In online discourse, irony and detachment often outcompete emotional sincerity because they provide greater strategic advantages in one-off interactions between strangers. When people are ironic or detached, they can take any position without committing to it, allowing them to change their stance mid-conversation. This flexibility makes irony more effective for winning debates, while sincerity requires defending fixed beliefs. The anonymity and fleeting nature of online interactions further marginalize sincerity, as the trust and character-building benefits of honest communication cannot develop. This dynamic explains why sincere expression often feels embarrassing or uncomfortable in digital spaces, even when it might be more valuable in person-to-person relationships.
Embarrassing Mistakes, Smartest Philosophers, and Why I Hate Irony | 900k QnAAdded:
Thank you so much for 900,000 subscribers. That's amazing. Um, I am incredibly grateful and I look forward to answering your questions. So, let's get started. My name is Joe Folly and here are some solicited answers. Right here we have a two-part question from Stormy Vi and it is one, how are you?
And two, what's the biggest misconception people have about you? So, how am I? Yeah, I'm I'm doing okay actually. like I I've purposefully tried to readjust my work life balance um this year and that that's been good. That's been kind of generally good for me. I'm really really enjoying doing the interviews. Um I want to do more of those cuz I always learn a lot from doing them. You know, I kind of get to sit down and talk to these incredibly clever people. And actually, I'd be interested to know um who you would like on particularly. You know, I I'm kind of I'm often in um on the lookout for, you know, academics that people are are particularly fans of or or other people that that that kind of take your fancy, you know, people that I might not have have thought of or or even necessarily heard of, but but are kind of really interesting and have very uh interesting things to say. Um that's that's really cool. I I want to um have a guest on to talk about like French psychoanalysis. I think that'd be really cool. Partly because it's something that I struggle so much with. So, it would be like lovely to just have someone on and it would in effect be a kind of live uh teaching session of them to me and I can just ask them all the questions that I have about like Lan because Lan is so difficult to understand. And I'd like to do more of that, you know, bringing on people where actually they they are an expert or otherwise very highly regarded in an area of philosophy or study that I personally find very difficult and then I can just pepper them with my questions so that I understand it better and then hopefully uh people might find that helpful as well because I figure that you know whatever you struggle with other people probably struggle with as well. I I keep finding that you know whenever I I mention that something uh is something that I find particularly difficult uh people tend to to resonate with that. I think partly because some things just are very difficult to understand. So you know if you find it difficult chances are other people will be finding it difficult as well. So I'm really enjoying that and I'd love to have u more interviews on. Um I'm also just kind of enjoying the topics that I've I've been able to read about this year a lot. Um, I'm really enjoying learning about the sophists and I've I'm really enjoying learning a lot about the kind of philosophy of the internet stuff. A lot of my videos so far this year have been about the internet or internet discourse, but trying to, you know, apply philosophy to it. And I've kind of stumbled across this subsection of of the philosophical literature that is like the philosophy of the internet and of internet dynamics. And I I think that's really really good fun. I I really want to do more of that because, you know, the internet is one of the most revolutionary inventions ever. You know, it's up there with like the printing press and depending on how long humans are around for it, it might be up there with the wheel. So, I know I'm I'm I'm quite interested in what what philosophy has to say about that.
So, that's an area of philosophy that I found really interesting and I'm really really excited to to to read a bit more about that. So, that's broadly how I'm doing. Um, I also kind of like got my sleep schedule under control a bit more.
Like, I I really prioritize sleep now.
And I tell you what, I know this is really obvious, but it does wonders.
It's like it's so good. Like, it is you will feel so much better um if you get a good night's sleep, which, you know, isn't particularly philosophically insightful, but I feel like it's one of those obvious life lessons or obvious lessons, I suppose, that that we kind of know is true and then we ignore. And I'm the same cuz I hate sleeping. I think sleeping is boring. it feels like missing out on like a third of life, but it does make the remaining 2/3 so much more pleasant. So, that's been another thing that that I've I've really kind of found has improved me um this year. And then your second question, what's the biggest misconception people have about you? I don't know. I don't know to what extent people conceive about me. So, I don't know what misconceptions um can arise. I think some people do give me a bit too much credit um for things. Uh, you know, I people, you know, I get a lot of really lovely comments. That's that's that's really nice. But I I I think that people can sometimes overestimate um either my intelligence or like, you know, how well read I am.
Like I I I spend a lot of my time reading, but ultimately I'm I'm 26 and I've I've only just turned 26. Like there's a limit to the extent of of knowledge that I can have acquired. And I I expect that I will look back on my time now and think, "God, Joe, you knew like bugger all." And uh hopefully I I'll think of myself as as terribly misguided. So yeah, I don't know. I I I think that, you know, people are very very kind and I I think in some ways they're probably a bit too kind. Um you know, I very occasionally get really really lovely comments being like, "Ah, Joe, you're really clever." And actually like just I'm not being this isn't like false modesty. I'm not like overly clever. uh when I was at um university there are plenty of people who were so so much cleverer than I was. Um and I kind of want to get that across. I sometimes feel like you know when uh we encounter people who are uh more knowledgeable at something or uh better at something than we happen to be at that point. There is a tendency to think that there must be something about that person that is special and and and separates them from me. you know, I've always had a kind of a tendency towards reading and I've always had a tendency towards philosophy, but I wasn't like a prodigy or anything like that. There is nothing that that I have learned that I think, you know, like other people couldn't. Um, and so I don't know, maybe that's a misconception. Um, I'm I'm actually not that clever. Um, I've just spent a fair amount of time on things and even then I've still got so much more time to spend on them. So, I know that that would be a misconception. Um, I would say. Okay, here we have a question from Daigok 2918 and it reads, "If you had not studied philosophy, is there another subject that would interest you?" The most obvious one is maths. Like, I love maths. In fact, I I want to do more of it now. It's been a long time since I've been able to sit down and devote a significant amount of time to familiarizing myself with a particular area of mathematics or just going over stuff that I knew at one point, but you know, this has drifted out of awareness. Maths is one of those areas of study where if you don't use it, you lose it very quickly. And although it is easier to relearn something, when you've learned it once, things just go, right? I used to be so much better at like abstract algebra than than I am now. Um I used to, you know, have a little textbook that I would I would kind of go through for fun. Just an undergrad textbook, like nothing nothing particularly major. Um and I I'd like to I'd like to do more of that. Uh the channel keeps me very busy and and other projects keep me very busy. Um, so I haven't had the chance to do that so much now, but that's an area that I would really like to have studied. Um, and I still think that at some point I want to go do like a part-time degree level mathematics course. I think that would be really good fun. I think I'd really enjoy it.
There are a couple of other subjects that I kind of thought about applying for um at university and I'd still love to learn more about. Uh, one is linguistics. My third year undergrad dissertation was actually kind of half in philosophy, half in cognitive linguistics. So I I always love learning about cognitive linguistics and I think that philosophy of language would be a lot richer if more people spent time in cognitive linguistics cuz I don't know it I think that doing philosophy of language in certain respects without doing cognitive linguistics or without looking at cognitive linguistics is a little bit like doing philosophy of mind without looking at neuroscience or psychology or any kind of empirical study of the mind. And I think most most philosophers of mind will say those empirical results are relevant. And I think that in many ways we could do with a kind of similar attitude in philosophy of language where it's seen as continuous with and inseparable from cognitive linguistics.
So that would be an area um that I'd like to uh look more into. And I I did genuinely think about applying for a degree in in linguistics uh rather than philosophy. And I didn't in the end um but I I could have easily have done. It was kind of on a knife's edge. And the other area um or the other subject that I think I I'm I'm very very interested in is history and particularly the history of ideas. Uh a lot of the stuff that I've read this year has ended up being kind of histories of concepts which has been really really good fun you know like like uh reception literature of of various thinkers and how views of their thinking has evolved over time or alternatively just histories of words. One of my favorite books I've read so far this year um is the making of modern cynicism and that was like a history of the word cynic and I think that was very very cool. Uh I really enjoyed it. So I'd like to I'd like to read more of those going forward. Um I've read a fair few this year but it's kind of yeah it's kind of seized me a bit this kind of history of ideas and particularly taking these terms that still have applications today and seeing how they evolved over time.
That's something that that I'm really interested in. But I think maths is like that that's the one that I I would have gone for um if I hadn't done philosophy.
