7.9 KiB
[RST] Zenpencils / Tim Minchin: Be hard on your opinions
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Author: u/PeridexisErrant put aside fear for courage, and death for life*
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URL: http://zenpencils.com/comic/135-tim-minchin-be-hard-on-your-opinions/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2014-09-14T04:11:02
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+13] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (a day later)
My thoughts exactly. A rationalist giver maximising good and would give to, for example, the SCI where that small amount of money could change lives a whole lot more than just a meal or two for that homeless person would.
u/comport [+6] (23 hours later)
I like Tim Minchin as a comic, but as a rationalist, from what I've seen, his material only uses the minimum amount of rationality needed to take combatorial shots at people who are religious, believe in alternative medicine, or live under some other illusion that's easy to spot from the outside.
I'd like his work better if he educated more and went after easy targets less.
u/Jon_Freebird [+2] (4 hours later)
If only it was that easy to change oneself.
u/PeridexisErrant [+0] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (2 minutes later)
Basically everything by Zenpencils is amazing - here's the index. Among my favorites, because they're uncomfortable - we're all dying... and that makes us lucky.
u/Terkala [+12] (3 hours later)
Zenpencils irritates me. It is the same sort of pseudo-zen dogma that has been around since the 1970s, just dressed up as "rationality" instead of "spiritualism". It has almost nothing in common with rationality.
The comic posted boils down to "Change your beliefs, and give to the poor." It doesn't make a case as to "why" we should change our beliefs, just that we should do so.
Similarly, the comic about "we're lucky to be dying" is also entirely lacking of a rational argument. Why should we be happy that we have the ability to die? Why does the fact that others have never had a chance to live make it more exceptional that we did? And further, why should we not seek immortality?
This is a quote made by Dawkins in 1999, when human immortality was a pipe dream. Not in 2014, when there are treatments in testing today that extend human telomeres, and current methods that allow for direct human-computer brain interfaces.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
This is a quote made by Dawkins in 1999, when human immortality was a pipe dream.
That was literally only 15 years ago. Anything that was a "pipe dream" then still is today, and anything we note today is not a pipe dream was not a pipe dream then, we were just ignorant of how to accomplish it.
When are people going to learn that we kick logic out and go beyond the impossible?
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (4 days later)
15 years is lots of time for something to go from "pipe dream" to "possible, but not yet achieved".
All it takes is one single discovery to do so. Atomic bombs were ' pipe dreams' until the discovery of chain reaction by Leo Szilard.
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (4 hours later)
To the first point, I disagree. That famous quotations drawn from all over are not explicitly rational doesn't make it anti-rationalist.
The comic text is two sentences long! Of course it doesn't make an argument, that's barely enough space for an assertion! The interaction of the quote with the comic is always complicated, but it's usually telling a related story - I actually agree that this part of it is too unsubtle to be a good choice, but the opinion-surgery made me smile.
"lucky to be dying" is obviously ridiculous - but the point is that that is still an enormous privilege within the mind-boggling large space of all possible people, most of whom never live at all. Living is good. More is better. We are in the immeasurably tiny fraction of people who ever live at all.
And immortality (or 'indefinite optional life extension')? What better way to spend a life than living well, and increasing our and everyone's capacity to live well?
^(I think we mostly agree on the substantive stuff, but differ in taste and approach to this kind of thing)
u/Bobertus [+2] (7 hours later)
Similarly, the comic about "we're lucky to be dying" is also entirely lacking of a rational argument.
It doesn't say that we are lucky to be dying. There clearly is an argument: It's good to be alive; most potential humans will not have lived, ever; therefore, we are lucky. Anyway, the point is not to convince you of some position, it's simply to make you feel grateful, which is good for mental wellbeing, as opposed to be despairing about the prospect of death (which, even if not inevitable, as you say, is still quite likely).
Though I, too, have a distaste for Zenpencils. Maybe it reminds me too much of Chick tracs? Maybe I dislike it for the same reason that I often dislike ridicule. Being able to formulate something so that it sounds ridicules doesn't track truth very well and neither does being able to formulate something in an "inspiring" way. And the comics, more than the saying that go with them, are a form of fictional evidence.
Though I do not advocate that we all should sound like the most boring kind of philosopher, either.
u/_brightwing [+1] Feathered menace (4 hours later)
Hey now, it never said we shouldn't aspire for transhumanism. In the essence of it, all it did was celebrate how incredible it is that right now we are here, by mere chance. The sheer odds of the perfect conditions needed for life developing in the universe. Like Carl Sagan had said there's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.
Zenpencils illustrates a wide variety of inspirational sayings from notable people – some from reader requests I think. Some might not, but there are a lot them that I think would appeal to folks in this sub. It definitely belongs here.
Edit: I just opened the first comic. Yeah, zenpencils maybe could have used a better way to illustrate this. The quote though is more of a reminder that we should be faithless to our beliefs, constantly adapting with evidence. And it talked in passing saying because our biases can cloud our judgment. I’d have liked it to expand more on it though. But then, it’s just a quote. Reminded me of Yudkowsky’s thoughts on rationality, the third para.
u/None [+5] (7 hours later)
In the essence of it, all it did was celebrate how incredible it is that right now we are here, by mere chance. The sheer odds of the perfect conditions needed for life developing in the universe.
Anthropics tell us that there's really not any other option, it would be impossible to someone wonder about the likelihood of their own existence if they didn't exist. I believe in a very big universe and possibly even a multiverse and it doesn't surprise me that I as an observer exist in the part of the universe where obversers are possible.
u/_brightwing [+1] Feathered menace (4 hours later)
I remember this place! Pale Blue Dot was my favourite when I first came across here. Thanks for the link.