Transcription
When you think about it, philosophy is pretty weird. At the end of the day, it's just people. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes bizarre. And we're all trying to make sense of the immeasurable parts of our world, morality, meaning, free will, things like that. And just for the record, there's no right or wrong answer. Just different schools of thought and deeply held beliefs.
I mean, think about it. Diogenes and Plato were both alive at the same time. This lack of objectivity combined with the absurdity of the internet has produced some of the most unhinged philosophy takes that you will ever see. Takes that'll make you mad, makes you sad, but most of all makes you wonder, is this person okay in the head? These are some of the worst philosophy hot takes from around the internet, and I couldn't suffer through them alone, so I brought EMCA along for the ride. So, it goes without saying that I I get excited about every uh every video that we make, but I've really been looking forward to this one. We've dealt with some very very high concept ideas, but let's eat some junk food. So, why don't we go through some pretty pretty bad philosophy hot takes from all around the internet.
>> Great. Um, let's hear them.
>> Okay, so we're going to start banging out of the gate here. I don't think you're harming someone by killing them. Okay. So, I'm going to go in no judgment. I'm just going to describe it and then we'll get to the proper judgment. But the idea is that once someone dies, they don't exist anymore. Therefore, they'll never be able to experience anything including harm. It's the Epicurean argument. Epicurus argued that while we exist, death is not present. And when death is present, we do not exist. Ergo, while you're dead, you're not harmed. Like you can't be harmed while you don't exist.
>> Yeah, I think I think yeah, we're definitely starting with like the red hot take. Um, instinctively I want to say obviously not. I do I do understand where the person is coming from in terms of like a thing that does not exist cannot suffer pain. Pain and suffering is a symptom of the living. And so I do understand that. Uh but but I also think that preventing future good or future enjoyment so to speak is also harm. So I think yeah in the way of like because when you kill someone you're definitely they're not experiencing it consciously but it does deprive them of a future life and so I think that it is definitely still harmful to them because it is depriving them of something that they would have even if they do not experience, you know, the pain of of you know, not being alive anymore. The fact that you're depriving someone of a future life to me is still definitely harm. Definitely.
>> Yeah. And I I have to agree. Now, what I will say is you can see the the threat of logic through this. There has been some thought put into it. But if you're only looking at from an Epicurean argument, even then it's kind of hard to push that argument just because, you know, there's there's the moment of harm in killing them. I'm assuming you're not just snap, you know, snapping your finger and off they go. But you're also, like you say, harming all future endeavor. You know, they you've cut off all their potential. And while they may not be experiencing the harm of dying again, assuming you've it's completely painless and instantaneous, something bad is you are still harming them. When I was reading through this, the example I thought up is I don't know if there's anyone out there. I'm not guilty of it, but if if you uh at some point you you took your parents' credit card and you got something that you really wanted to buy and they never found out, you know, you you got away with it, you still did something harmful to them. Just in the same way that this person that you're killing would never know that the harm was being done onto them, it would still be done to them. So, I I don't think this one passes muster. I think by killing someone, you are in fact harming them. I think that that analogy of taking your parents' credit card, I think it's it's perfect. Even if they never like figure out that, you know, some of their money is missing. It's like what if they were saving for a house and then, you know, they can't buy that house again. It's like what you did in the past, even though they don't know that their money is missing, still means that they cannot get something in the future. Um, so yeah, I think that's Yeah, I think that's like the perfect example for that. Please don't go around, you know, unaling people.
>> Aperture does not endorse murder. As if we even have to say that.
>> Yeah, we started off pretty strong. And now this one is something that can actually put our entire channel to to rest. Um, and it's basically that philosophy without real life use is worthless. So basically what the person said is philosophy that we cannot directly apply to real life situations is pretty worthless. Oh. Oh, I just finished this thing about stoicism and how I'm supposed to take everything like don't put emotion into it. So, I'm not. But I'll just start with this. Fundamentally, I don't think there's any useless experience and philosophy is very much an experience. And I could be wrong, but I feel like this is coming from the same people who say, "Oh, you know, art is useless or movies are useless or, you know, video games or or or experiences that aren't dedicated to building the world up. Like on a structural level are useless." And that's just fundamentally wrong from my perspective. Every experience you undergo is a step towards building you up. Even if it's not a structural experience, even if it's just something that makes you happy for a day or, you know, gets you through a bad week, I think it's fundamentally useful as an experience. And the same goes for philosophy. We build entire mental frameworks on how we want to go through life and interact with other people in the world on this. And saying that that's useless, I think, is it's hasty uh to say the least and almost dangerous uh in the extreme.