And I would still like to kind of go for at some point. I kind of think that you know you kind of have thought experiments of not thought experiments just kind of daydreaming imaginings of what you would do if you you know suddenly a billion pounds was deposited on your lap. And I think what I basically do is just go from university to university doing various different undergraduate degrees and mast's degrees and I I know I think I'd find that really really good fun. Um so yeah there'd be all sorts of things that if I had kind of infinite time and infinite resources that I I would love to go and study but yeah math would be the main one. Right here we have a question from Rakama and it reads do you have any hobbies that aren't so intertwined to philosophy? If so what? Now, there is a reply to this that that points out that everything is of course uh intertwined with philosophy. And yeah, like I I kind of would agree with that, but I I also know what this what this person's getting at. Um I really like going to the gym. I spend, you know, four or five evenings a week uh not the whole evening, Christ, but you know, fair portion of the evening um there, which I think is great. It's it's just so good to like blow off steam. And I I kind of think that getting in some physical exercise, it's a bit like the sleep thing we were talking about earlier, right? It sounds so obvious, but it's also very easy to listen to that and go, "Yeah, yeah, like sure, man." And then not do it. Um, but but getting out some physical exertion, especially if like me, your your job might be mainly kind of either desk work or either like sedentary work, sitting work, staying still work, I think that um making sure that you get some exercise in uh in whatever form I think is very worthwhile. uh not just for the physical benefits, but also just helps you think clearer, stops you from feeling like in the evenings, you know? I think there's a limit to how happy you can be without moving. And so that's that's that's why um I I find the gym like really worthwhile. I'm not like, you know, super serious about it, but it does keep me sane. And then, okay, other hobbies. Um I used to be really into coral singing. Uh I did that a lot at university. I don't do that so much anymore now. Um I ought to. There's a cathedral near me, and I have sung there before, so maybe I'll maybe I'll sign up with them. and singing more generally um I think is is very cool. My family's sort of relatively musical. Uh my dad plays a few instruments. Um my mom plays guitar and my sister is a professional singers on the West End at the moment.
Um so, uh yeah, I'm a bit musical, but I'm like the least musical member of my family. So, I suppose I don't really think of myself as particularly musical, but you know, that that's something I kind of uh spend my time thinking about or or doing. I like the history of music. I like looking into different composers. Um, I used to have this this kind of history of opera and a history of ballet that I used to enjoy dipping into. And I I I kind of think that it's it's nice to to have that. Obviously, there are connections between music and philosophy, most famously in the work of Schopenhau and nature or most recently, I suppose. Obviously, there's lots of treatments of of music and musical aesthetics throughout philosophical history, but those are the ones that least spring to my mind. So, yeah, they are intertwined with philosophy, I suppose, but that's not the that's not the angle uh through which I approach them. So yeah, those would be two things that I do outside of philosophy um that that bring me a lot of fulfillment. Here we have a question from Rodia T4Z and it reads, "As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?" Um I went through many different stages. Uh I wanted to be a physicist when I was very very little or a scientist of of some sort. Uh then I wanted to kind of travel the world um and kind of learn different languages, which which is kind of rubbish. I'm like terrible at languages. I I I've not been able to learn one. I'd really like to learn German, um, but I I'm awful at it and I also don't spend enough time doing it. So really, when I say I'm awful at it, that's an excuse. What I mean is that I'm I'm I'm lazy and I have not yet found myself uh insufficient discipline to sit down and learn German, which I could like I don't think that it's like a a kind of genetic inability. I just think that I'm I kind of I struggle with motivation there. Um, by which I mean I'm a bit lazy there. But uh I went through lots of different phases. Um, I wanted to be a historian at some point.
Um at uni I kind of went through various different uh ideas of what I wanted to be. Um at one point I wanted to be an actor which was never going to work. Um and then uh you know while I was at university I I wanted to be an academic and I I kind of still do in a in a in a way. Um originally the the channel was kind of started and what I was going to do is take a few years off in between my my masters and and then apply for PhDs and I may still do that. It's just that this kind of side project that I was doing so whether I could continue to, you know, learn a bit of philosophy and and read a bit in my spare time has has ballooned into what is now my absolutely wonderful job. So there is that you know I I would still like to go back and do my PhD at some point. Um I'd like to do in philosophy of science. A lot of a lot of people have asked me if I if I have plans to do a PhD and I would do. I'd like to do a PhD in pragmatist philosophy of science and possibly connecting that with uh the comments that nature makes specifically in his very very late unpublished work and also in Twilight of the Idols because I I think there's some really really rich what I would call pragmatist philosophy of science there although um the label there will probably be disputed uh but I I I think there's a lot there uh that is incredibly relevant to modern philosophy of science and I I'd love to to bring that out of it. Um, so yeah, that that's that's kind of maybe maybe I'll end up doing a PhD in that. That'd be great.
Uh, but yeah, that's a kind of general list of of things that I I I wanted to to be when I grew up as a child. I I feel like in some ways, you know, I don't think that kind of childhood dreams are totally discontinuous with adult dreams. You know, I still have ideas of what I want to to be when I grow up. Um, it's just that, you know, I sort of am grown up, but also there is clearly more more growing to do. So, I don't know. What do I want to be when I grow up now? Um, I know I to be honest, I just want to write. I love writing. I think it's great. Um, in any capacity, I would love to to still be writing and yeah, I I don't know that that is what I do now. So, I suppose that's that's absolutely fantastic, but I would like to continue doing it. So, that's what I want to be uh when I grow up. Here's a question from Polyonic Princess and it reads, "Why do you think emotional sincerity is so often perceived as embarrassing or uncomfortable and do irony and detachment play a role in that?" So, I've spoken about this or I've mentioned this a couple of times on the channel. I effectively think that being ironic or being insincere and not having to commit to a position in a conversation just is a more powerful position to be in than being sincere or emotionally vulnerable or just saying what you think. Right? You know, I'm not saying that I'm extending this beyond, you know, blubbering on camera or anything like that. I literally just mean giving your honest opinion on something. And the reason for this, I I think is is basically that if you're being ironic or detached or in some way distancing yourself from the things that you're saying, which we all do at some point, and sometimes it's entirely appropriate, you don't have to stand by your words.
You can then later say, "Oh, you know, that that's not what I think. Um, I was just taking up that position." And sometimes that's really really helpful, right? Sometimes that's exactly what you want. quite often if I'm interviewing someone and I want to press them on a particular position, I'll say, "Look, this isn't what I think." But like this is the obvious objection to to what you've just said. So, um, could we delve into that a little bit more? But the trouble with the way that I think discourse occurs online is because so much of it is anonymous and because so much of it is happens between you total strangers who might never see one another again. The glory of winning that particular outcome becomes outsized in people's priorities.
Uh at least this is what I reckon, right? I haven't actually, you know, I've looked into this a bit, but it's not like I have, you know, diehard uh empirical evidence for this, but this is what I think. So, if you're having lots of one-off interactions with people and the main aim of that is to win the interaction, well, then you are likely to have more success if you're being ironic because then you can take any position that you want on any issue that happens to be under discussion and the other person, if they're being sincere, just simply cannot do that, right? They are stuck defending their sincerely held belief because that's not going to change probably within the course of this conversation. So that's one uh factor or incentive pushing people I think towards the direction of irony and attachment. But the other thing is it just affords you so much more flexibility in the conversation. You can on the fly change what you say and what you for the purposes of that conversation think. So it's just a much more flexible debating posture. And again, if your goal is to win that debate, then you want to allow yourself within the context of the debate as much flexibility as you possibly can. So that's another reason. And I think that this leads to a slightly penicious scenario whereby because irony and detachment are so much more efficacious in conversation, that means that eventually sincerity kind of gets edged out. If you let a bunch of ironists and a bunch of people being sincere together in the wild, then the ironists are going to out compete the sincere people and eventually just, you know, make them shut up and the sincere people will either have to switch tactics and turn slightly ironic themselves or they will have to simply stop talking. And so I think that that I think that's one of the reasons why having discussions online is so difficult. It's because the incentives are all towards irony. And I think part of this is because the interactions are so fleeting because you know if you're say you know say if you had a friend right who talked in the totally ironic and detached way that works very well for people online you would eventually just go that guy's a dick and I'm not going to spend time with him. It only works because the interactions aren't repeated. You know you're talking to one person one minute you're talking to another person the next minute. And as a result the benefits of sincerity which are that people kind of know your character. you know, they they get an idea about you. Uh they know what you believe. They there's a relationship of trust that builds up. All of that is basically impossible anyway if you're just having one-off interactions with strangers online. And so only the strengths of irony are left. And yeah, I I so that's that's kind of why I think that irony and and attachment tend to edge out sincerity on online discussions because I I think that it's just a a function of a mixture of anonymity, interactions between strangers, the particular strengths of irony and the fact that these are often one-off interactions. So yeah, in terms of why emotional sincerity is often perceived as embarrassing or uncomfortable, I think just kind of because it is, right?
like it's a it's a it's an element of your life that is most often displayed in private and so when it's displayed in public there's a certain amount of vulnerability that comes from that that I think understandably can make people kind of cringe a bit right it's like when you know it's like if you saw someone completely breaking down in public there's a little bit of you that's like oh god like I really feel for you and I don't just feel for you because you're clearly upset I feel for you because this is a a socially embarrassing situation for you to be in.
