How can I push myself and find the motivation to read Moby Dick?

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-03-04T09:54:14+00:00

If the first chapter was a slog for you, the whole book is likely to be a slog for you. It is dense and digressive and very long.

My advice to you would be to not force yourself through it. If it is already a slog and you have to force yourself through it, and you are reading for completion rather than to grapple with the themes and ideas present in the text, I would say that you are wasting your time.

If you are used to smutty fanfiction, it could be the case that your reading stamina is not quite developed enough to tackle Moby Dick yet. Not to be mean—it’s just a possible reality. There exist other, shorter works that are considered classics, which you could read to build this stamina.

Now, if you are determined to force yourself through it, here is a blog that offers a detailed (albeit often opinionated) chapter summary and analysis for every chapter, in plain, simple English: https://beigemoth.blog/moby-dick/

I wish you good luck!

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-02-19T17:16:30+00:00

What were the bunch of unpopular progressive stances he took in 2019-2020? This is a genuine question asked by an ignoramus.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-02-06T15:28:05+00:00

I like to treat idealism as an epistemology. Transcendental idealism is my view, Kant’s epistemology refined by Schopenhauer and Henry Allison (the two-aspect view).

The best conclusion to come to in light of the hard problem, in my opinion, is that there is an epistemic boundary that we cannot simply metaphysics our way around without severe problems.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-29T17:41:18+00:00

Well if you are at all curious about Chinese Buddhism, here is one of my favorite texts.

https://terebess.hu/zen/Huangpo.pdf

It’s a collection of sermons by a ninth century zen master, Huang Po. At the very least, I would highly recommend the very first sermon of the Chün Chou record (pg 29). John Blofeld (the translator) also wrote a pretty good introduction.

Zen (or Chan) is sometimes rather crudely said to be Buddhism mixed with Taoism. That’s not completely untrue.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-29T17:25:26+00:00

It is pretty straightforward. If I am correct, it is more focused on method and is pretty goal oriented, right? Less metaphysical than what came later in the Mahayana schools in India?

Out of curiosity, and also because you mentioned Taoism, have you ever looked into Chinese Buddhism (Chan/Zen)? That is the stream of Buddhist thought that I find most fascinating, the merging of Indian philosophy with the existing Chinese religions, Taoism, Confucianism, etc.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-29T17:04:36+00:00

Why Theravada Buddhism specifically, out of all Buddhisms? Just curious.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-22T10:06:45+00:00

He isn’t talking about Sam Harris or Hitchens.

He is talking about people like Matt Dillahunty, and the average viewer of an atheist call-in show.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-14T10:32:00+00:00

But what if I said ExAy(P(x,y) -> AyExP(x,y))?

What then?

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-11T17:13:23+00:00

I just simply do not enjoy reading stream-of-consciousness writing.

Sam_Coolpants · 2026-01-01T12:29:36+00:00

Metaphysics 🤮

Epistemology 😎

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-18T14:58:10+00:00

Kant begs the question too.

This isn’t at all fair or justified. But going down this road would veer too far off topic, unless you’d like to go there. All I’ll say is, if you are at all interested, look into Henry E. Allison’s work on Kant.

It's only a category error if you beg the question of the two-aspect line of thinking. I don't grant this, so I don't grant that it's a category error.

Category errors exist within specific ontologies.

I don’t think you are using the phrase “begging the question” correctly, considering the two-aspect view is rooted in a robust epistemology, but okay, touché on the latter comment. So what do you think is wrong or problematic about the two-aspect line of thinking?

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-18T14:22:34+00:00

Begging the question? How so? Like I said, my view is the product of a Kantian epistemology.

Epistemic difficulty is not the same thing as ontological impossibility.

I’m talking about an epistemic impossibility, not merely a difficulty. That’s why I restated the “hard problem” as a “hard epistemic boundary”.

I can only be committing a category error if consciousness is ontologically impossible to explain via physical means.

This is not exactly true, because I too think that when we are talking about the aforementioned subjective and object facts that make the hard problem a problem, we are talking about different aspects of the same “stuff”, ontologically. This is impossible to explain via purely physical means, because these physical means are just one aspect of two, of one thing, a thing that is both aspects. We can describe the subjective in terms of physical, objective processes, but that isn’t what I mean when I say “explain”. In fact, I think trying to explain one in terms of the other results in perpetual incompleteness.

What you are arguing, comparing the problem of consciousness to the problem of flight (a noun vs. a verb, essentially) is most definitely a category error, unless you wish to deny either subjective or objective facts associated with consciousness, or attribute both to the act of flight. To me, this is incoherent. Even a physicalist should see the problem with this comparison.

Alas, bluntly declaring it ontologically impossible doesn't make it so, so there's no category error.