Honestly, I agree with you a lot and I think I think you know this kind of comes from you know like you said the same people who say you know you have to do everything to maximize shareholder revenue.
>> It's like it's like you can't even have hobbies these days if it's not like a side hustle or a side income or things like that. I think yeah it very much minimizes the human experience. Uh because you know you would never tell a bird that it should only sing if it actually wants to get a mate. It feels like everything has to have like a tangible purpose in terms of like creating something or you know building up the world or anything like that. But I think even even in the tangible sense I think philosophy still helps people. And I think this is definitely like a more modern thing where philosophy and philosophers they are very much underrespected. um they're definitely respected a lot less than they were before because you know before even like people who do the hard sciences were called like you know philosophers of science you know they they were thought of as philosophers as well because when you think of people like Aristotle or people like Isaac Newton who you know the earth is not in the center of the universe that started out from a philosophical point of view of trying to understand the world conceptually before it became like a hard science of like actually finding a proof that okay the sun is in the center of the universe. So I think people who say oh like if the philosophy does not have a usefulness like immediately then it's worthless are probably the same people who would say like applied mathematics does not have any use because why are you trying to look for imaginary numbers if they don't have any use right now?
>> Yeah, but we kind of yeah they kind of fail to understand that you know sometimes we don't know what these things will be used for 10 20 30 years down the line. A lot of the best things that humans have made have come from experiments that have failed and then something else happens and then something else is created out of us. We don't only build on the success of others. We also build on the failures. We build on the things that don't work. We build on the ideas. I think there is definitely a huge part of philosophy that should be immediately applicable to life. I don't think we should like compress philosophy into self-help essentially. We can think about things that don't have immediate um usefulness in life. I resonate with that. You know, we we don't judge science on all the failures or all the, you know, the bad ideas. And I don't think there's a perfect anything in our universe. We haven't had a perfect science. We haven't had a perfect philosophy. So that that view that philosophy isn't perfect. It's not the perfect explanation for anything. Well, of course not. Science isn't even a perfect explanation for anything yet. We're still coming up with theories that are, you know, credibly backed. and then we run the tests and say, "Oh, well, that's not actually the case." But that, you know, it's the the step-by-step process that we go through as human beings in understanding science to the universe and philosophy to ourselves.
>> Exactly. Yeah. I think I think that's the perfect boat. Definitely.
>> I think the last two we've been pretty ready and able to swat them down, but I think this one is this one's going to be uh fun to talk about. Actually, the TLDDR of it, and then I'll go into a little bit more detail is that optimistic nihilism is a nice new fad that largely isn't true and contradicts itself. So, just as an intro to anyone who is wondering what the heck we're talking about, optimistic nihilism, it's a growing philosophical idea. It accepts that life is inherently meaningless. Ergo, we have the ability and we have the right and even the responsibility to create our own meaning on an empty canvas. It criticizes the contradictory nature of finding a meaning when nihilism posits that there is no meaning to be found. So I think the issue that this point has is that nihilism says no meaning and we say okay we get that no inherent meaning let's make our own. If the other ones are hot takes, I'll say maybe this one is sort of lukewarm.
>> Yeah.
>> Because I do understand fully where the person is coming from. Um I also think especially because you know you also have existentialism and absurdism. I think those three philosophies sort of you know they're playing around the same ballpark and it's very difficult to like find the hard lines in the sand between all three of them. And we've actually done an entire video on the channel about it which you guys can check out just trying to explain the differences between between those three things. What I would say is is something that I learned from from Marcus Aurelius and that is that philosophy does not have to have a hard line in the sand cuz cuz I think essentially this person's problem is that yeah you know existentialism already exists because that's why they're saying oh optimistic nihilism is just a fad. Um existentialism exists just be an existentialist. But I think, you know, philosophy does not have to have hard lines in the sand. It's supposed to, you know, it's supposed to be kind of like the rainbow. There's no place where red stops and orange begins. They all just kind of flow into each other. So yeah, obviously you would have things that are kind of on the edge of two different philosophies. I don't think it needs to be shunned out because of that. And speaking of the contradiction, I don't necessarily think that it contradicts itself because to me what optimistic nihilism is saying is that the the world does not have a meaning. Okay. The world does not have a meaning but I would take pride in the fact that I can make of the world whatever it is that I want.
