even more common, if you add in all those who (like me) can't see how an external entity could be an arbiter of our morality anyway, however powerful they claimed to be. 
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Jul 7, 2021 10:46
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Jakabite posted:My mind is blown. I didn’t even know the bulb forming sort was a thing.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:53
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Comrade Fakename posted:Just lol if you haven’t been going out of your way to use the self-serve checkout as often as possible in the supermarket for years. I like self serve checkouts coz I can pay with rakes of change that I had lying around, where as if I did that with a person I'd feel guilty.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:54
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Borrovan posted:That's not actually a problem in absurdism, because it involves recognising that all action is ultimately futile so who cares. If you're judging yourself by your moral worth though, then drat right you should be thinking about that - people who don't even question whether their moral assessment might be wrong are, ime, the kind of people who tend to be wrong. And if you are questioning it, then you ultimately have to conclude that you have no idea whether you're right or not, which, if you view your life having purpose as being contingent on "doing right", means you've just got to live with not knowing whether your life has meaning or not. Separating "meaning" from "virtue" allows you to just be, your existence stops being contingent on fundamentally unanswerable questions so those questions become much less urgent, so you can reflect on them much more clearly & impartially (imo). But without virtue how can things have meaning. If I am not doing the best I can, then what the gently caress am I doing? Also the idea that "oh we just have to live with unponderable questions" is irksome, surely someones worked this poo poo out.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:57
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I like the regular checkout because somebody just deals with all my poo poo for me, instead of having to do a bunch of faff & then it goes wrong anyway & you've still got to interact with a person. Also, since supermarkets have made a conscious choice to accept more theft in exchange for hiring less staff, you're morally obligated to steal poo poo on the self service, which stresses me out sometimes.
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Jul 7, 2021 10:58
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The ASDA near me have these handheld scanners now so you scan your stuff while you’re shopping and can pack your bags while doing the shop, then just pay at the exit and it’s a godsend for a) avoiding speaking to anyone and b) avoiding queues
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Jul 7, 2021 11:01
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Josef bugman posted:Also the idea that "oh we just have to live with unponderable questions" is irksome, surely someones worked this poo poo out. Guavanaut posted:Some of it doesn't make sense as an individual because it comes from a cloud of people, other bits don't make sense as a conscious mind because they come from the wet bits underlying that.  Borrovan posted:you're morally obligated to steal poo poo on the self service, which stresses me out sometimes.
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Jul 7, 2021 11:02
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https://twitter.com/alex_niven/status/1412697033148874755
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Jul 7, 2021 11:03
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Josef bugman posted:But without virtue how can things have meaning. If I am not doing the best I can, then what the gently caress am I doing? Also the idea that "oh we just have to live with unponderable questions" is irksome, surely someones worked this poo poo out.
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Jul 7, 2021 11:09
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Borrovan posted:It just does. On the one hand, every pebble on the beach has meaning - they don't do anything, but who cares. On the other, all the good anyone can do ultimately comes to nothing anyway, so has no more "meaning" than those pebbles. Embracing the absurd lets you just exist, & if you're not constantly trying to justify your own existence then it's much easier to do good, precisely because it's easier to accept that you're doing the best you can & that's fine. If you're deriving your meaning from virtue, then doing your best isn't enough, because you have to be correct, and you just can't be sure of that. I don't want to just exist. What I want is to have a positive impact on the world and on people. That requires justification. Everything needs justification, or at least everything a person does and says and is. Even if it's something small it all needs to have a justification for why a thing is done that way.
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Jul 7, 2021 11:11
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Josef bugman posted:surely someones worked this poo poo out. Unfortuantely, philosophy is not a solved problem yet.
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Jul 7, 2021 11:13
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Josef bugman posted:I don't want to just exist. What I want is to have a positive impact on the world and on people. That requires justification. Everything needs justification, or at least everything a person does and says and is. Even if it's something small it all needs to have a justification for why a thing is done that way. Why?
