The Dawdler's Philosophy

Dawdler's Classic is back! In this episode we discuss margin haunting in light of the Decoding the Gurus "gurometer." Then we tour a couple frameworks Ryan has come up with for margin haunting. Plus we unveil a neologism you will want rush out right away and use in the world as soon as you learn it! Yes! HAVE A GREAT DAY -Dawds 00:03:23 - Evaluation of margin haunters with Decoding the Gurus podcast “gurometer.” 00:44:42 – Margin haunters are substandard to any paradigm. 01:09:01 – Wave fronts, memetic drift, and memetopoles.

Episode never sent.   This time we release upon the world...The World. Back when we took a year long break without telling anyone we had some recordings we never did anything with. Here is one of these recordings.   Harland and Ryan have different styles of thinking about things and that includes "everything." So enjoy this brief excursion into our past.   Besides everything and what we make of it, what's The World to you?

Oh, the philosophical times they are a-changin'!! "But HOW!?" you ask. With the seasons... And you thought it was all footnotes. Silly philosopher...

Preeeetty self-explanatory this time. Ryan goes over 10 things he hates, doesn't like, despises, etc., in nonfiction books. Harland does his best to disagree.  Next episode: 10 things Ryan hates about devil's advocacy! Jk. -Dawds #1 Maps & Legends - Chapter Maps #2 Show, Don't Tell, Nonfiction-style  #3 Style & Substance - Epigraphs #4 In The End - Footnotes & Endnotes #5 Size Matters - Book Length #6 E-mail Is Fine - Interviews & Narratives #7 Story Time - Stories, Yes; Dialogue? Nah #8 Apology Unaccepted - Using kid gloves with the reader around technical material. #9 The Elephant In The Room - Little-to-no acknowledgement about popular and comparable ideas. #10 Big Words, Little Context - Using uncommon phrases, words, and acronyms without giving them the appropriate context and slowing the pace and flow of the reading.

Whoo boy! Ryan is back in the swing of things with his kids in school and sports and ballet and covid and everyone's FREAKIN OUT! Harland is on a journey through the red states lookin' for a poker game or two. Apparently, Austin is nice...and hot. But they're back with your best interests in mind. Except there is no "mind" and they don't know what your interests are, let alone your best ones, because you won't tell them. That's why they're doing a review of some core ideas. Now that they have 27.7 listeners they have to onboard all 26.7 of you newbies!  They cover a framework they call "Modes of Inquiry." Then there's Ryan's baby, "Episodic Synchrony." And last, and very much least, Dr. Ought-opus and his idea, NME skepticism. Catch 'em all while you can! And tell your friends! Outside, triple masked, and 20 feet apart, The Dawdlers

"Make a clear concise description of your podcast" they advise for this input. Umm... good luck with that. 

Another letter. Another obsessive and compulsive repeating of oneself over and over again. Ryan replies to Harland's reply because he can't help but indulge in his thoughts and justifications. Maybe Ryan misses the point. Maybe he's on point. Tune in to find out!

No one needed this. Few people wanted it. But here it is, world. Basically, we're standing near an on-ramp to the infosphere holding a black markered cardboard sign which reads, "Will podcast for beer - God jest you".  

Here I am,  never-minding my own business when I stub my toe on a liter litter bottle full of semantics.  Well how's about that?!  It's from my old buddy old pal Sci-Guy Ry-- what a nice surprise! I should really not Dawdle too long and get back to him, lest remain least on the list of priorities!   Feel free to listen in, dear old friends.  

We Dawdlers are as advertised. But we're back. Don't get all excited.  In this new kind of episode Ryan Writes Harland a "letter." Will Harland write back?

The value of history is that one has the chance to make sense of their present circumstances. How did we get to now? Can we come up with the best solutions to our problems if we think we understand how those problems arose in the first place? Fingers crossed.    In 1959, author and scientist, C.P. Snow, gave a lecture on what he saw as a problem in the West. Two intellectual and influential cultures had formed and become entrenched; one, a literary culture and the other, a scientific one. If they had anything in common, it didn't matter for the commitments they had made to their respective vocations were too great to be bridged without great effort.   In this episode the Dawdlers discuss the lecture and the state of its themes in our current age.

