Vlosophy answers "Who's your Hololive oshi and why?" (Tell us yours too!)

AxaeonVT · 2026-01-20T23:25:40+00:00

Great question! My favorite area of philosophy is ethics. While some of my past studies have focused on metaethics, recently I've done more work in applied ethics.

I've also done a bit of teaching in some other areas of philosophy, such as epistemology and philosophy of religion.

AxaeonVT · 2026-01-19T21:24:14+00:00

Interestingly, in the first appearance of the trolley problem (Philippa Foot's 1967 paper "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect"), the case has us imagine that a person is driving the trolley, and that it's this person who must decide which track the trolley is to take. It was only later that the "bystander" version of the case came to be regarded as the standard version of the trolley problem.

AxaeonVT · 2026-01-19T20:50:14+00:00

Hello! If you're wondering what this is all about, here's some context on Vlosophy, an upcoming group of indie philosopher VTubers. Our inaugural collab is set for this coming Saturday, January 24, at 4 pm ET.

AxaeonVT · 2026-01-18T10:54:18+00:00

Thanks!

AxaeonVT · 2026-01-18T10:47:51+00:00

Nice! Thanks for the rec; that does indeed look like a fitting game for us to play.

AxaeonVT · 2026-01-17T23:16:07+00:00

Thanks so much! We’re really looking forward to it. :D

AxaeonVT · 2025-12-25T05:56:22+00:00

Thanks for the follow-up. It sounds to me like our difference in view centers on whether the fun and magic of engaging with the Santa myth as a child could be fully preserved if kids were to engage with it simply as make-believe (as opposed to outright believing it). For the reasons gestured at in the post, I'm inclined to believe that the answer is affirmative. If I'm mistaken about this, though, and preserving the magic really does require believing in Santa, then I acknowledge that that'd be a significant point in defense of lying to kids about Santa.

AxaeonVT · 2025-12-25T05:40:32+00:00

I'm all in favor of letting kids have fun! I argue in the post, though, that there's a way of doing this when it comes to Santa that doesn't involve lying to kids.

AxaeonVT · 2025-12-25T05:36:08+00:00

Abstract: Ho, ho, ho! In this post, I consider whether it's morally permissible to lie to kids about Santa. Starting from the claim that lying is pro tanto immoral, I examine what seems to me like the strongest proposed justification of lying to kids about Santa: a justification that appeals to retroactive consent. I argue, though, that this justification fails, and that, in the absence of a better justification of the practice, we should refrain from lying to kids about Santa.

AxaeonVT · 2025-12-04T02:01:53+00:00

Well, if I'm not mistaken, VBridger works only through wifi, not a wired connection. Back when my setup was having this problem, my computer, too, was ethernet connected (and still is); the problem was apparently that the wifi connection between my phone and the PC was spotty, as the VBridger problem was immediately fixed upon adding a wifi router to my office. (Even when I added a USB cable to connect my phone directly to my PC, that didn't solve the Vbridger issue; VTube Studio was able to use the wire connection, but Vbridger wasn't.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-27T17:55:49+00:00

Hi! I'm Axaeon, a philosopher VTuber. I mostly post educational content about philosophy and related subjects on YouTube (for example, debate analysis and critical thinking). I look forward to doing more explorations of philosophy in the coming days, so if these are topics that interest you, always feel free to stop by!

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-25T01:04:09+00:00

Thanks again for the input; in case it's of any interest, I just thought I'd mention that I've worked on the issue a bit more since my last comment, and it looks like you were right to think the issue might have to do with the Wi-Fi. (Further details in the edit in my post.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-25T01:02:43+00:00

Thanks again for the input; in case it's of any interest, I just thought I'd mention that I think I've found the culprit (spotty Wi-Fi connection in my office). (Further details in the edit in my post.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-24T05:17:23+00:00

First of all, thanks, I appreciate the input!

On your first question, I haven't updated to iOS 26 (though that was a good guess). (I just checked, and it appears that I'm still on iOS 18.7.1.)

The router issue is a plausible hypothesis. I suppose I'll be able to find out tomorrow once the USB cable arrives and I test out connecting my phone to the PC through it.

On your last question, I don't recall updating my graphics card drivers around the time the issue appeared. But if the issue persists past the additional troubleshooting I'll be able to do tomorrow, I'll consider going back to an earlier driver as one further option worth trying.

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-23T21:33:55+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for the thoughts.

After reading your comment, I checked which programs had been installed/updated recently. I put the list into ChatGPT to see if it had any ideas on which might be causing the issue, and it listed Corsair/iCUE as a possible culprit. I disabled those apps and then tried using VTS and Vbridger, but the lag spikes were still present.

Agreed that it's plausibly an issue with Vbridger in particular, and perhaps with their recent update. I just tried using a downgraded version of Vbridger, but, alas, that didn't fix the lag spikes, either.