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Jul 7, 2021 11:14
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Because then it's explicable. Having a reason to explain why a thing is a certain way is important and helps us to have a more full understanding of the world. That and if we can discover the reason why a thing is the way it is, it means it can usually be changed more easily if it has to. If something is the way it is "just because" or "oooh it's really complex you wouldn't get it" then it's just putting layers of problems in the way of changing it. Sometimes things are "complicated" but they can usually be boiled down to more simple things. Also still sad that philosophy isn't solved yet. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Jul 7, 2021 |
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Jul 7, 2021 11:16
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Miftan posted:Unfortuantely, philosophy is not a solved problem yet. 2,500 years and people are STILL sitting round stroking their chins and saying stuff like; "Hmm, yes but how does one define what 'being good' is?" Face it: if they haven't worked it out by now, it ain't happening ever. Garbage subject, fit only for the nerdiest of nerds.
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Jul 7, 2021 11:35
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knox_harrington posted:Yeah, I'm just coming up to 2 years of zero contact with my Dad. It's been a huge improvement to my life just not having to deal with his nonsense.  Going on a decade of not talking to the aul boy, because he's an absolute poo poo oval office. No complaints - "ah Imagineer won't you be sad you didn't make amends with him before he dies?". Nah, just cause he shot half of my DNA out of his balls doesn't make him special, you can get jizz anywhere these days
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Jul 7, 2021 11:43
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Guavanaut posted:Scallions are green onions, Welsh onions, bunching onions, Allium fistulosum, they grow in bunches and will not form large bulbs no matter what time of year it is or how long you leave them in the soil. Wtf I’ve been yelling at people who called them scallions 
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Jul 7, 2021 11:50
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Josef bugman posted:Also the idea that "oh we just have to live with unponderable questions" is irksome, surely someones worked this poo poo out. I was tempted to quote the entire section from Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (FYI it's book 1, part 4, section 7: conclusion of this book), because in my opinion it's one of the most brilliant, moving and thought provoking pieces of writing ever committed to print, an articulate, deeply felt and highly personal attempt to work through his own depression/melancholy, a myriad of doubts and questions and intellectually unsettling conclusions that puts Hamlet to shame. It's a marvel of prose, expressing confusion without being confusing, almost like you can see his thought process unfolding in real time across the page, trying to grapple with exactly bugman's point. But you're all busy people so here's the gist: quote:The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron’d with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv’d of the use of every member and faculty.
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Jul 7, 2021 11:50
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That's a lot of words for "spend time having fun to cure the doldrums" Bloody philosophy honestly
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Jul 7, 2021 11:57
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Pistol_Pete posted:2,500 years and people are STILL sitting round stroking their chins and saying stuff like; "Hmm, yes but how does one define what 'being good' is?" Face it: if they haven't worked it out by now, it ain't happening ever. Just because there's no objective answer (double offer applies to moral philosophy!) doesn't mean it's not useful to examine all the pros and cons for yourself before you commit yourself to a path that seems better than the others. Objective meaning doesn't exist, and if it does, it's beyond our understanding, imo, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't examine the effects your actions have on others and think about how you should act in a community.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:00
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The word "yet" is doing a lot of heavy lifting on this page. Josef, I'd say your posts are actually a strong argument for embracing the Absurd (I'm gonna start capitalising it now because I think that's what these fancy philosophy types do & it might make me sound clever or something). The Absurd is a consistent, even necessary concept. It sounds like you're refusing to recognise it altogether, and that's doing you harm, because you're trying to find meaning when Josef bugman posted:Nihilism does seem like something we are going to have to confront as a species. The core of my argument as to why absurdism is a good philosophy for leftists is (very basically) because it's much easier to do good if you're happy, and it's very difficult to be happy if you feel the need to justify your own existence, so justifying your existence by good deeds presents a contradiction. For a start, some people just don't have the capacity to do much, and that's fine. I don't think any moral system that would judge people harshly for that has any merit anyway. If you think it's just doing your best that matters, then we're absolutely in agreement, but then we get into the whole "free will" thing, and . Moral philosophy basically doesn't offer any solutions, only problems, and grappling with those problems actually gets in the way of doing good poo poo. Basically,Communist Thoughts posted:That's a lot of words for "spend time having fun to cure the doldrums"
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Jul 7, 2021 12:09
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I know philosophers who embrace nihilism and they're all cowards.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:13