>> Yeah.
>> Just to use like a single line to like kind of differentiate them. Existentialism does not say that the world does not have any meaning. An existentialist says that the world does have meaning, but you have to create that meaning yourself.
>> An absurdist says that f everything I'm just going to party my life away. I don't care about anything. An absurdist does not care. He says the world makes no sense. It's not saying the world has no meaning. It's saying the world makes no sense. But an optimistic nihilist is saying the world makes no sense, but that's not a bad thing. So I think there's there's a slight difference there. So I don't think that necessarily is a contradiction. You can be happy even if something doesn't you know you're saying yeah, there's no meaning there but I will take my own meaning in the fact that there is no meaning there and I'll be happy about that. I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction but what do you think?
>> Well, you used the term absurd nihilism and I am for anyone who doesn't know I am an unabashed Camus fanboy. Annoyed my friends a lot about that. But I think they're one step off from kind of that that little golden nugget at the core of absurd nihilism because you know there is a contradiction. So trying to find meaning is absurd which is the point. Like that is the point of absurd nihilism. You're saying any meaning I make in a meaningless system will also be meaningless. Yes, we'll do the absurd thing and do it anyway cuz it's it's better to be like that. It's um heroic nihilism was also the term where against you know against all odds of logic and you know philosophical reasoning you're still managing to create meaning for yourself and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Saying it's a contradiction kind of goes against, you know, a bit what what Camus wrote. And, you know, I'm just I'm just reminded of his essay about the myth of Sisyphus and saying that, you know, Sisyphus should consider himself happy. And, you know, optimistic nihilism kind of gives me that vibe of Sisyphus must consider himself happy. Like he knows that there is no purpose and no end to all of these things he's doing, but at the end of the day, it's kind of like you're still better suited having a positive reaction to that reality than a negative one. You know, I understand what the person was getting out, which is why I said it's not, you know, as crazy as the first two, but I still think that optimistic nihilism is definitely, you know, important for a lot of people, and I wouldn't like just bash it because of some trying to draw some paraly lines in the sand.
>> Yeah. You know what? I think you hit it on the head with that Sisyphus reference.
>> So, we're going back to the crazy. And this one is says ethics is just about forcing people to conform. And basically, the idea is that normative ethics boils down to the desire to homogenize. Basically, if we can't homogenize, then we force others to conform via things like punishment and rehabilitation, you know, prison and all of that things. But yeah, the the the point the person is trying to make is that trying to prescribe anything such like a societal ethics is an attempt to make people conform.
>> Yeah, I uh I think I fundamentally disagree with that. I I can see the logical inroads that they take. From a certain viewpoint, you could look at ethics like moral imperialism. You're trying to impose your own viewpoints and your own standards onto other people. But ethics grew out of the seed of, "Boy, I would sure like to leave my house without being murdered. Not a lot of people like being killed. A lot of people don't like having their stuff stolen. A lot of people don't like suffering the pain of violence, you know, etc., etc." That is the uh fundamental crux of what all ethics has grown out of. It's how do people want and not want to be treated? And I think imposing that on that is just a fundamental tenant of society. I don't really have an issue with ethics in that regard. Here's an example. Uh so a dictator wakes up one day and expresses a need to eliminate certain undesirable groups whether they're ideologies or people. And it's a small number of the population and it would be considered ethical under this hottake since it helps with a greater goal of homogenization. I think yes, stuff like this, you know, is it kind of if you push it too far enough and say, okay, ethics is is only about societal conformity and homogenization, it kind of enters into, you know, defense of of pretty terrible policies like governmental policies, you know, and, you know, bad treatment of things like immigration or and people of that nature because, you know, you have this view that the entire society is supposed to be homogeneous. ized. So if that was what ethics was about then, you know, you wouldn't have people openly expressing their disgust for things like this because, you know, at the end of the day, it helps homogeneity. So I don't think ethics is just about that. Uh plus I think, you know, like you said, I think, you know, that explanation of ethics is just about forcing people to conform does not explain why we feel this like gutural hatred for things like murder and and, you know, genocide and slavery and all these, you know, very terrible things. In my opinion, there is something fundamentally biological um fundamentally human about hating all of these things. And I don't think that can you know, because society comes after biology, not the other way around. So I don't think we can say ethics is only about conforming if we've had ethics before the need to conform as a society in the first place. Society came because we had ethics. I think because humans could come together and say, "Okay, I wouldn't take your stuff. You won't take my stuff, you won't kill me, I won't kill you. Ethics sort of like created that. It created a social bond between humans which made us rise up the food chain. So I think it's actually in reverse. So yeah, definitely definitely don't agree with this hotcake.