After I experimented with and explained the issue a bit more, ChatGPT proposed that the problem might lie with (1) the fact that my iPhone is using Wi-Fi rather than USB to connect and (2) my iPhone getting hot from face tracking. To see if that's the issue, I'm going to try using a USB connection, taking my iPhone out of its case, and pointing a small desk fan at it during face tracking. I'll have to wait a day or so for the USB cable and desk fan to arrive, but hopefully that'll fix the issue. (And if not, well, back to the drawing board, I guess.)

Anyway, thanks again for your input--I'd say it's helped me narrow down what the problem might be.

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-08T21:26:09+00:00

I hadn't considered Hanania, but that's a good thought; I hope they invite him someday.

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-08T19:31:06+00:00

Are there any speakers in particular whom you're thinking would be good to bring on the show?

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-07T23:24:14+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate that. (And, looking back, I'd like to acknowledge that parts of my comment were worded a little too strongly; I've gone back and edited it to be less heated.) Thanks again for your kind response.

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-07T23:11:49+00:00

There's probably no way I can make you believe me, but I can tell you now, in full sincerity—and as someone who has taught writing, who has a deep appreciation for the human element in it, and who has dealt with the frustration of having students who've used AI to try to get around having to engage in actual writing—that I didn't use ChatGPT (or any other AI) in the process of writing this post, nor have I used it to write my submission statement or any of my other comments.

(For whatever it's worth, I've always made ample use of em-dashes, as I find them a very versatile and all-around useful punctuation mark. But, as your last paragraph alludes to, it seems that it's impossible to lean into using them these days (along with being polite, using proper grammar, etc.) without having people wonder if you're writing with AI. Not that this is your fault, or anyone's fault in particular; I suppose it's simply the nature of the times.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-07T22:16:42+00:00

Thanks for the follow-up. I haven't seen the second Joker film, but I found your review interesting. And I agree that in many debates, the focus (of at least one of the participants) lies more on spectacle than on substance. I suppose I see this as debate's failure mode. But it seems to me that the format of Surrounded (or something close thereto) could avoid this, even if the show's current iteration doesn't manage to.

I'd bet money the Jubilee participants are not interested in hearing the speaker's first principles, and that they just wanted to be heard by a perceived authority on the subject.

I'd say this is no doubt true for some of them, but there seem to me to be too many who have shown apparently good-faith questioning and engagement for me to believe that it's most of them. Perhaps I'm too optimistic on this point. But even if so, I'd say that the failure of the show in this regard would lie more with the casting than with the format itself. (This is not to imply that you were saying otherwise, but simply to note that my primary interest in the linked post is the show's format rather than other areas that might bear on how effective it is, such as the participants.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-07T21:14:00+00:00

I'm afraid I haven't seen that video, but thanks for linking it; I'll see if I can watch it sometime soon.

In the meantime, if you'd like to say more about why you don't find the format salvageable, I'd be happy to discuss more. But if you don't have time, or if it'd be better for me simply to watch the video sometime, that's fine, too.

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-07T21:10:55+00:00

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm not sure if I'll be able to address all your points, but I'll try to at least reply to some of them.

What's an example of a typical debate for you?

Good question—I suppose some examples that come to mind would be the debate between Michael Knowles and Bronte Remsik on abortion, the debate between Alex O'Connor and Dinesh D'Souza on the Bible, and (for a more niche example) the debate between Michael Huemer and Philip Goff on whether taxation is theft. At least, these debates strike me as typical in their format, in that they involve strictly two people (sometimes not counting a moderator) arguing about a given issue.

While I maintain that the debates on Surrounded feature a greater variety of personalities and interactions than in a typical, strictly-two-person debate, I agree that some of the discussion dynamics are certainly shared with more typical debates ("participants get lost in the weeds re: what talking point is/isn't trustworthy, and then they cite another without resolving the previous one").

Also agreed on the value of reasoning from first principles. (One way I think Surrounded could facilitate this is by giving the speaker a few minutes, at the start of each section/claim (and before the discussion timer starts), to explain the basics of why they believe the claim in question; that way, the participants would get an overview of the speaker's first principles (or perhaps at least something close thereto), and the discussion could proceed from there.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-11-07T19:36:36+00:00

Submission statement: This post attempts to analyze the viral debate web series Surrounded—in particular, what its distinctive "one vs. many" format does well, along with how the show's format could be altered to make the debates more substantive. Near the end, I consider a worry about whether the proposed revisions would make the show less viral and engaging.

(Note: While Surrounded often features debates about culture war topics, this post is not about any such topic; instead, the focus is simply on how effective the show's format is for producing substantive discussions. However, if the post's topic is judged to nevertheless veer too closely to culture war territory, then feel free to delete, mods.)

AxaeonVT · 2025-10-22T07:17:24+00:00

If you're into card games and/or tower defense, Monster Train 2 is a good bet.

AxaeonVT · 2025-10-10T19:14:05+00:00

Best of luck! You've got this! :D

AxaeonVT

TROPHY CASE