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Some things are just too important to be taken seriously.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:17
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Borrovan posted:but literally every argument that can possibly exist has to fall back on some axioms at some point. And this is why the universe is fundamentally in the wrong. There should be some things that allow us to refer back to it without continually going back to "why" as it were. I do get what you are saying, it's interesting to read all of this stuff and very well laid out, thank you.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:22
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Josef bugman posted:I don't want to just exist. What I want is to have a positive impact on the world and on people. That requires justification. Everything needs justification, or at least everything a person does and says and is. Even if it's something small it all needs to have a justification for why a thing is done that way. I find it helpful to remind myself that much as many people like to think this, in fact we are just here by accident and the justifications are all after that fact. So it is not odd that our justifications for stuff are a bit slapdash, because they are the silicone caulk on the leaking shower tray of our involuntarily conscious existence. You are, therefore you think, perhaps 
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Jul 7, 2021 12:26
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Aidan_702 posted:Wtf I’ve been yelling at people who called them scallions It's not helped by the fact that between shallots, chives, 'true' onions, Chinese onions, etc. there's still ongoing arguments over which are real species and which are cultivars, because much like moral philosophy, onions are not a solved problem yet.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:29
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UKMT summer 2021: the universe is fundamentally in the wrong
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Jul 7, 2021 12:30
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The utter lack of meaning or purpose and the bonkers poo poo people do in response is the best bit about life imo Imagine how dull things would be if we all had meaning and knew what it was
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Jul 7, 2021 12:34
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Borrovan posted:The word "yet" is doing a lot of heavy lifting on this page. The One Rule of existentialism is "existence precedes essence" which is just a fancy way of saying "there's no objective way things are, they just are, so humans must make our own meaning". This had led to a lot of existentialist being very depressed, and is an obvious retaliation against most philosophy that came before it which LOVED claiming things had immutable essences (thanks for that Ancient Greeks.. ) Not all of them though! Camus for example is an existentialist that I'm sure you're aware of and there's significant overlap between existentialism and the absurdism that you describe with people like Camus and Sartre (though I don't think Sartre would use those terms, he'd probably basically agree with you and tell you how important it is that you have the free will to decide what to do about it)
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Jul 7, 2021 12:41
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Who among us hasn't "indulg’d a reverie in [our] chamber" to alleviate the anxiety of living? We're all philosophers here.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:41
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I'm going to fire my reverie up your chamber heh heh.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:43
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Camus wasn't an existentialist.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:47
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Josef bugman posted:I don't want to just exist. What I want is to have a positive impact on the world and on people. That requires justification. Everything needs justification, or at least everything a person does and says and is. Even if it's something small it all needs to have a justification for why a thing is done that way. What makes you think you haven't already had a positive impact on the world and on people? Positive impacts (or negative ones) aren't always known to the person making them, they may become aware years down the line or never know about it. Just by being somewhere at a certain time, by walking down a street for example, you may have stopped something bad happening in its tracks - just given a moment's pause to someone and 'broke the moment' and you will never know about it. But you may have prevented someone maybe pushing someone in front of a bus, mugging an old lady. I'm sure if most of us thought about it, we could come up with a time when we were about to do something (not necessarily dramatic) and the sudden appearance of someone else - even someone we don't know and had no idea what we were thinking of doing - gave just a slight interrupt to whatever sequence of thoughts/actions we were following through. The other person would just never know they had stopped us doing whatever it was or maybe even changed our lives forever!
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Jul 7, 2021 12:48
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Josef bugman posted:thank you. Miftan posted:The One Rule of existentialism is "existence precedes essence" which is just a fancy way of saying "there's no objective way things are, they just are, so humans must make our own meaning". This had led to a lot of existentialist being very depressed, and is an obvious retaliation against most philosophy that came before it which LOVED claiming things had immutable essences (thanks for that Ancient Greeks.. ) 
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Jul 7, 2021 12:49
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Dead Goon posted:Camus wasn't an existentialist. That's how he saw it, but he can hardly stop us from saying it now.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:52
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