Category:
Philosophy

Infinite Conversation

an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek. Everything you hear is fully generated by a machine. The opinions and beliefs expressed do not represent anyone. They are the hallucinations of a slab of silicon.

infiniteconversation.com

Posted By: Alex - Fri Nov 04, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Philosophy, Strange Websites

Existential Tattoos

I think that in the 1950s anything slightly non-conformist was labelled 'existentialist'.

This tattoo, on the back of a young Italian woman in Milan, Nov. 5, 1952, is in a new fashion taken up by young feminine followers of the post-war existentialist philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre, the French writer. The tattoo reads: "I have loved. I am grateful to God." This girl likes to be called Ginetta Sartre in honor of the leader of the movement. The tattoos are usually sentimental phrases or symbolic drawings. (AP Photo)


Wichita Eagle - Oct 27, 1952



Anyone with an existential tattoo should make sure to also wear an existentialist hat.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 08, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Fashion, Philosophy, 1950s, Tattoos

Miss Vice

In 1950, while Americans were bestowing titles such as 'Miss Potato Chip' or 'Miss Typical Teen' on young women, the French elected a 'Miss Vice'.

Chicago Tribune - July 3, 1950



The winner was 17-year-old Diane Erdos. Some details from the NY Daily News (Jun 25, 1950):

Diane won her title at Cave Tabou, rendezvous of the Existentialists, a year ago, after she put up an awful howl at being eliminated from a contest for the title of "Miss Virtue of Paris." Writer Boris Vian, the promoter, staged a Miss Vice contest to give her another chance.

The sexy brunette showed up with a costume made of three rather small pieces of newspaper — and won hands down over eight other contestants. The selection was popular. The crowd in the smoke-filled Cave Tabou congratulated Diane so enthusiastically that she lost her clippings and was carried unadorned on the shoulders of her admirers until the cops rescued her with a voluminous cape.


NY Daily News - June 25, 1950



Miss Vice, who was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, was soon after arrested for trying to blackmail one of her father's friends, threatening to tell the police that he was trafficking cocaine and illegally exporting ball bearings to countries behind the Iron Curtain.

When arrested, she confessed, saying, "I wanted the money to travel around the country and teach Existentialism to the youth of France. I intended to reveal my body in the interests of this new religion, so the sensation would bring me big audiences of young people to hear about M. Sartre's new philosophy."

Posted By: Alex - Wed Sep 01, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Philosophy, Ethics and Morals, 1950s

Video Village

This is getting meta! A TV game show that uses people as living tokens on a board game set is later replicated as an actual board game. Wow, man!

The Wikipedia page.







The entry at Board Game Geek.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Jun 28, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Games, Philosophy, Television, 1960s

To Be Alive



Moments of surreal or bizarre imagery in a nice little film about enjoying life.

One weird addendum: you are seeing only one-third of the film. The film was meant to run on three screens simultaneously, with different imagery on each screen, although sometimes, I think, they synchronized.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Nov 15, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Movies, Documentaries, Philosophy, Surrealism, 1960s

The jokes of Immanuel Kant

We've posted before about jokes from unlikely sources, such as the jokes of Lord Aberdeen, and the jokes of King George VI. Now, along similar lines, comes a book from Robert ClewisKant's Humorous Writings . It's a collection of 30 jokes told by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.



Kant and humor are, I'm guessing, two things most people wouldn't associate together. And after reading Clewis's book, their opinion on this subject may not change.

Clewis freely admits this. In his preface he notes that he was "once tempted to call the book Kant’s Humorous Writings: I Wish They Existed." He goes on to say, "Readers may find the jokes to be boring or even offensive. No promise is being made that the reader will find the jokes amusing."

But Clewis also insists that the book itself isn't a joke. Nor was his intent to lampoon Kant. As he describes it, while studying Kant he realized that the philosopher's work included occasional jokes. His curiosity aroused, he thought it would be interesting to collect these jokes together, as a way of understanding what Kant thought was amusing.

Each joke is accompanied by an illustration drawn by artist Nicholas Ilic. So it's very much a book geared for a general audience. (Admittedly, an audience who appreciates offbeat, erudite material). Personally I think it seems like a great coffee table book. But then, I'm strange that way.

I've reproduced two of Kant's jokes, as well as Clewis's explanation of them, below.

Amazon link

The Merchant's Wig
There was once a young merchant who was sailing on his ship from India to Europe. He had his entire fortune on board. Due to a terrible storm, he was forced to throw all of his merchandise overboard. He was so upset that, that very night, his wig turned gray.

Explanation:
This joke comes from the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), one of Kant's three Critiques. He contrasts this version with another version: the merchant's hair turns gray. But in that version, we listeners or readers become more concerned and involved. We empathize with the merchant and feel his pain more than in the first version. When it's just a wig, we are in a better position to find the story amusing. We hear the narrative as a joke rather than as descriptive speech, a real story about the world that can be either true or false.

Kant thinks that when we hear or read a joke as a joke, we need to be removed from the situation or story; we cannot have something at stake in it. He calls this disinterestedness, which turns out to be a key principle in his aesthetic theory and account of beauty. "Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful." While the humorous is not the same as the beautiful, Kant thinks that our response to both of them requires a kind of disinterestedness. A notion of disinterestedness can be found in the writings of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper) (1651–1713) and other eighteenth-century aesthetic theorists. Today the notion of disinterestedness remains controversial. Some theorists think that the idea can be better captured by the concept of absorbed attention or focus.

Immanuel Kant



Happy Funeral Mourners
A man's rich relative dies. Suddenly he is rich. To honor his relative, the man wants to arrange a solemn funeral service. But he keeps complaining that he can't get it quite right.
"What's the problem?" someone asks.
"I hired these mourners, but the more money I give them to look grieved, the happier they look."

Explanation:
This is a second joke from the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Kant is using it to illustrate his incongruity theory of humor. When we learn that the mourners are happy because they are getting paid, he says, our expectation is suddenly "transformed into nothing."
The philosophical underpinning is that there are at least two levels of satisfaction at work: we feel sadness, joy, etc. (first-order satisfaction) and then can approve or disapprove of it using reason (second-order). A man can be glad that he is receiving an inheritance from a deceased relative, yet disapprove of his gladness. "The object can be pleasant, but the enjoyment of it displeasing."
The joke turns on something similar happening with the mourners. They are so happy that they are getting paid (second-order) that they are no longer able to look sad (first-order).
There is a similar anecdote in Plato's Ion, a dialogue about a professional reciter (a "rhapsode") named Ion, who aimed at moving his audience. Ion says that when he looks out at the audience and sees them weeping, he knows he will laugh because it has made him richer, and that when they laugh, he will be weeping about losing the money.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Sep 28, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Humor, Jokes, Philosophy, Books

Cosmic Guinea Pig

Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 14, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Anthropomorphism, Humor, Philosophy

Man sues parents for giving birth to him

The philosophy of anti-natalism has been around for a while. It’s the belief that reproduction is bad because it involves bringing someone into this world without their consent and dooming them to potential suffering.

Mumbai businessman Raphael Samuel (aka Nihil Anand) has now taken this one step further by claiming that he’s going to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent.

His mother's response: "I must admire my son's temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers. And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault."

Of course, Samuel hasn't yet found a lawyer willing to take his case. And he fully anticipates that the case will promptly be thrown out. But he's plowing ahead nevertheless.

More details: BBC News

Posted By: Alex - Wed Feb 13, 2019 - Comments (3)
Category: Philosophy, Lawsuits, Birth Control

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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