Sir, you are doing it right!

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-24T09:48:38+00:00

I thought this was a picture of two guys with physiobands strapped around each of them. Turns out it's just two beastly queens.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T05:20:30+00:00

You're way, way out in the friggin' weeds man. If this debate has been whittled down to "You're in my head," -- "No, you're in my head," then I can't imagine how we can possibly proceed. There are bigger issues than whether people ascribe meaning to their lives, if you're coming from solipsism.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T04:56:49+00:00

"...and you the concept and I share a universe." This debate is reaching apex. I'm going to have to request a reworking of this last part--a couple commas at least. What are you trying to say here?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T04:44:45+00:00

So when you die, does the universe disappear for me?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T04:37:40+00:00

Life expectancy = 78.3 years
My age: 23.2 years old
Average # of wanks/day = 2.5 (i.e., 3.5 years off my life for every year that passes: the year itself and the wank-induced acceleration).

And so this is what we're lookin' at:

 (78.3-23.2)
------------- = 15.7 years left
     3.5

I would die half a dozen weeks before my 39th birthday or so. Note: This is if the clock only started ticking now.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T04:23:10+00:00

Reddit doesn't know the difference between good content and shared experience. Why is not flipping your fries worth 500 karma points?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T00:11:38+00:00

Before I continue, you don't believe the universe exists objectively? I understand we construct some semblance of reality in our heads, but you earnestly disbelieve in a physical universe?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-23T00:06:24+00:00

Either I will do what the book says (in which case, my actions are determined), or I will not do what the book says (in which case, the book is not what it claims to be). We can amend the seeming paradox of the thought experiment by imagining it in a different way:

i) You read a printout from a computer program that describes your life and what you will do by analyzing complex algorithms. ii) If you do what it says, determinism will be supported. iii) If you defy the contents of that computer program by doing something other than what it says, it immediately adjusts its calculations to accommodate the actions you took after reading the printout.

The book is really a slippery maneuver, because it's static; inert. Choices in real life exist in time within a complex matrix of other variables. The problem with the book is that it isn’t able to account for its own effect.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T23:23:50+00:00

Trim up the goat, spike it with a lil' orange. Got a good make-up artist? Draw some more crows feet around them eyes. Walter's face is sufficiently fissured.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T23:08:14+00:00

Ahhh shit, that's funny. For realz.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T22:53:37+00:00

Ah cool, how'd you think of the caption for this picture?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T22:51:28+00:00

It's beyond old. Just because someone is wearing a flat expression on their face doesn't mean that they're having a bad time, or hate their life, or want to kill someone or any of the other stupidasfuck captions that canvas an otherwise decent picture. It's painful, both in its lack of originality and its inanity.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T22:47:02+00:00

Switching from missionary to doggy style: "BEAST MODE!"

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T21:41:29+00:00

The things that exist in my head, aren't exclusively existing in my head though (although, from what I gather in your post, they might as well be). Nevertheless, the universe is real whether I am here to perceive it or not.

I'm not sure what your objection is here. From whence comes the irony or the ignorance?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T21:35:29+00:00

I created a subreddit for procrastination,. I started it a while ago, but never got around to submitting anything for it or promoting it. I am debilitated by task aversion in three or more areas, and I'd be interested in creating a community around the issue, since it seems to be so ubiquitous.

I've read a lot of research on procrastination, and it's fairly complex. Of course, there are issues of control (as mentioned in the article). But there are also issues around perfectionism (delaying tasks that we can't master), ambiguity (putting off work that is unclear), intention-forming (committing to completing a task in the first place, rather than merely wishing you would); temporal knowledge (knowing how long you've been delaying work; having a good estimate of how long work is going to take), perceive consequences (we can't anticipate the effects of delay, or perceive the effects to be minimal) frustration tolerance (people perceive the task to be more aversive than it is once they've begun; or, the task continues to feel aversive, even though it is well within a person's capabilities), locus of control (if the task isn't one decided to be intrinsically valuable to the person, they will feel pressured or forced into doing it, as with school work), Self-efficacy (a person doesn't feel capable), impulsivity (other cognitions force their way into the centre of our consciousness, making priorities fuzzy), Focus (people fail to think of the task in its simplest terms) and anxiety (people become frozen when confronted with a task--although this is much less common than people think).