What is a dream? How do we come to form “cherished aspirations” as one dictionary put it? Why do we bother? And how can such aspirations be American? How can such aspirations be shared widely? Equality, egalitarianism, opportunity. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For whom do these bells toll? Is it a good dream? And does one “have to be asleep to believe it”? In this long short, the Dawdlers take on a request from a listener and discuss “The American Dream.”

This episode is slightly different, in that it is our first attempt at recording while doing a Live Stream!  Sounds about the same I reckon.  But we're excited anyway.   An analysis of Thomas Nagel's 1974 paper "What is it Like to Be a Bat?", which initiated "decades of confusion" in the philosophy of mind literature, and gave us the phrase still in use today "what-it's-like"-ness as a pseudo-definition for consciousness.  

After another mammoth Dawdle, the Dawdlers finally return to the Margins seeking specters, and find this time the anti-improvement, anti-guru, self-improvement guru Alan Watts.   They consider some of Mr. Watts' most controversial opinions with oodles of juicy quotes.   As is the nature of considering the centrality / marginality of thinkers, many guests come to the party this week, but Alan has always loved an audience!   Wrap up your kashaya, assume the lotus, and get yer enlightenment-- sucka! 00:00:00 - 00:16:40 - Margin Haunters vs. Flat Earthers / Membership to the Clubhouse 00:16:40 - 00:21:10 - Watt a Man 00:21:10 - 00:50:00 - Watts' Attacks on Virtue, Morality, Honesty, and Capitalism   00:50:00 - 01:16:11 - Watts the Philosophy of the Dawdle / (Ir)Responsibility / Creativity 01:16:11 - End - Watts' "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" / Ryan's Frustrations

The thigh-ly anticipated second half of the Richard Rorty Dawdle.  Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Part II!  

Can't we all just get along and get awards for attendance? Or not? Your science is not better than my poetry! This week we talk about Richard Rorty's “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”. In Part 1 of this topic (WHAT!?) there are plenty of misgivings, mischaracterizations, and misunderstandings along the way. But we keep retuning to this framework of ours: the modes of inquiry (E3: Triamond Joy!). These include overseeing, truth seeking, and game playing (and engineering but Harland has yet to come around to it). Rorty wants to scrap much of it. Por qua? Let's play some games! -Dawds

Again, we return to “The Great Filter”. Ryan is obsessed! This time, Ryan, like millions before him—millions!—has a solution to Fermi's Paradox and “The Great Silence”. It's “The Great Server”! Yaaaaaaay! Bury those ear buds deep in your ears! It's about to get virtual! -“The Dawdlers”

Man does not live by bread alone. He also lives with social anxiety and is a bit of a control freak. These neuroses fuel him too. Oh, and lies. This is also critical. Lies must be told. How else can you get people to do shit you don't want to? In this episode you will be treated to a Pre-Covid discussion had back in December of 2019 that these Dawdlers were too lazy to knit together into a fine piece of auditory (f)art. The topic? Religion and explanations for its creation and subsequent changes. Enjoy your lockdowns. Oh, and don't forget to treat others the way you wish to be treated. And if you wish to be treated like shit then too bad for the others, amirite? -Dawdlers 00:04:21 – Defining terms // What is Religion? // What is culture? 00:12:48 – Asking questions // Tinbergen's “Four Questions” // Origin, spread, and maintenance // Traits – morphology, physiology, behavioral, life history 00:23:05 – Hypotheses // David Sloan Wilson's “Adaptive vs. Non-Adaptive” framing // Adaptive Hypothesis (AH) 1: “The Watcher” // AH2: “The Organism” // AH3: “The Parasite” // AH4: “The Useful Fiction” // AH5: “The Echo” // Non-Adaptive Hypothesis (NH) 1: “The Dinosaur” // NH2: “The Blind Matthew” 01:17:09 – Winners & Losers // Everything is happening, everyone's a winner // Ameliorating fear makes sense and shit just happens…