So, no, I feel like emotional sincerity in that extreme sense has always been uh a little bit um uncomfortable or or a little bit embarrassing. Um I think that online it's just that even straightforward sincerity that isn't particularly uh emotionally I don't say incontinent, but I'm going to say it anyway, like emotionally incontinent also gets mocked. And I think that's because of all of the incentives that that I've talked about before.
effectively it it just is more advantageous for you to to be an ironist online. I think that's a shame. Um with the possible exception to be fair of people in my position whereby you know you see my face and and you have kind of repeated par interactions with me. So I know I think that actual creators especially um creators like long-term creators there there's a possible exception to that. But even then, what you'll more often see, I think, is people jumping in and out of the ironic stance as it suits. Uh, which I know I I think is like I think there are strengths and weaknesses to this. I wish that the internet was or I wish the internet could facilitate a little bit more sincere conversation. Um, but at the same time, I think there is room for creative irony. And I I don't want to lose sight of that. I have been very harsh on irony in the past. And it's not that I think that it's completely useless. It's more like I think that it is outsized at the moment, has an outsized role. I think similarly about things like critique. You'll notice that on the channel I basically never do response video content. Um that's not because I have like like a kind of inherent moral aversion to it or anything like that. Um and I have done it a couple of times, but mostly I don't. And that's normally because I don't like my content to be purely critiquing or or purely critical just because I think it's so much easier to criticize than to create. And uh so I don't know and I I I think that means that we end up online with an outsized number of critics and a small number of people kind of attempting to originate things or be enthusiastic or or teach about things. And so I I'd rather be in that in that latter camp. Um, again I think for a very similar reason uh the the kind of oversaturation of of critique online I think occurs for a very similar reason as the oversaturation of irony. It is much much easier to take something that exists and point out flaws in it because there are always flaws in things. Like it it's very very easy to spot flaws in basically everything and uh than it is to create something that is nonetheless uh imperfect and will require refinement but is there and it's not sort of it's not leeching its existence off of another thing. That's not that I think that criticism isn't important. I just think that because it is easier that means that we have to be careful about it taking an outsiz role because you need people creating these imperfect things uh in order that they can be later refined. Okay. Next we have a question from a male bulier 2454 and it reads what is the line between a non-filosophic piece of literature like say the hobbit and a work of literature that is philosophy like say one of dstovski's novels is it simply intent on the part of the author can any work of literature be used to create something of philosophic value oh and by the way I love your channel you do great work oh thank you very much that's very kind so I don't think it's a hard line I think that it is a sliding scale there is a trivial sense in which you could say all literature and all work and almost everything is philosophical in basically the same way that you can kind of trivially say that all art is political.
The reason that in both cases I find that kind of thing unhelpful is because if your statement applies to everything then chances are it doesn't say very much. Um we talked about this in in a video I did not too long ago about the phrase um all relationships are transactional. If your statement applies to every one of a thing, then by definition, your definition must be large enough that it cannot differentiate between elements of those things. So, I'll use all artist political as a good example here.
There's a trivial sense in which I think that's probably true. I think I've given this example before. Like even if you were to take a cave painting, right, and I was actually reading something about this the other day. It was it was on a a book uh about dehumanization.
And the author was pointing out that in cave paintings, animals tend to be drawn naturalistically whereas people tend to be drawn symbolically. And that's you can have political import there, right?
You you can say, Colin, we can we can learn something about the way that these people saw the human being as distinct from the animal. And you know, if you you might you might say that well, we can look at the particular pigments they used or the particular materials they used and we can learn something about the society in which they they existed.
At the very least, we can say something like, well, they must have had enough leisure time and enough stability to think it was worth painting uh the cave painting and also they had the time to do it. You know, that that that's not insignificant and that is a political inference. I think the danger is where, you know, somebody uses that kind of triviality where you can draw political conclusions from basically any work of art and basically kind of anything that humans do because politics is is is effectively the stuff that happens when humans come together and interact with one another and create things in a social context.
I think that the danger comes when we take a trivial observation like that and we try to say things like, you know, we we act as if all art is equally political, which I think is obviously not true because take something like George Orwell's 1984 or or an homage to Catalonia, right? These are two incredibly political works. They have direct explicit political content. Now I could say in this trivial sense that both those works and the cave painting are political but of course like the devil's in the details right I can there is significantly more political argumentation and content in these Orwellian works and in you know numerous other overtly political works like dsiovski's demons is an overtly political work in at many many points at least so there's more political content in those works than there surely is in the cave painting this I think suggests that in addition to this trivial way of using the word political where we say all art is political. We also need to make kind of intraartic distinctions between how political works are, what their politics is, whether their politics is in the content or the mere existence of the work, etc., etc., etc. And I think that sometimes this can get a bit obtuse, right? Like when someone says online, I don't want my films to be political or something like that. I think that to reply with a triviality like all art is political is sort of to just to say like it's it is to deliberately misunderstand what they're saying or at the very least to not put much effort into understanding what they're saying because clearly it seems to me that they're using the term political in a narrower sense than in the trivial sense whereby all art is political. So anyway, that's kind of a side tangent. I would effectively say that a similar thing holds here, right?
All literature and I would I would say all art and pretty much all statements are philosophical in a very very broad sense of the word. However, the trouble with that designation is that it's basically unhelpful because evidently uh there are works that have more philosophical content and works that have less philosophical content. Right on my desk, I have, you know, DSTVKI's Crime and Punishment. This was actually a birthday present from a friend of mine. It's the It's the um it's not the one that I've got all my notes in um cuz I didn't want to kind of ruin it cuz it's a bit sentimental, but this is my my kind of gift, Crime and Punishment.
And let me see what else I've got. Uh do I have anything any literature that I would say is like totally non-fillosophical around me? So this is a trouble. You know, almost all the literature that I look at is a bit philosophical. But let's say, you know, I've got Crime and Punishment on one hand and imagine that I've got a copy of the hungry little caterpillar on the other. Is it hungry little caterpillar?
It might be very hungry caterpillar or very hungry little caterpillar. I don't know how many adjectives there are, but anyway, if I was to hold those two up, you could say, well, there is philosophical content in this children's tale. Uh, I it says something about the nature of life. You know, life needs food to to sustain itself or something like that. I can't really remember the plot of the very hungry caterpillar, so uh I'm just kind of going off the idea that he probably eats a lot. Uh, but clearly we could say that there is more philosophical content within Crime and Punishment. And I think that that distinction is worth drawing. Like I think that when we define terms so broadly that we can no longer make helpful intraet distinctions between the members uh of things like literature and art. I think they become unhelpful. So basically I'd say it's a sliding scale.
I don't think that there is a hard line.
At the same time I think that there are works that are evidently more philosophical than others.
And again, I when I'm reading classic literature, I almost always find that there is a healthy amount of philosophical content in there. It's interesting that you use The Hobbit as your kind of non-filosophical uh work of literature cuz I think there's there's quite a lot of quite a lot of philosophy in The Hobbit, uh at least as much as you get in any other children's book.
And certainly there's there's a lot of philosophy in Tolken more generally. So, I don't know. I think that there is philosophical value in an awful lot of literature. At the same time, I don't I think that there are works that are clearly more philosophical than others.
Okay. Our next question is from the Neptune Kid, and it reads, "Where are you at in the consciousness discussion?"
So, my position on consciousness is that I think that I'm generally quite skeptical of any philosophical debate that attempts to get to fundamental reality, if that makes sense. This came up a bit in my conversation with Philip Goff and I've since talked about this with um Jack SS on his show though I don't think that I don't think that's come out yet where a lot of the discussion around consciousness is about what consciousness is at a fundamental level like what it is in and of itself separate from anything that it does or anything we can perceive about it or anything we can infer from it or any way in which it seems to manifest observably. And like I kind of don't know what we're talking about then if that makes sense. like if we're trying to ascertain the inner nature of consciousness, I'm suppose I suppose I just don't quite know what I mean by an by an inner nature. And so I suppose I kind of struggle to understand the discussion in the way that it's normally put. Um, and I don't mean that like flippantly. I have I have tried to understand uh and and most people seem to have no trouble with this. So maybe it is just a me thing. But like I I often would give the same reply to like physicalists who are kind of saying, "Yeah, everything in the world is is fundamentally physical." And I kind of think, well, is it like separate from any kind of observation we make of the of these things or like ways that we can interact with things? It also is this extra thing called physical.
I I don't know if that makes that much sense either. And and I I I think that a lot of the time when I talk to physicalists and when I talk to non-physicalists, they seem to be able to recognize this critique when it's applied to the other camp but not their camp. Like um you know, it's not that unusual to see non-physicalists calling physicalism like incoherent or confused.
And it's not that unusual to see physicists calling non-physicalism incoherent and confused. And both of them seem to think that the other is positing this kind of weird mysterious thing that the other party can't make sense of. Like everything is physical, everything is non-physical, everything is ideas. Like what do any of these really mean? Um, and I I just share that skepticism, but I I kind of feel it with all of the positions. And I I think this conversation can get a bit confused because quite a lot of the time I see the term physicalism, I see it used for naturalism, right?
methodological naturalism. The idea that when we are studying the mind, we should attempt to use scientific and empirical methods to do it. And I I don't mind that. That that sounds great, right?
Like I I think that using observation and then seeing what we can infer from observation is a very good way to study anything and a very good way to study the mind. I've got no issue with that.
But I don't see why we need this extra bit where we say that everything is physical. Like I don't know what in the same way that I don't see why we this need this extra bit saying that you know things are are non-physical like in their essence I I'm just like really skeptical of the of the way that this debate is often couched in terms of inner natures or essences of things. I I I just kind of get I get a bit confused.