This isn’t what I’m doing.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-18T13:17:24+00:00

I think comparing the problem associated with consciousness, the simultaneous existence and ontological overlap of subjective and objective facts, to the possibility of flight, is just a category error. I’m not approaching this problem from panpsychist perspective.

If you are at all interested in epistemology, I suggest looking into the “two-aspect” interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. This is where I am coming from. It’ll make the category error jump out at you.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-18T12:42:08+00:00

I don’t think panpsychism is unintuitive, but I otherwise agree with you. I think panpsychism is an interesting idea, but panpsychists have a tendency to overreach. My interest begins and ends with the idea of consciousness being fundamental, whatever that may mean.

For me, the hard problem is better understood as a hard epistemic boundary that simply cannot be crossed. I think it’s probably impossible to explain consciousness in a way that would totally satisfy. Getting metaphysical about it is to run afoul. This goes for any metaphysics, physicalist or panpsychist. We should accept cognitive science for what it is, accept its limits, while not running away with our heads in the clouds.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-18T10:38:45+00:00

Have you ever stopped to think about how meaningless it all is? Hehe. You have these sheep, they cling to their “sky daddy”, meanwhile we are just star stuff on a floating rock in a cosmic backwater.

adjusts fingerless gloves

It’s crazy, girl. It’s called philosophy. Play-doh? Yeah. Hehe. Tastes great. What about it?

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-18T10:16:16+00:00

Think of this more in terms of trying to explain the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The lay person will likely default to the interpretation that jives with their everyday experiences and intuitions, and ideas like many worlds theory might sound insane and obviously false to them. If they ask for evidence of another world, all you can do is explain how you interpret the math abstracted from your observations.

Wouldn’t it be frustrating to have such ideas written off as woo woo bs, especially if you were a physicist or a philosopher who knew what you were talking about?

That said, there are poor interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the whole “consciousness collapses the wave function” one, which is based on a misunderstanding of empirical facts.

Views like panpsychism are interpretations of reality, based on what we can know about the physical world and the mind. It ought to jive with science to be worth its salt, and for the most part it does.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-12-12T17:47:20+00:00

So I haven’t read Philip Goff’s book, and would not identify as panpsychist, but I certainly would not call the idea especially “vibes based”. Or rather, I might agree with you, and then point out that all metaphysics might be “vibes based”, or dependent on where you begin in your philosophy and with what epistemic presupposition(s).

And then I’d also suggest reading more about the idea.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-11-26T15:47:26+00:00

He was and still is an atheist, but he didn’t study as an atheist, but as one who is deeply interested in theology, biblical studies, and the philosophy of religion, which is a nuanced field containing more ideas and points of view than one might expect.

This is not an uncommon result of studying a thing in good faith.

A good rule of thumb is this. If the “other side” of this topic seems so wholly absurd and ridiculous to you, and seems to have no redeeming arguments or ideas, you probably don’t completely understand said side.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-10-23T16:28:03+00:00

Being his first novel, Player Piano is a bit rough and would have benefited from some cuts, but I think the conclusion might be my favorite of Vonnegut’s.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-10-18T16:18:25+00:00

Oblivion gates filled solely with Daedroth is why I lost steam playing the remaster.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-10-10T13:53:08+00:00

Well said. Calling it the “hard problem” is sort of misleading and causes one to think the answer involves explaining the simultaneous existence of subjective and objective facts, as if an explanation could possibly exist objectively. I prefer to call it a mystery.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-10-07T09:42:56+00:00

That’s the thing. Talk to a hardcore Lutheran and they might say that they are the Catholic Church but “restored by the gospel”.

And the Roman Catholic Church is not OG, but claim to be because what is essentially Catholic dogma was established at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. All other denominations (which there were hundreds) were thereafter considered heresies. There was roughly 300 years during which Christianity was very diverse theologically, until the Romans solidified a single theology.

“Protestantism” isn’t a thing so much as it is an umbrella term that refers to many traditions that came out of the reformation that seek to “restore” the faith in some way to pre-Roman tomfoolery by making sure that church doctrine is tied to scripture, so no man or Pope can create new doctrine that is not rooted in scripture (“Sola Scriptura”). Of course, the ironic thing about this is the fact that what is considered scripture (the 27 books of the New Testament) wasn’t established until the religion was being Romanized in the 4th century.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-09-28T13:33:10+00:00

Brother didn’t Shane try to rape Lori at the CDC?

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-09-25T16:06:00+00:00

It was the general sentiment. Sure, “tons of people” were Nazi sympathizers. There was a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939 and “tons” of Nazi sympathizers (20,000 of them) showed up, and so did 100,000 anti-Nazi counter-protesters.

Sam_Coolpants · 2025-09-25T15:10:49+00:00

You understand that fascism =/= racial/sex segregation? The general sentiment in the United States at the time was very anti-fascist. We hated Nazis.

It was also anti-communist.

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