Right. So here’s what you gotta do:
Are those words being used right there false, or do you believe that they’re true?
You think he doesn’t even mean
A single word he says
It’s only words and words are all he has
To take our hearts away
It’s worth noting that this is incorrect anyway, because it’s ignoring the fact that after you’ve boiled everything down to first principles you can then proceed to take your few accepted knowns and start extrapolating from them again - producing additional results with the same certainty as your accepted knowns.
Of course solipsists make this error deliberately, because it’s fun to whine about how nothing exists and nothing is certain. But you should be aware that when people do this they’re lying, essentially - they choose to believe that nothing can be known because they close their eyes and stop up their ears and try to know nothing.
Also, if you watch closely — or, really, not even all that closely — you can see that, when they order a sandwich at a deli, and a mistake gets made, they act as if a pastrami on rye with mustard has been placed before them, observing aloud that, er, no; this isn’t what I asked for.
And then, as soon as the requested sandwich is apologetically served up, they nod and acknowledge that oh yes that’s it and promptly devour the sandwich: acting as if they can tell the difference between the sandwich and the plate it’s on, and acting as if they need to eat food — and have a definite preference for one type of sandwich over another — and are, in fact, perfectly willing to pay a bit more money to get some extra pickles or whatever.
It’s as if what they say and what they do differ.
A true solipsist (which is to say, one who believes what he says and practices what he preaches) would die of thirst within a few days, sitting in a pile of their own poop.
And the obviously dormroom wankery becomes even more obvious when you realize that Machinaforce gets most of his solipsism stuff off the internet, which itself is an overt demonstration of how full of shit basic-principles solipsism is.
The internet, to put a fine point on it, doesn’t exist. It’s not a physical thing. It’s just data, which is to say information, which is to say it’s the kind of thing that these goofballs are saying doesn’t exist. They say that the information received doesn’t have value (for no reason they can articulate) - if they weren’t liars they would think the same about the internet, only moreso. Anybody who uses the internet for any purpose clearly believes that things constructed from arbitrary information can have absolute real value - that or they’re a moron who doesn’t actually think through anything they say or do.
So you can be absolutely 100% certain that anybody who uses the internet to distribute basic-principles solipsistic beliefs is a liar, a conman, or an idiot - or some combination of the three.
It’s like the opposite of that speech from MERCHANT OF VENICE, isn’t it? Oh, sure, the solipsist acts like he hath eyes, what with him stepping out of the way of stuff he apparently sees coming — because he acts like he doesn’t merely eat the same food that I do, but can also be hurt by the same weapons; why, if pricked, does he not bleed? — sure as he sensibly clothes himself differently in a cold winter than he does in a hot summer, and et cetera.
But then, having done all of that, he’ll affect a puzzled look and ask aloud whether he hath eyes and so on: he’ll ask if that’s all true about food and bleeding and and the rest; and then he’ll for some reason go right back to acting sensibly, as if he just now saw something of interest and wants to act accordingly.
Can I get a job doing Solipsist Therapy, where I just slap some sense into those people?
…
(Although the people who ACTUALLY believe it and live their lives that way? Yeah, that comes to a a whopping total of three, worldwide, so I don’t think I could make a living at it)
Disagree. There are earnest and honest people who are simply lost and bewildered. I think this can fall well short of “idiocy” and just be “kinda pointless.”
Depends on what we mean by “distributed”, I suppose. What Machinaforce is doing, I don’t think qualifies - he’s just asking questions. (Repeatedly.) But these blogs he goes to, where there are whole blogs devoted to collecting and distributing solipsistic theory - they’re either in it for the money, or are too stupid to realize that their approach to solipsism is to toss an object in the air, look at it at its zenith, and declare that because you haven’t seen it come down that gravity has stopped working.
(To explain the analogy, I mean that sure, you can note that our perceptions are unreliable. That’s an obvious fact to anybody who wears glasses. But anybody who just stops there, reveling in the uncertainty of it all, either isn’t trying to deduce further or isn’t capable of doing so.)
Oh, and I suppose I’ll carve out a tiny possible exception for Buddhists that actually do have coherent worldviews and just suck at explaining themselves. The exception is tiny because I’m pretty sure that if one applied unflinching logical reasoning to their beliefs, most of those theologies wouldn’t hold up too well either.
“Reveling in the uncertainty of it all” is a wonderful way to put it. It’s a fun late-night-around-the-campfire metaphysical game, like “What if we’re just part of The Matrix, or maybe Keanu is dreaming, like that kid on St. Elsewhere?”
But hardly anyone tries to live their life this way… that way lies delusion, or at least pointlessness.
That’s why I feel sorry for Machinaforce, he’s looking at other people’s “random playing at metaphysics” and trying to take it seriously.
Even if I don’t believe in “reality,” I certainly believe in pain and pleasure, and it seems to make the most sense to avoid one and seek the other. I may just be in a Skinner Box with buttons to push – but why the hell would I push the button associated with an electric shock?
I think this is Machinaforce’s most serious problem: what he is doing hurts. As the doctor said in the joke, “Don’t do that.”
Yes, seconded (squared).
It’s similar to discussions about free will and determinism.
I’m not entirely certain that I actually have free will (at least in the sense that most of us accept). But I’ll be darned if I’m going to live my life that way! Better to believe in free will and be wrong about it, than to believe you have no free will, right or wrong, at least as I see it.
I prefer to recognize that definitions of free will that rely on non-determinism/unpredictability are incoherent and do not conform to common usage. (Since when is something you do at random a choice?) When one constructs a definition of free will that matches common usage and actually makes sense, determinism abruptly ceases to be a problem. Heck, it’s necessary.
Even if the world is nondeterministic, I am functionally deterministic, because if I was not I would not be a person with meaningful free will.
When I read that I punched the edge of a table, and hurt my hand. Stupid thing to do, with no rational reason to do it. But it was my choice, dammit.
And now I’m going to have a bowl of Golden Grahams and a Bud Lite Lime for dinner. I hope you solipsists appreciate all my efforts on behalf of free will…
I think you have to pour the Bud Lite Lime into the corn flakes, like if it was milk, for that to cause free will to happen.
If that’s what it would take to shock Machinaforce out of his self-constructed jail cell, heck, I’d pour the dregs of my Finnerty’s Single Malt on a bowl of Lucky Charms!
Now that sounds magically delicious.
I’m so tempted, now… but a peaty Scotch is so inappropriate. Moss and dirt do not go well with those styrofoam by-product “marshmallows”.
Now, maybe something smoother… (Tullamore Dew on Cheerios?)
Hey, maybe we should start a Viva La Free Will challenge, where we all do stupid/dangerous/disgusting/really random activities that no one would ever do in a deterministic world.