The Barstool Experiment

[Reginald Ret]

The singing one, you know: the one that whines during their 'songs'.

[Daego]

Albeit NO Barstool
This experiment clearly states, in any obvious or REDUNDANT opinion, "Woe to this fact, and Woe to the facts, every fucking one of them."  This fact would be, once again obvious and redundant, The Fact
Go Go Gadget MEDIA BOMB!

[Cramulus]

it's one of the default PD avatars

[Cain]

Historical barstool-ery

"Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped."

From Avicenna.  The "first principle" is the law of non-contradiction.

[Kai]

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth A barstool experiment at length, expanding on the idiocy of "But does 2+2 REALLY really equal 4?"

[Cain]

Yudowsky's site is one giant barstool to many things.

[minuspace]

Ikiriki?

[the last yatto]

tattoo idea i had...

[Freeky]

bOOMP.

[Slurrealist]

"It's empty space...Y'know...Like in that song," My friend George responded drunkenly. I think it was a natural state after one full vodka bottle, which had been emptied out by George only, and half a joint, a thing I shared tonight with my pal.
"Me think it's not real...A dream...Hallucination," I responded sluggishly, then giggled. God, I felt so stoned. Like if a rock of physical ecstasy had fell on me, crushed me, penetrated trough my body, became one with it.
"No...No...It'ssss all materiall...The empty space...The particles are too far...The barstooooll shouldn't exist at all...In theory," George responded, bloodshot eyes looking at me with the seriousness of a conservative college professor when some student had made a critical remark on his theory. He always had been the more materialistic one from our group.
"Then...it's an illusion. Like the pattern crawling on the table...Not real...A hallucination," I responded. An all knowing smirk danced on my face. Finally, I will put him down, broke his theory, shatter his view to shards.
An intrusion stopped my elation. I looked to the left, and I encountered a gorgeous woman, beautiful as the Greek Goddesses.
She smiled, her light blue eyes shining as sapphires. Maybe they were sapphires. She placed her silky and warm left hand on mine's; the right one covered George's long fingered, bony hand. Then, in a swift motion, she brought our hands to her boobs, hidden by a red blouse.
Suddenly, everything made sense.

[Cramulus]

I like that take on the parable

I like it because it shows the attractive qualities of reality.

The original form of the barstool parable shows us beating people in the face to demonstrate the true nature of reality.

But that's a very narrow demonstration of The Real World, no?

This telling shows that material reality has its own reasons that you should anchor yourself to it--more reasons than just avoiding punishment.


Your version of the parable says:

You should keep one foot on the ground. Yes, it's dangerous to have your head in the clouds, but what we forgot to mention is that you'll be missing out on all the cool stuff down here.



My Discordian practice is kind of monastic, and I do need these reminders now and then, that even if you teach yourself to hold things at arms length, you've gotta bite the fucking apple now and then.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Clumsily put, Let's say we were in a bar, having a few pints, and talking about the nature of Universe.

You point out that most of what we consider "matter" is made up of empty space; the distance between a nucleus, it's electrons, and the nearest adjacent atom is comparatively large; why, that barstool over there shouldn't even be considered a solid!

I respond by saying that as far as we can actually prove, that barstool might simply be a hallucination, for we're not actually seeing the barstool, we're processing electric signals in our heads generated by our optic nevrves that claim certain wavelengths of ligh have bounced off an object, but none of that says anything about whether or not the barstool actually exists.


Then ECH comes along, picks up the barstool, and proceeds to beat the shit out of us with it for being such pretentious assholes.

Cool to use this?

[moose]

Im reminded of something from a modern philosophy course...Can't remember if it was a response to Berkeley or what but there is this famous response to an argument regarding sense-skepticism and the critic of the argument goes "I refute him thusly" and kicks a nearby stone. I like the forum version much better.

[LMNO]

Clumsily put, Let's say we were in a bar, having a few pints, and talking about the nature of Universe.

You point out that most of what we consider "matter" is made up of empty space; the distance between a nucleus, it's electrons, and the nearest adjacent atom is comparatively large; why, that barstool over there shouldn't even be considered a solid!

I respond by saying that as far as we can actually prove, that barstool might simply be a hallucination, for we're not actually seeing the barstool, we're processing electric signals in our heads generated by our optic nevrves that claim certain wavelengths of ligh have bounced off an object, but none of that says anything about whether or not the barstool actually exists.


Then ECH comes along, picks up the barstool, and proceeds to beat the shit out of us with it for being such pretentious assholes.

Cool to use this?

Not a problem. KopyLeft.

[Cain]

Im reminded of something from a modern philosophy course...Can't remember if it was a response to Berkeley or what but there is this famous response to an argument regarding sense-skepticism and the critic of the argument goes "I refute him thusly" and kicks a nearby stone. I like the forum version much better.

Yeah, I think it was possibly Samuel Johnson.

Personally, I always liked Avicenna's refutation of those who denied the law of non-contradiction:

Anyone who denies the Law of Non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as to not be burned.