This came up in in in my discussion with Philip Goff as I said because you know he was saying things per like perfectly reasonable things. These are things that I hear people say a fair amount in in in these debates which is uh you know you know what consciousness is just by experiencing it and I kind of think well I can see I can see things I have experiences and I can I can look at the contents of those experiences I suppose I can see that you know I've got my light there and my camera there and my uh my screen there and um that allows me to to sort of make sure that I'm I'm kind of staying roughly in the center of the frame. And I can see all of those things, but I can't see the inner nature of my experience. Like I I this sounds really flippant when I say it, but I just don't know which part of my experience is meant to be the inner nature bit. And I promise that I'm not being obtuse when I say that. I I just kind of It seems to me that a lot of non-physicalists say things like the uh when you experience you get an insight into the inner nature of consciousness.
And I don't know where the inner nature is meant to be. Is the inner nature meant to be like all of it taken in totality? Uh is the inner nature meant to be like a structural property? I'm just not entirely sure. And I have tried like I've really tried to sus out what what I think people mean by this. Um and maybe it's just that they're having an experience that I don't have. And and that's okay. It might just be that I'm kind of in the same way that some people are like, you know, color blind. I am inner nature blind or what have you. But I think that if I were to ask many of you now who do are convinced that they know the inner nature of their experience just by kind of reflecting on it, which part of your experience is the bit that justifies this inner nature inference I suppose is is the kind of thing that I would ask. And I say in addition, I'm not massively sure what describing the entire world, the kind of totality of facts or the totality of stuff we study as physical really does.
Like in addition to being observed or the subject of empirical inquiry or the subject of of kind of reasoned reflection, it's also this extra thing called physical. I I don't know. I I don't really get that that either. Um which is why I wouldn't call myself a physicalist. The closest I don't know the closest in literature position that I have generally on this kind of thing would be called something like phenomenalism which is a a position sometimes ascribed to David Hume where I'm quite skeptical about getting beyond like perception and into things like inner natures. I I I'm there's a line from nature where he talks about the Greek staying boldly on the surface and in some ways I really resonate with that. like there's a kind of um not that I think that's particularly uh necessarily the sense in which nature meant it but staying with what I can see and think about and that you know it seems to me that when I am theorizing about physical objects I'm carving up bits of my experience and that sounds like it's going to be you know some kind of argument for idealism but the only kind of idealism that that would establish is a very trivial kind it's just the kind that says you can only see things through the lens of your experience which is I don't know like kind of big whoop like I don't really know what follows from that certainly nothing about the inner essence of everything follows from that when I say that I can't get beyond experience I literally just mean that I am experiencing things and I am there's nothing that I am experiencing that isn't part of my experience it's like a deeply trivial claim I don't know so I suppose maybe it's cuz I I have quite pragmatist leanings I'm I just find that a lot of the questions about consciousness I suspect either either it's just that I'm struggling to understand them or I think that they might be trying to get at something that I don't know seems like it can never be experienced and seems like it can never be kind of checked if that makes sense like two people uh we can imagine two people one of whom is a physicist another whom is an idealist and they both say they both make all of the same predictions about the world but one of them has this extra thing which is that everything is physical and another one has this extra thing which is that everything is is an idea in this kind of broad sense in which we can we can talk about ideas and idealism. Um because that can be a bit of a misleading way of putting it. But I'm going to stick with it for now. I just don't know what the extra bits doing. It seems like these two things if they're not totally equivalent are equivalent in an awful lot of ways. And if this extra designation as physical or non-physical doesn't allow me to infer anything and I can't perceive it, well then I I don't really know how I'm going to adjudicate this debate. And I also am not entirely convinced on what of what hangs on this.
That that's my position on the consciousness thing which is why I kind of you know I had um Walter V on and I really enjoyed our discussion about consciousness partly because I think that we we focused a lot on on kind of questions of how consciousness might have come about what evolutionary role consciousness has and I'm really interested in those sorts of questions.
I'm less interested in thinking about what consciousness fundamentally is or what anything fundamentally is separate from any kind of experience of it or thoughts about it. Like I I mean I've occasionally put it like this which is you know I don't know what something seen from nowhere would look like. You know I I don't know what a thing in and of itself would be like because by definition I can never get at it. And a lot of the uh discussions about consciousness strike me as trying to get at something with a view from nowhere.
And I I know I'm just not entirely convinced of that. Uh having said that, I'm I'm like, you know, I'm perfectly open to uh being convinced on this point. It's not like I am uh dieh hard against this. It's just that I I I'm I'm concerned that I can't see what would adjudicate the debate between the physicist who thinks that everything is essentially physical, like separate from any kind of experience, so that it just like also is essentially physical, and the non-physicist who agrees with the physicist in all of the observations about the world, but also thinks that that everything or the mind is is essentially non-physical. I'm just I don't know. I kind of don't. But then again, I think it's just that I'm skeptical about this fundamental reality that they're arguing about. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if that's helpful or if that's just deeply unhelpful because it's kind of a a wishy-washy sidesteppy answer. But that's why I struggle to engage with the philosophical debates on consciousness in the way that they're often put. Okay, here we have a question from Anakah S4U.
And it reads, "Who's your favorite author just reading style-wise?" So, separate from content, my favorite author in terms of style. This is a a tricky question. Probably either Stondal, but I suppose then I'm kind of incorporating the particular translation. Um, but at the very least the Stondal that I've read in English uh read incredibly well. I love the reading style. I thought it was very funny and very witty and at the same time incredibly insightful too. Uh, I think Standal just is an absolute genius.
There's also um Bulgarov uh the author of the master and the margarita who I I really like his his writing style again in translation so I for what it's worth I don't know how much that holds but I think that Bulgarov has a wonderful way of describing things that he can do the sort of conversational vernacular way of of speaking and and writing I suppose but at the same time he's very very good at describing things that are magical and fantastical and I think that's a real skill as well. And then the third would be uh PG Woodhouse. I think PG Woodhouse is the funniest author ever and I think he's a magnificent stylist.
Just has a a phenomenal way with words and I would encourage everyone to go read him. Uh I I think you know I say there's very little philosophy in in there. There's quite a lot of like social satire in there which I I think is very good in kind of the G's and Worcester books which are are the ones I'm most familiar with. but he's just a magnificent pro- stylist. And I think that it's so hard to be funny in written text. I think it it's so difficult because I think that um I've watched a fair amount of standup and if some of you have, I think you might concur with an observation here, which is that I feel like 70% of what standup comics do is they're very, very skilled at getting the audience on site. And if an audience is in a particularly genial mood, you'll notice that a stand-up comic can say almost anything and the audience will burst out laughing because they're in that kind of ra. It's similar to how, you know, if you're sat chatting with some friends, right? And you're telling jokes, those jokes can make you laugh more than some of the greatest comedy writing in history simply because of the context and how relaxed you are. You know, your mental state is perfectly attuned to humor. But of course in the written word which is PG Woodhouse's domain, you kind of don't get any of that. You know, you can kind of build up a raore with your reader as a writer, but it's it's much harder. And so I think you have to lean a lot more on just being an incredibly skilled stylist. And I think that's what PG Woodhouse is. And then fourth, I'd probably say Shakespeare. Um that's kind of boring, but Shakespeare is as brilliant as everyone says. So, um I'm sorry to be dull, but I I I will happily be dull and and right. Okay.
Next, we have a question by Ralphen NC09, and it reads, "What's some advice you would give to someone who wants to use his intellect but takes disagreement a bit too personally, sees everything as a threat? Yeah, it's a bit of a shame.
Also, I'm new to most of this. I haven't done rigorous reading on philosophy, literature, arguments on God, existence, etc." So, first of all, everyone starts somewhere. Like it's perfectly okay not to have read uh all that much on on these subjects. Like if if it's something you're interested in, it's just you you'll read more over time, right? Everyone begins with not having read everything like well everyone begins with not having read anything and nobody ends with having read everything.
So you know you're starting at the same point as as everyone else. Um, and like something that an old philosophy professor of mine used to remind all of us of was that however much you have read, you have only read a vanishing amount of the literature on any topic probably and certainly a vanishing amount of literature out there on every relevant topic that you're interested in. It's just that there is an absurd amount of thinking done an absurd amount of writing done on almost everything that that you can think of and you're never going to encounter at all. Uh so you know that's that uh don't let people you know talk down to you. Uh we were all at one point very very like new to to things in terms of taking disagreement a bit too personally. I think that's also just kind of something you get used to. I've kind of had a a crash course of it like online right because you're just exposed to so many more people and I I don't get very much negative push back but like anyone right I do get some. And I think that it is something you become inured to. One thing that I found that that really helps is in philosophy, I think that you get used to not identifying with your own beliefs very much. At the very least in my area of philosophy, uh it may be different. I know some people who are very into political philosophy who are like really really identify with their beliefs, but certainly in my kind of neck of the woods philosophically. I suppose it's common practice to try not to end up identifying with the things you believe. And the reason for that is that you might be wrong. And if you are wrong, you want to be able to change your mind without it hurting all that much. And also, you want to make sure that because it would hurt to change your mind, your mind isn't kind of marshalling all of its resources to ensure that you don't change your mind.
Right? Because that's the the the other worry is that if we find the possibility that we're wrong very painful, then we will not improve. will not maximize our our true beliefs and will not get kind of closer to being uh well-rounded thinkers. So, I don't know that that's that's one reason to to kind of not identify too strong with your beliefs. And also like you'll end up taking disagreement less personally because it won't seem like it's a reflection on you. It'll just be like, well, you know, people don't share my belief. That's kind of how things go.