>> Yeah. Yeah, definitely not. And um just putting my last points on that we're able to make a society because of a system of ethics that we normalized into laws. And again, the intention was never to create a homogeneous unit. The intention was always to create a well functioning and safe society. Not many people are going to argue against that. It's the social contract. As Thomas Hobbes says, we give up a few freedoms, individual freedoms, in order to function better and more safely as a whole.
>> Exactly. Okay. Yeah, I think we put that one to bed. Here's one we're going to have to talk through because on the surface, I'm going to I'll give it credit here. It does have some teeth. And the the point that they're trying to make is philosophy doesn't contribute anything to our understanding of the natural world. And yeah, you know, you spend at least a couple seconds thinking and it's like, well, we're talking about how we as humans go through things or we haven't talked about how the rainforests work or what climate change is all about or what the Coriolis effect does. They're trying to make the point that philosophy doesn't really help us understand the nuts and bolts of the world around us. Uh, what do you think about that?
If if this take was more so limited to like saying something like oh new age philosophy uh then maybe I would understand that because because now philosophy and science are a lot more divided. So yeah, I would I would probably say okay maybe not a hot take but if we're looking at throughout the history of time then I'll say definitely I don't agree with with the take and I think the perfect example is Aristotle's four causes. Aristotle like proposed a way to to understand why something exists and why it happens in nature to basically explain natural phenomena. And this was before we had the scientific method and the scientific way of thinking. And according to Aristotle, before you can understand the purpose or why a thing happens, you have to understand its material cause which is what is it made of materially physically. Then you have to understand its formal cause which is the form and the pattern of the thing. Then you have to understand the efficient cause which is the agent or process that it brings about like what does it cause essentially and then the final cause which is the purpose or function that it serves. And out of those four different causes and purposes the only thing that scientists don't use anymore today is the final cause because right now we think more in terms of like the mechanistic cause. We don't we don't use the term final cause again. But the remaining three are still used in the core of science today. And all of them like they came from philosophical thought from people thinking about how the world could work and proposing these ideas that are now used in actual science. You know another one that we have things like Descartes' you know is mind-body dualism which is still you know considered a bit controversial but it's one of the things that made us sit and actually consider the mind-body problem and start to ask questions about consciousness scientifically and, you know, trying to look into the neuroscience of how the brain and the mind work. This was all started because one man thought and said, "Oh, I think therefore I am." Like he had a philosophical thought that has eventually led to us trying to understand more about the nature of humanity using those scientific tools. So, I don't think he's really, you know, I don't think he's right. Honestly, I don't think this take is right. I think there are definitely some there's some branch of philosophy that focuses too much on asking questions and everything. And I do think that's important as well. But I don't think it's, you know, right to say all of philosophy does not help in any way.
>> I mean, you just knocked it out of the park on the structural reasoning. So, I'm not going to uh hammer a nail that's already in, but I'll go from a different viewpoint on, you know, how and why philosophy is actually really important for understanding the natural world in that philosophy is our way of understanding ourselves. It's understanding how we think and move through the natural world as members of the natural world. You know, understanding ourselves is only the first step naturally. But once we understand ourselves, we can then go on to okay, well, we can then understand how we perceive the natural world because anything we do to define it will always be through our own lens. You know, we'll never be 100% objective, but at the very least, we'll be able to understand it and we'll have the philosophical framework to understand ourselves and then understand that world around us.