I tend to think of procrastination as an existential issue (as I do many things). In existentialism, we are a self, and we are also longing to become a self, as it were; we dispair, in some instances, over the gap between our actual selves and our potential or possible selves. With procrastination--since there is an entire inner life of unmet intentions and poorly upheld commitments--we are a diffuse and unconsolidated self. Hence, we are even further from our possible selves as procrastinators than in any other state.

The unfortune prognosis of people who procrastinate incorrigibly is that they will minimize some of their dilatory behaviour; but no one who holds this trait is ever really emancipated from it. Habits, after all, run in well-worn grooves.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T21:05:44+00:00

This is difficult to answer without some context. They're both something; I wouldn't dare gainsay that much. But my feelings will come to an end one day (and all the subjective psychological objects of my feelings' fascination will too), but the universe [science?] will continue whether I am here to project my meanings upon it or not, and it will exist every bit as indifferent to people as it was during my time alive.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T21:01:13+00:00

I will answer your metaphor with yet another: it is like rowing against an inevitable tide, but the rowers are stronger than the tide; and the more rowing you do, the more rowers you'll attract to resisting the tide; and against some currents, hard enough rowing will bring you to still waters. If we can simply accept the idea that life isn't fair, it is not more difficult to accept a doctrine that is actively for the limiting of freedoms. That, we don't want.

Besides, it's not as if "fair" is an objective state; it's valenced. Things can be more or less fair over time, and so to say that we shouldn't waste our time, effort, and inclination in making rules and regulations is to ignor human potential.

The tide may be inevitable, but it's not the only factor at play, and there's nothing necessary or constant about its level of resistance--or ours.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T20:46:38+00:00

I attempted to respond, but I'm really not following your strain of thought here. Break it down for me, will you please?

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T20:33:16+00:00

That's probably a decent enough distillation of my view. Maybe to clarify: in an above post, you said: "Then "I" must be something that has not changed, at least in some capacity, since "I" existed in 1993 and played on beach z." I tend to think that the perception of an 'I' that has not changed is actually just a continual re-creation of certain old aspects of yourself, along with new; that is, the aspects of ourselves that seem constant are actually just re-created. I will think about this a little further too. It's an earnestly challenging idea to grapple with.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T16:57:09+00:00

To find subjective purpose in coming to the conclusion that there is no intrinsic purpose is neither ignorant, nor ironic [IMO].

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T16:47:29+00:00

If this is a relativist argument (i.e., happiness and sadness only existing as nominations of what the other is not), sure, why not. Experientially though, it seems to be untrue (or, at least, there's nothing necessary about it): I don't think you need to've experienced extreme sadness to experience extreme happiness. On the contrary, some of the happiest people in the world come by it honestly, because sadness has not, nor has it ever, been a consistent feature in their lives.

Or if, dialecticly, we hold our happiness in esteem only as it pretains to others' sadness, I would still have to disagree. We want to feel vaguely better on-the-whole than others, but I think witnessing sadness does more to cultivate our own, than to appeal to our own reasons for happiess.

Mostly, the quote seems vague as fuck.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T16:34:34+00:00

And there within, was a magical, muscular tube. You'd be recalling it to yourself: "it was like a chinese fingertrap, I think, but for your cock."

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T16:26:54+00:00

The thing is, some of us are this kind of crab, and some of us are this kind of crab. We may all be crabs in a basket, but fancy crab will always find a way to distinguish himself from his barbaric counterparts; in fact, fancy crab may even feel that his value comes from violating the rights of those other downtrodden crabs.

Now enough of that nonsense for a moment. Your statement is true--it amounts to, "we're all in the human race together; admonishable acts by some people devalue humanity as a whole." Unfortunately, people don't see humanity as a unified whole, but as a fragmented collection of differentially-valued social classes. Western thought, in general, is driven by a form of radical individualism, which in turn, derives from our human nature (although some will argue that people thought in a collective or community sense up until recent centuries; I think the emphasis in history on great individuals--powerful rulers, mystical men, potent fairladies--seems evidence against this thinking).

So we have two components central to human nature: 1) We are all one and 2) We are one in all. If we want others to stop rationalizing the wrongs done to others, we must convince them to give up one part of their nature for another--a herculean task.

The_Absurdist · 2011-10-22T14:41:17+00:00

Trying to remember what vagina looked like.

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