Um, another, you know, if you if you uh hold a position very very strongly and you're very frustrated, people are dis disagreeing with you about that, a phrase um that I that I quite like is is just let them be wrong. You know, people are going to be incorrect about things.
That's okay. Even if they are straightforwardly factually incorrect or you feel very strongly that they are just wrong about something, people are going to be wrong. Like it's okay. uh the world isn't going to collapse because because people are are wrong about things or or disagree with you about things. At the very least, that particular person isn't going to bring about the end of the world probably unless they know they have access to nuclear weapons or something. Um what was the other part of your question? Uh seeing everything as a threat. Yeah, I think that's um I think that not identifying with your own beliefs and recognizing that they're likely to change a lot over time can be very helpful here. Something that I've mentioned a lot on the channel is that I am I disagree with a lot of what I believed even a few years ago and with some topics I disagree with a lot of what I believed a year ago and with a few I disagree with what I believed even a couple of months ago. So I think once we get used to seeing our beliefs not as a set of things that's going to be fixed and that it is our duty to defend but instead as one stage along a development then it becomes much easier to go well you know I could be wrong about this.
It's not it's not a threat for it to be wrong. If anything, you know, it's more rewarding to be wrong about something than right about something because that then allows you to change your mind and have a more defensible and more developed set of beliefs. I think that is in some ways it's much better to be wrong than to be right because when you find out you're wrong, you get to become better. Whereas if you find out you're right and you can't go anywhere from there, right? You just kind of you're right. Like big whoop. You don't get to learn anything from being right. you get to learn quite a lot from being wrong.
Um, so I don't know that that that's what I tell myself anyway to kind of stem the shame of of of realizing that I'm wrong about things. Next, we have a question from Robar Wish 9514 and it reads, "Do you journal to document your growth over the years? Do you note down your troubles, goals, and ideas for the sake of self-reflection? If so, what's the structure that you go for?" So, I do journal. Um, I both have like types notes uh that I I kind of type up if I've got a lot to to say, but I also have a handwritten journal that I write in most days, I would say. Uh, sometimes I go long stretches of time without doing kind of personal reflection in it, but I'm I'm always always writing something in it. Part of that's just because, uh, for a long time I really struggled to handr write. I had kind of soft tissue damage and and and stuff down my my writing arm, and that made it, you know, difficult to to handr write. And so I I I take a real pleasure in now being able to handw write is something that I couldn't do very well for a very long time. So that that's one reason. Um I don't really have a structure for my journal. Um I'm not one of those people that that has, you know, five different journals for different subtopics and things. I just find that whenever I've tried to do that in the past, all that's ended up happening is that I've got overwhelmed and I haven't written in any of them. So I have one journal for everything. Um, if I have kind of thoughts I that I I feel need to be worked out handwritten on paper, I'll do it in that. It also has my personal reflections in. It has my to-do lists in. Uh, it has, you know, stuff I'm working on, video ideas, uh, particular kind of quotes from books that I've enjoyed so much that I wanted to to write them down. I just have like one book for everything. Uh, that means I go through books fairly quickly. Um, so I I it's not on this bookshelf, but in the bookshelf in my living room, um, I have, you know, a stack of of my old notebooks, which is really fun. You know, sometimes I I go through it and I think, God, what was I what was I thinking this time, you know, last year?
And I've got a I know kind of which notebook corresponds to that and and I I kind of go to that one. I I've tried journaling a few different ways. I used to take a lot of notes on my Kindle Scribe. Oh, that's I must be in the other room. Um, that's a Kindle Scribe, by the way. This isn't sponsored or anything, but they are fantastic.
They're just brilliant. You get to make notes on the side. You get to highlight.
You can export them all off. It's it's brilliant. Um, so I highly recommend Kindle Scribe. You know, I import PDFs onto it and I can kind of write right onto the PDF and then have an annotated version of my PDF. It's it's brilliant.
Um, I'd highly recommend it. So, I do I do a fair amount of amount of my actual note takingaking in the margins of things. Um, and then you know at the end of a chapter or at the end of a book, I tend to then either type up some notes or write a paragraph about it or jot down a few notes in my notebook. It kind of depends on on what what kind of is nearest to me in the moment or what I fancy doing. I'm not kind of I'm not precious about things. I I'm not I don't like have a journaling system that I I really stick to or a note-taking system that I religiously stick to. I I feel like that can be very very helpful, but after a while you kind of figure out what works for you. you know, you kind of you can loosen up and and and I don't know, journal in jazz rather than in kind of strict time. Uh, which I know I I I find that it I journal more and I journal more effectively. I don't know if effectively is the right word. Um, when I just allow myself to kind of do what I want. So that that that's kind of my my broad approach that is profoundly unhelpful, but it is true. Next we have a question from Bass Vanerine 9575 and it reads, "What topic would you have liked a certain philosopher to tackle?
As in I wonder what philosopher X would have said about topic Y like what would Plato have thought about the modern human rights framework and its philosophical underpinnings eg?" So there are a couple two really spring to mind. One is Plato but Plato on modern mathematics and modern logic because you know Plato was obsessed with mathematics. he was obsessed with geometry and uh in his educational system for the philosopher kings, there's a huge amount of what we would now call pretty abstract mathematics.
So, I'd love to see what Plato would make of harmonics and modern algebra and group theory and symmetries and topology and all sorts. I I just think that'd be really interesting. You know, how would he have reacted? Would that have affected his philosophical framework?
Would it have not changed it at all?
Would it have made it more entrenched?
How would he how would he react to the modern philosophy of mathematics? You know, would would he recognize modern platonism? Or would he think I don't know about that? You know, actually my I intended platonism to be be a bit different from how it's currently worked out. That that's one thing I'd really like to see what Plato would make of mathematics and the philosophy around mathematics and also modern logic because of course Plato wrote before Aristotle even made the first steps to codifying logic and I would love to see what what Plato would think of that and what Aristotle would think of that. um and what the stoic logicians would think of that like Crescipus. I'd love to see what Chryipus would make of of Brig Frager Brishift or or something like that. Um I think that'd be really cool. The other one that really springs to mind is I'd love to see how nature would react to modern neuroscience and modern evolutionary biology and kind of modern empirical psychology more generally. I one of the things that that's really kind of affected the way that I I read nature um especially more recently because it's kind of been the stuff that I'm reading has been looking at the books that nature himself was reading at the time.
uh Thomas Broier just generally he's a he's a a nature scholar from Sweden and he in his papers and in his books is so on it with this and it has really changed the way that that I see nature because you know we think of nature as an untimely thinker and he refers to himself as an untimely thinker you know a philosopher who is commenting on uh perennial themes uh to a certain extent and and somebody who is in in his view not mired in the particular controversies of his day. However, if we look at what N is reading, especially in his later periods, N was reading a lot of contemporary psychology, a lot of contemporary biology, um a lot of very very very early neuroscience. And I I don't know. I I think that these seem to have shaped his thinking in in pretty important and profound ways because especially in his later work, he's often prioritizing the physiological over what we might call the the kind of psychological even though he thinks that the physiological has psychological implications. It gets complicated, but I think that nature would take an awful lot from the modern states of those fields. And I would be very interested in in seeing how they shaped his own thinking. Um I think that the also just generally I think it's really worth looking into the context of his of his thoughts. Let me bring up my my book.
It's it's by bravier. Um it is on I'm trying to get the exact title. It's called nature's philosophical context and intellectual biography. We read a braier book as part of the reading group in was it Mar? No, it was April. Um in April in March we read Simone V. uh and this um in that book he talks a lot about nature's context around uh what he was reading when he wrote Twilight of the Idols but in this book that's just called nature's philosophical context he just examines the books that ne's reading at various different points uh in his writing period for example you know one of the things I took from this I didn't realize this was that in his middle period ne was reading so much voltater I didn't know that like I knew that that nature had some some positive things to say about Voltaare, but I didn't realize quite how influential that was in his middle period. And in his later period, he's reading so much contemporary natural science. I I think that it's very easy to overlook this sort of thing. I also didn't realize, this is something else that I learned from this book, is that in his later period, in his very late period, he had an ongoing correspondence with Ernst Mack, the the kind of Vienna Circle philosopher.
Amazing, right? I I would have never drawn that connection, but they they exchanged letters. Nature sent him a copy of the genealogy of morals. But anyway, I I think that kind of thing is fascinating. And so, yeah, I I would love to see knowing that and knowing how influenced nature was by his own contemporary physiological sciences and evolutionary biology like as a kind of overarching framework and things like that. I would be just so fascinated to see how he would react to the advanced mature state of those fields today. I think that would be completely brilliant. And I again I want to know how much that would change his view on things. Would it mean that he would go back and and reclarify some of his ideas about psychology or would he would he view them as confirming some of his ideas about psychology? Brian Lighter wrote a book called Nature's Moral Psychology or something like that. It's either called Nature's Moral Psychology or Moral Psychology with Nature. It's like one of those. Um so many of of the titles of these commentaries kind of blur into one in my head. Anyway, in the final chapter of that book, he talks about modern empirical evidence for his interpretation of nature's psychological framework. And I thought that was absolutely fascinating. Um, and so yeah, I think that's the kind of thing that that ne himself would be interested in.