>> Yeah, perfect. I think I think that perfectly encapsulated what I was trying to say.
>> You did most of the work. All right. So, this one is um it's not a modern problem, but we've definitely been seeing it coming up in the memeosphere. I think two or three years ago we started seeing the or even longer than that the trolley problem has been coming up in the public discourse again. So this hot take says the trolley problem is pointless but without more information on the people. For anyone who doesn't know the trolley problem is you stand at a lever, you're the conductor and there's a trolley rattling down the tracks high violent like um harmful speeds and you have a choice. You can pull the lever which will divert it onto one track or you can keep the lever the same and it'll stay on the same track that it's going. Problem is on one track there's three people on the other track there's one person and it asks the question what is more ethical killing three people or one person and what do you as the agent who organizes that shift what is your ethical responsibility in that position? It's people have been talking about it for years and I have a feeling we will continue to talk about it. But uh let's bust this hot take down before we get too into the weeds on this one.
I think in a sort of like ironic twist, this person has proved like in an effort to say the trolley problem is pointless, the person has proved perfectly the point of the trolley problem. This take kind of comes from like you said the memeification of the trolley problem where people you know say like oh what if the one person is your child and the five people are this. I think a lot of that like you know it makes interesting discussions.
>> but I don't think it particularly gets to the point of the trolley problem. Giving descriptions for exactly these people, their skin color, their we start to enter very like treacherous waters where we're saying that, you know, the things that make people human are more than the basic dignity of being a human. You know, you kind of start going into the thing of like, do we sacrifice the elderly for the young? You know, do we sacrifice a woman who is not pregnant for a woman who is pregnant? Because you, you know, you kind of start going into all these places where we're we're starting to say like human dignity alone is not enough. We kind of have to dress this person up and we kind of have to say okay this this this and I think yeah, it just gets very disturbing honestly when you start you know putting these people up against each other in a way there's there's obviously the well some people are more important than others argument which is abhorrent. But I think by trying to explain who those people on the tracks are you invalidate the trolley problem as a whole. The trolley problem is all about you don't know who these people are. So, how do you make the ethical choice? And it's it's never been about who they are. It's been about is it more ethical to save three people or one? A utilitarian will say, "Well, three people." Whereas, I forget the name of the branch right now, which is embarrassing.
>> Yeah. They would say, "Well, they all have equal value. So, you're making the choice to kill one person." And then you, you know, the whole crux of it generates from you not knowing who they are. So saying it's pointless without information is I I just don't feel like they thought the problem out enough.
>> Yeah, exactly. And yeah, just to just to remind you, I think what you're looking for is the deontological. Utilitarian says that, you know, it depends on the outcome.
>> Meanwhile, the deontological says that, you know, right is right, wrong. You explained it perfectly. That is the point of the trolley problem is trying to figure out if we strip away of these things that cloud our judgment because the trolley problem is not trying to say would you save your kid or three random people you don't know like that's not a problem. Obviously like 99% of people would save their kid. The the trolley problem is trying to say if we strip away all these regular societal expectations that make us make choices and it's down to just the fundamental ethics. What choice do we make? Do we go with, you know, trying to get the best outcome possible or do we simply say me as a person, I'm objectively moral and I would not partake in anything that I believe to be morally subjective no matter the outcome. That is the point of the trolley problem. The point of the trolley problem is not trying to ask you if you would save your cat or random strangers. So yeah, I think that like this is like probably it might even be the worst take because I think it just completely Yeah, because it completely misses the point of the trolley problem. It's like it just shows that the person doesn't even understand the trolley problem and why it was created and its usefulness in the first place if you think that we need to know every single detail about them for it to be for it to matter. So
>> yeah, I that it gets a little gold medal for worst take. So, those were a few of the hot takes on philosophy from around the internet. And honestly, I'd love to do this again. So, audience, our beloved audience, if you know any other hot takes, please, oh, please, like, give us another good video. Send all of your amazing philosophy hot takes down in the comments below because I guarantee you we would love to see them.