And so yeah, that that's an example of of a philosopher who I would be so fascinated to to wake up today and see how far neuroscience and physiology and psychology have come in the past 100 or so years and just just see what he makes of it. Um I don't know what he would make of it, but I would love to find out. Sadly, of course, we never will. Sorry, I ran out of contacts this morning, so I'm going to be in my glasses for the next few. Um, and our next question is from ID I L A A A T1 I, and it reads, "Really wanted to ask, did you like philosophy as a kid? Were you ever told to stop talking about it or to be less philosophical? How do you fair in social situations in general?" I I far all right. I wasn't a particularly social kid. Um, I was certainly very interested in asking like incredibly strange questions. I was very confused with the way people use language from a very very young age. I kind of thought this seems very odd. I would notice that people would use uh the same words in different ways and thus they would end up having arguments even though they weren't really disagreeing on anything. And I generally saw that people would get mired in linguistic disputes when they were trying to talk about something more substantive. And that's kind of how I got into philosophy. You know, I got into philosophy largely through confusions about language. um like I started my philosophical reading with philosophy of language largely and I I just kind of expanded outwards from there. The I suppose the the kind of like there are early stories reportedly from my parents like apparently I was like a pain in the ass in Sunday school and stuff. In fact, I used to I was embarrassed of this story, so I used to attribute it to a friends, but actually was me um younger at Sunday school who' uh bothered the the the nice um young lady running it who, you know, looked very old when I was seven, but was probably like 15 and asked her why if you go to heaven when you've just been baptized, why wasn't I killed after baptism? Because then I would never risk going to hell and that would be, you know, hell sounds really, really bad.
So, you know, if if if if my parents truly loved me, why didn't they kill me post baptism? And, you know, so I had that kind of that kind of question, which I don't feel is is is too unusual.
I think that, you know, one of the reasons why I've got, you know, young cousins and young family friends. And I think one of the reasons why I kind of enjoyed, you know, spending time with them almost and chatting with them is because I think kids are quite natural philosophers because they kind of just haven't learned what questions aren't silly to ask. Sorry, what questions aren't okay to ask, if that makes sense.
Like nobody's told them hopefully yet that these questions are like nonsensical or pointless or whatever.
And you know, I and I think that that obviously is why kids also ask a lot of questions that don't have any like feasible answer and and are kind of linguistically malformed, but it also sometimes means that they would just pose philosophical questions just kind of out of the blue. Um, I remember I was chatting to a family friend of mine when she was like six, so like a couple of years ago now, and she said, "Uncle Joe," and I said, "Yes." and she said, "Where did beauty come from?" And I was like, "That's like an insane thing for a small child to ask." And yeah, it didn't it didn't strike her as particularly strange question. And I I kind of said, you know, well, it sort of depends who you ask. And we had had a bit of a back and forth, you know, about what she thinks beautiful means and and you know, what kind of things she thinks are beautiful and why. And and it it was really really kind of interesting. And I think that a lot of the time kids just are quite philosophical. So I I I don't think that like a philosophically inclined kid is particularly unusual. Um I I think that you know my my parents were always very good at kind of nurturing my curiosity in that direction and in loads of other directions. I was a really curious kid.
I would just annoy them constantly with questions on everything. So I I kind of think that yeah I was a very questioning kid. Um sometimes uh probably to the detriment of everyone else around me.
Then again I don't know how much of that has changed. Uh in social situations I wasn't a particularly socially skilled kid. I kind of taught myself how to socialize by looking at the people around me when I was quite little. Um, I had like a notebook and I would write little observations about what other people did and to kind of like sus out what it is that you know makes people react certain ways to certain things and I eventually that kind of gave way to a much more natural way of engaging with the world. I don't have to think like that uh in quite the same way. Um, but yeah, no I I struggled with socializing quite a lot as a kid but again I don't feel that's I don't think that's massively unusual. like loads of kids struggle with socializing. So I think that you know that kind of Yeah. No, but to answer your question I wasn't a massively socially skilled kid. Uh but I was also very bookish. So I I think to a certain extent like I was not social because of a lack of interest until very suddenly I was interested in in socialization and making friends. And then I kind of had to catch up because all the kids who'd shown interest in socialization um had already put that work in. And so I had to to kind of suddenly bootstrap my way uh into being like a reasonably competent conversationalist. But that was fun. You know, it's kind of nice little project for little me. Okay, our next question is from Matrix Boy 303 and it reads, "You and Alex have found the greatest philosopher of all time. We ended up settling on Aristotle, which I think is a fairly uncontroversial choice. Um I know in some ways finding the greatest of anything of all time there tends to be a sort of convergence you know like uh greatest drummer people tend to converge on on Neil Pit. Um greatest guitarist people tend to converge on on Jimmyi Hendricks and greatest philosopher I think people tend to converge on Aristotle or Plato. It's kind of a those those are the ones that that that people tend to converge on. I bet I've just like pissed off loads of um like people who are really into rock.
But the very least that's my impression from from watching conversations and also I'm a big Rush fan. So that's why I'm very sympathetic to the uh the crowning of Neil Pit as the greatest drummer of all time. But anyway, who is in your opinion and as far as we can tell the smartest recorded person in philosophy? That's a very very good question. Now I am really biased here.
So I think Frank Ramsey. Um Frank Ramsey's amazingly brilliant. I've got his biography up here. It's by Cheryl Mizak, who's a phenomenal philosopher and historian of philosophy, but the subtitle to it is a sheer excess of powers. This is one of those books where I've actually got it in ebook, and that's the one that I I I mainly read um cuz it's nice to have it on the go, but I I was so enamored with it that I got the the physical book cuz it's just like lovely to have. Um but anyway, no, Frank Ramsey would be uh the person that I would say is at least in the running for the smartest philosophy person or philosopher of all time. He kind of just went around like I part of it the fact he died so young. So he died oh my god he died when he was not much older than me and by the time he died he revolutionized you know whole areas of mathematics, huge areas of philosophy, a few areas of economics. just a bastard, you know, you know, you come across these people in history are so intelligent, you just go, "Fuck you, man. Why dick? You're hoarding all of the all of the brains to yourself." Um, and the other reason why I really admire Frank Ramsey, as well as the fact he was so like incredibly brilliant, just just seemed to be able to um originate these original and incredibly insightful ways of looking at philosophical problems. uh he originated a huge aspect of the theory of partial beliefs and credences and how to treat those and in the philosophy of probability and stuff like that. Um as well as that he was just a lovely lovely guy. Uh he was one of the only people that Vickenstein would consult on things like Vickenstein really valued his opinion and Vickenstein's another contender for an incredibly clever person. The reason why I would go for Frank Ramsey, um, and I realize this is just showing my own bias more than anything else, is because he, I think, more than any other thinker in history, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before, um, disproves the idea that in order to be really clever, you need to be a dick. like we have this idea I think culturally floating around um in characters like I don't know Sherlock Holmes not necessarily the book Sherlock Holmes but almost every adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that I've seen um like you know Dr. house and that kind of stuff. We we have this kind of cultural idea of the person who is a genius and their genius makes them kind of an you know. And Frank Ramsey was like the opposite of that. And I love that because he was potentially the cleverest person in Cambridge at this at the time where where he lived and worked there. And yet he was so lovely, you know, he would he would ask he he said um he would like ask people questions.
He wouldn't condescend to them. he seemed to want to learn something from from all the people around him. And I just love that. I think that's such a a wonderful approach to life and to study.
And I think that I wish that culturally in philosophy and and in other fields we replaced the kind of giant of Vickenstein as an intellect to emulate because Vickenstein was a genius.
There's no doubt about it. But I wish that we replaced him as an idol almost with Frank Ramsey because Frank Ramsey demonstrates so well that the the kind of genius and dickishness can come apart and actually you can have someone who is I would argue just as if not more clever than Vickenstein and yet was eminently kind to the people around him.
That's why I love Frank Ramsey and I'm sure I' I'm sure I've given that rant on the channel before just because I love talking about him. He's phenomenal. I'll link some of his papers in the description if I can remember because they're they're free online and they're just amazing. They're like the Sorry, I'm going to kind of I'll get too sidetracks and I'll start just making rather odd noises if I continue talking about Frank Ramsey. So, I'm going to move on. But please do check out his papers cuz he's yeah that that would be my contender for the most intelligent person I've ever read or read about in philosophy and you can you can make the case for for many other people but that's the one you know that that that's my gut instinct. Here we have a question from feral earthman. That's a cool name and it reads what do you think about? I really like Jung Shawhan. I think that he has an incredible ability to put his finger on how people feel, if that makes sense. So like, you know, The Burnout The Burnout Society was a was a bestseller, I think, for for a very understandable and good reason, which is that he's so good at describing and conceptualizing a framework to process everyday phenomena that people experience like burnout. you know, when he says uh in the burnout society that um burnout is a result of a kind of autoexploitative cycle that you put yourself through even when no one else is watching. I think that myself and well I know that I read that and thought Christ that that that's very insight.
Yes, I think that does hit on something and I think many other people felt the same and I think that's kind of what Bungchan is brilliant at. I I think that's one of the reasons why uh people find him so compelling. Um I am reading a book by Shaw at the moment actually called In the Swarm um which is about is it's about many things because Balhan books kind of always are even when they pretend to be about one thing they're about they're about many things um but it's ostensibly about kind of the way that we do discourse on the internet. So that's a a kind of video topic that that I'm working on at the moment and is kind of almost ready uh to record. So, I'm quite excited about that. Um, but the uh where was I going with this? Yes. Um, but I I I think there it has a very similar um vibe to it, I suppose. Oh, it has a very similar strength to it. Like when he's talking about the way that uh discourse online is fleeting and it has no staying power, but at the same time, it's kind of chaotic and powerful and seemingly unpredictable and lashes out, but it's also not like one coherent body acting.
It's kind of many different things arising and falling away in this kind of in a in a to create a state of discourse where it feels like there's no stable handholds to grip. I I think that genuinely is such a good description of how it feels to conduct dialogue in many places on the internet especially kind of mass social media platforms like Twitter. So yeah, I I think that is his like immense strength as a philosopher.
Um, I wish he wrote a bit clearer sometimes. Uh, but I suppose, you know, I feel like most people have that complaint about about harm when they read him. Um, and I I do I do think that part of the reason why he is so compelling is that he puts things in a very poetic way, at least in translation, right? Because I've not read him in German. Um, and so maybe maybe that is maybe he would be maybe his writing would be poorer um were it more like a kind of analytic philosophy paper. Um yeah, I don't know. I that would be my um my general thoughts. Uh I the other thing that I do kind of wish is that I wish that he would occasionally make it explicit um what he's drawing upon sometimes cuz sometimes he does sometimes like there's a chapter in the Burnout Society where he's just commenting on an essay by Walter Benjamin and that's fantastic.
You can bring up the essay by Walter Benjamin, you can read them side by side and that makes everything a whole lot easier. Occasionally he is referencing things slightly obscurely like it's not entirely clear exactly what he's referencing and then you you don't get to do the sideby-side comparison and and see and read what he's commenting on as he's commenting on it. Um sometimes you can but sometimes it's a bit it's a bit more difficult to find. So that that that's something that I I I find a bit difficult. Um I also think that I know this is both a strength and a weakness. I find I can only read Bungalhan in very small chunks. And I think that's actually partly because his writing is very rich and takes a long time to pick through and that that that's I I like that. Um I can see why it frustrates some people though. Some people like really don't like Bhan. Um I've met people who just go, "Yeah, I hate him, man." I was think I can't imagine hating him. Um but yeah, I I see why people also have critiques of his work. Um, I like to see it I like to see his work primarily as a as constructing conceptual frameworks to understand the phenomenology of modern life from the inside. That's how I I interpret it and in that I think it's incredibly helpful. Um, but you know other people may disagree. Uh, I'm not you know I'm I'm sure that there are good critiques of him as well. Here we have a question from too aware for this and it reads, "Will you do videos about logic?" Yes, I will. I know he keeps saying that I will and I will. I think that I've done a couple, you know, I did a video where I was very skeptical about the the way that we use the word logical fallacy and stuff like that. The trouble is that a lot of logic is almost impossible to talk about without just doing the symbols. And the trouble with that is that like it's impossible within the span of a 40 minute to an hour YouTube video to become familiar enough with logical symbolization to talk about it in depth.
Like I could do a guide. I could do a kind of here's how logical symbolization works. Um but then you know at the end of the hour we wouldn't have really got any further than just establishing the the kind of symbolism. what a maybe we'll get as far as like what a simple natural deduction and propositional logic is. So it's it's just very tricky.
It's very tricky to well and then like if you talk about logic without the symbols, it's very easy to just stick entirely on the surface because like so much of formal logic is the symbols and it's impossible to express without the symbols. There are a couple of videos that I want to do on logic.
Well, there are three. I thought about doing a video on you know that scene in in the BBC Sherlock show where um it's become a kind of a meme online where Sherlock says you know oh this you you struggle there are scratches around the charging port of your phone. So, uh, I know that you were gifted this by your alcoholic brother or I can't remember the exact thing, but anyway, I thought I could use like scenes like that and to to kind of illustrate the difference between deduction, induction, and abduction and uh the kind of the uh necessary components of a good argument within each of those. Um, I I still may do that. Uh, I think that could be quite fun. Um, I'd like to do a video on the proof that 1ep plus 1 equals 2 from the Prancipia Mathematica because partly because I have it. I have volume one of the Prinipia Mathematica and I have read up to that point. Um, but I did it when I was like 1920. So I will need to refamiliarize myself with it. But um, the nice thing about that particular proof is that you can kind of explain it in plain English, although you will inevitably miss out some stuff. And there are loads of videos online that are like the 300page proof that 1 plus 1 equals 2, but they don't go into very much detail on what the actual proof is.
So I thought I mean maybe everyone will find this really really boring. Um cuz I I'm always very it's quite cuz cuz I really like logic and although I don't do it nearly as much as I as I used to, I still like it. It was it used to be like my joy. Um I I have a tendency to overestimate the extent to which people will will care about any of it. Uh, I want to do a video on girdles incompleteness theorems. I actually wrote half a video on girdles incompleteness theorems and I sort of realized that I was about 3,000 words in and I kind of hadn't even really explained what the proof was and I wanted it to be a video not just on the theorem or theorems um but I was just focusing on on the first one for for the sake of of that bit and then uh also looking at the way in which the the girdles and completeness theorems as results are often misused in various areas of philosophy but also in in science actually and it even by incredibly bright people like Stephven Hawking makes reference to girdles in completeness theorem in one passage of one of his books um that's referenced in a book about misconceptions around girdles in completeness theorem and you know Stephen Hawking is obviously like an infinitely better mathematician than I am and than like well was um than than than almost all of the world was is I'm I'm getting confused with the tense because obviously he's dead. Well, anyway, my point is he's very very good at maths or was very good at maths. Um, and yet even he for whom gles and completeness theorem would be like the kind of thing that he could pick up and understand without effort uh even he uh ends up paring um some of these some of these mistakes which I I I think is very interesting. Um so I would like to do a video on that. I would still like to do a video on that. I just need to figure out how to like frame it. I suppose this happens a lot. A oftentimes I'll I'll come up with a video idea and then I'll kind of get 80% of the way there and then it won't quite click together and so I'll just shove it and then like 8 months later it will hit me and I'll go great I I kind of know I know I know how this is going to all slot together there. And um so I whenever that moment happens hopefully if it happens uh you'll get a video on that. But yes, no I do want to do more videos on logic um if I can uh I just need to yeah need to need to think about how to go about it cuz I also I don't want to neglect the symbolism but I also don't the symbolism. It's just so it's funny hearing the the double meaning of that word. I don't want to neglect uh the formalism let's say um in say instead of symbolism um of formal logic and at the same time I don't want to get so lost in that that it becomes unhelpfully formal um and cutting that balance is something I will struggle with um so I don't know we'll see uh but I would like to yes that that's my broad answer is yes I would like to here we have a question from friend of the channel Brandon who runs the YouTube channel Mind Shift, which is a really cool channel. Everyone should go go check it out. Uh does lots of content on on kind of philosophy of religion and counter apologetics and and that kind of thing. It really really cool stuff. Um and it reads, "Holy cow, congrats, man."
Oh, thank you. We did our episode together when you were at 200k. Proud of you. Oh, thanks very much. What's the most surprising philosophical take you've changed your mind on since starting the channel? Oh, I don't know.
I've changed my mind on on a fair few things um since starting the channel.
Some of which I've talked about and some which I haven't. Um I I changed my mind a lot on on interpretations of stuff. Uh I've certainly changed my mind on how I interpret nature and I've changed my mind on how I interpret shop and how um a fair amount. And there are aspects of Dostki I've changed my mind on as well that that I think has remained a remained a bit more consistent. Um yeah, and mainly interpretive questions I've changed my mind on a lot since starting the channel just because I I spend a lot of time reading secondary literature um on these thinkers and reading the thinkers themselves. And so inevitably there's going to be shifts when you encounter them again and and you know you have fresh thoughts in your mind.
I've become probably a bit more empiricist since I started the channel.
uh not in the kind of classical sense just in terms of wanting to take philosophy a little bit away from intuitive appeals and trying to draw on on on naturalistic findings uh wherever I can though it's not always possible and generally trying to avoid except in ethics because I think it is unavoidable there but that's why I have an anti-realist conception of ethics um appealing to kind of intuitiveness or intuition as like much to uh uphold my my philosophical argumentation because I've become um pretty convinced that I I I just don't quite know what's supporting it. Um yeah, so that that that's a big change that that has occurred. Um it was a kind of direction I was already heading in anyway, but you know, that might sound minor, but it is like that that does underpin an awful lot of philosophical debate. So it ends up being quite a major change. I've become more pragmatist. I was always pretty pragmatist, but I've become like pragmatist in the philosophical sense.
um like uh kind of I I I've I've read a lot of of Pierce and Purse. Sorry, I just said Pierce. I said Pierce because one of my professors said Pierce. Um and I just kind of picked it up, but it is pronounced Purse. Um but Charles Sanders Purse and uh Frank Ramsey as well. This those two have been very very influential on me. Um I mentioned Ramsey earlier and I just think he's brilliant.
Um Pur is brilliant as well. Uh so that that that's been that's been something that I've changed my mind on. just kind of drifted more towards that that camp over time. I'm actually going to do a video on uh Vickenstein and one of my favorite kind of pragmatist leading interpretations of Vickenstein because I think that'll be really interesting. And also um Keegan from Essential Salts did two videos on Vickenstein and I was like, "Oh my god, I want to talk about Paul Horcher's interpretation of Vickenstein. Uh that'll be really fun."
So I'm I I've kind of just finished refreshing my my memory of that and I will write a video on that on that pretty shortly. um which are yeah I'm really looking forward to that cuz I think Vickenstein is fascinating but he's so complicated and there's so many interpretive disputes that I I quite like to see him through the eyes of a particular thinker. Um yeah and this is Paul Hor's reading of philosophical investigations and that's something I've changed my mind on actually reading that I read that in the autumn uh of 2025 and that really changed how I see Vickenstein. So that was that was really cool. Um yes there's lots that I've changed my mind on. It tends to be kind of background stuff.
There's also stuff that I've gone back and forth on. So, for a while I was more convinced of the strength of the fine-tuning argument. Um, and then I wasn't again. Uh, so I don't know that there's other stuff I've gone I've gone back and forth on. Um, probably the biggest shift that occurred just before I kind of started the channel is that when I was at university and when I was in undergrad, I was very fixed into a particular mode of doing philosophy whereby if something couldn't be fit into a formalism or you know a neat kind of uh logical or the very least kind of pseudological structure um I would be incredibly skeptical of it. And I still I I still think that's not a bad instinct, but I am much more open to alternative ways of presenting and doing philosophy because I I've become convinced that even though they offer something different, I don't think it's anything anything less valuable. Um, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the past past few years reading various continental thinkers and I I I just I just think that, you know, they're good. I I think they have insights to to to impart. I definitely fall on the continental defenders side. Um even though my background is more in more in analytic philosophy and I I still spend a lot of time reading analytic philosophy. So that would be something I've changed my mind on but again that's kind of slightly before I started the channel. I changed my mind on a lot of minor things and then when I look back on it my positions have changed really significantly. Oh something I have changed mind on since starting the channel is that I this is kind of quite controversial. I don't think the problem of evil is a problem for the theist. Um I I just think that they can appeal to a certain level of inscrutability in the personality of God. Um and yeah, I I think that kind of is the traditional theist response. It's certainly the response that is sort of intimated at the end of the book of Joe.
So yeah, that that's something I changed my mind on. I used to be a very big problem of evil uh believer, I guess. Um and now I just don't think it works. And um I divine hiddenness is slightly different. Um I actually think divine hiddenness is a is a better um problem.
the problem of evil for reasons that I won't go into now, but maybe maybe I'll I'll write on that at some point because on the face of it that does seem a bit a bit peculiar now I'm saying it out loud, but I do I do have my reasons. Um, yeah, that's a few examples, I suppose. But the problem of evil is probably the the kind of sexiest uh issue on which I've I've kind of over time taken a much more controversial position on. Um, yeah, that would be the one I think. Here's a question from Steven Adams 9173 and it reads, "What's one thing that really makes you angry, grinds your gears? And on the other hand, how do you keep your composure and stay calm and eloquent?
So, well, I'm very flattered think I'm eloquent. I actually think I'm quite rambly. Um, but I know I I have quite a calm demeanor, I suppose. There were points in my teenage years where I got quite hotheaded, but I think that's relatively normal for a teenager. I don't know. I I'm not of a disposition where I am massively bothered by uh kind of people saying mean things to me or stuff like that. I I touched on this earlier. I think that's partly just because the internet is kind of exposure therapy for that. You know, people are going to say mean things and it's kind of just how it is. Like I I I I don't think that um there are various different strategies that I I use to stay calm. Um quite a lot of the time is that is that I'm not It sounds bad when I when I say it out loud. I'm not like enormously concerned with what other people think about issues. And that's not really that's not because I think that they're like wrong um or necessarily wrong. It's just because I don't know. I have a fair amount of faith in people, I suppose.
Um, so I when somebody takes a position that that that disagrees with mine, even if they're very kind of vehement and quite rude about it, I I tend to think, well, you know, we just disagree, right?
There's nothing particularly mysterious about disagreement. And, you know, provided that they're like relatively good faith. And even if they're not good faith, you know, it's just kind of there's nothing I know. Maybe it's just there's nothing you can do about it. So, like it just doesn't really bother me.
Um, also like The thing about the internet is that like it it kind of doesn't matter if people say mean things about you. Like nothing nothing happens.
Nobody shows up at my house. Um you know I I I don't spend a lot of time online outside of making videos. Um and um I watch not very much YouTube and basically no philosophy YouTube. Uh, the only channel that I will watch, well, there there are a couple of channels I'll watch with regularity. Um, I'll quite often listen to the Nature podcast. Um, cuz I think Keegan always does really really cool work. Um, and I will, you know, I listen to to to the podcasts of my friends primarily. Um, but that that kind of feels slightly different partly because mostly I listen to that on Spotify. Um, so I'm still not kind of plugged into the the YouTube sphere. Um, and also just because, you know, I don't know. Yeah. So, I I'm not like I don't spend a lot of time online, so I don't I don't encounter many things that makes me like make me absurdly angry. I occasionally encounter a phrase that will make me very angry. I wrote on my substack a while ago about the phrase um the the idea of fulfilling your potential and how that kind of grinds my gears a bit. Maybe I do a full video on that at some point because I do think it's actually very interesting. The more I thought about it, the more I thought um actually this is really this is really interesting. I'm I want to write more on this. Um, so maybe I will um maybe I'll write a bit on that. Uh, that's something that grime my gears.
Yeah, I don't I don't know how I I stay calm particularly. People are mostly very nice. Um, so that that kind of helps. Um, and also yeah, the internet is real life, but most of the time it's not real life.
Like there are real disjunks between internet world and real world. Um, and I know I I place a lot of emphasis on just double-checking that all of my basic needs are met. You know, am I seeing people? I have a roof over my head. I have food on the table. It's just kind of fine. I don't know. May maybe maybe that's I don't think that's particularly unusual. Um, but that might be it. Uh, I'm also say I'm very I see my family a lot. I'm very close to my family. I live near to them. Um, I see my siblings a lot. So, I don't know. I I just kind of I feel like when you're in a very very natural social support network, the idea of like people being mean to you online hits much much less because it it seems so ephemeral and insignificant compared to like the the genuine embodied affection of your your own family. So, I don't know that that that might be why. Um but you know, but also like people just aren't very mean to me online. Most people are very kind of nice. Um, I find that if you're nice to people, people will be nice to you back. Um, so I don't know. I kind of live by that, I guess. Here we have a question by Gordon Shamway, 1857. And it reads, "Should philosophers have beards?
Does stroking a beard produce better thoughts or reflections?" I don't know.
I can't grow a beard. Uh, I wish I could. I would so grow a beard. I will grow a beard the minute that that I can grow grow one. Like this is like what two days stubble and you can see it's just kind of patchy and rubbish. Um I I like it's I I I can't grow a big wonderful Daniel Dennitesque bushy beard. Uh but I I would love to. Uh there there's fun there's an old Latin phrase uh that is I can't remember what it is in Latin, but in English it's um the beard doesn't make the philosopher.
And it it's kind of on this well it's it's a kind of more general lesson about you know uh somebody can look like something without being them. uh you know the the uh philosophers or the classic stereotype of philosopher has a beard but the beard isn't the thing that makes them a philosopher. It's kind of you know it's just it's it's it's not causitive there. Um and yes don't be fooled by by the appearance. Uh I suppose is is the lesson in that phrase.
But no that that's struck me as a as a kind of odd bit of synchronicity between between that and and this comment. Um yeah should philosophers have beards? I know I say I want a beard. Uh I can't say I can't give a kind of moral proclamation on the matter but I would want a beard. Does stroking beard produce better thoughts or reflections?
I do fiddle a lot when I when I think um you know either with my beard or with my hands or like I drum on tables. You in my um chat with Jonathan Pio you can see me drumming on the chair with my fingers and I do that a lot when I think. I like tap um which I think is is a habit I got from my dad because he taps on on lots of things when he's thinking. Um, so yeah, I maybe maybe that's uh maybe that's my my version of of stroking a beard. I do find that like fidgeting or pacing uh helps me think a little bit better if I'm a bit antsy. So I don't know this. So when I have a beard, I think I will stroke it. Uh I I I'll enjoy that. Um but for now, I'll have to make do with my my sad alternatives to beard stroking. Right, that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much again for all the support. I I really am bowled over by it. I I can't believe that, you know, I started this channel like 3 years ago and it I yeah, I'm I'm completely blown away by by how enthused people have been with it. Um and how uh how enthusiastic people are about philosophy and literature. It's it's such an absolute privilege to be able to do this. Um if you want to watch the last Q&A, uh you can watch it here. Um I talk about various uh different stuff.
I've tried to make sure that I I cover different topics here that that I covered there. Um but yeah, thank you so much for watching. Uh have a wonderful day.
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