Still getting our footing here at Dawdler's HQ. Hence this klunky transition back we've been doing since we dropped out after American Thanksgiving. This episode is a long short. Not much structure like a typical long episode, but it is what it is, right? This time we use a twitter thread Ryan saw that raised some flags for him. It's a thread discussing what might best be described as discussing the business of science. Yuck! Though sources aren't really cited and quotes aren't given, we still end up where always do anyway. Something like, “The hustlers are dead! Long live the hustlers!!” SAD! Lots of love! Dawds

Intent or accident? That is the question. No good deed goes unpunished! But in what world is that!? One where shit is just banging together towards a blah entropic state or one with biased negentropic filters that favor the hustlers? This week the Dawdlers discuss the notions of luck and karma and the preference for inhabiting systems—especially social systems like, y'know, SOCIETY—that reward good deeds. Wouldn't it be nice…

Take yer stinkin' proteins off me you damn, dirty microbe! This time Harland asks the question: Is there any way for us provincial primates—with all our adaptations for dealing with smaller scales—to address planetary-sized problems? We discuss from there topics ranging along the lines of logistics, motivational strategies, and hopelessness and helplessness. Unfortunately, we are the mercy of this pan-troglo-demic. What else are we at the mercy of that is of our own making? -Dawds

Stay in yer lane, puny pedants!! This time the Dawdlers ponder the question: What is preferable, being a pedant or a magister? Tune in to find out which! Then celebrate by doing the ma-corona! [moves: go to beach, dig hole in sand, stick head in]

Longest. Dawdle. Yet. But we come back to you now at the turn of the tide. This time Ryan asks a question and Harland gets it wrong (of course). But we're ok. Are YOU ok? Let's talk about how the world will end then, shall we?

Tastes like chicken! What does? Dinosaurs… Happy Harrahdays, -Dawdlers

Metaphysical outlaws?  Does our universe operate according to some set or other of fixed, eternal rules?  Enforced by whom/what?  Could these "laws" themselves "evolve"?  This week the Dawdlers consider some lawlike generalizations from Alfred North Whitehead's book Adventures of Ideas where he presents a quadruple of suggestions for how "laws" might function metaphysically, and how various influential thinkers have developed this concept family historically.    

What makes humans special? Is it language? Culture? Throwing? Semiotics? Impossible burgers? Ryan thinks it's the extent to which we combine ("meat", cheese, bun - see!?). In this episode we Dawdlers discuss this in this “short long” and will perhaps revisit it again sometime. Join hands and feel our infinite combinatorial power, people! -The Dawdlers ~~~ 00:01:13 – Ryan's deep passions // A way in // Physics and the humanities and nothing in between!!! 00:06:58 – Without further ado, another story // Ubiquitous combination // Human exceptionalism? 00:12:54 – Cognitive combinatorialism // A simple definition // Conceptual blending/integration // Possible worlds 00:28:32 – A framework // Analogy and categorization // Actions and conditions // Shark test bites // It's the extent to which we combine that's different about us 00:39:57 – Biotic exceptionalism, not human exceptionalism // Photosynthesis comparison // Waste, extinction, and niche construction

To be or not to be, that's the question, isn't it? In this episode, we Dawdlers discuss Jacques Derrida's idea “Hauntology.” Not an easy philosopher to understand, we do our best to work out what spooks a Frenchman. In the end, this was but a first foray into the thoughts of an intellect that dealt in as much enigma as he did in misunderstanding. Happy Halloween you cavity-riddled chompers! -Dawds P.s. Be warned, there's some narration in this one. ~~~ 00:03:40 – First narration interruption 00:04:54 – Background to Derrida and Deconstruction 00:10:43 – (Metaphysical) Hauntology // Temporal and ontological disjunction // Melody example // Specters of Marx // Commodity/value example // The word itself 00:26:17 – (Cultural) Hauntology // Mark Fisher's “Ghosts of My Life” // The slow cancellation of the future // Anachronism 00:33:15 – Second narration interruption 00:34:51 – (Cultural) Hauntology cont'd // Role in society and economy // Another Einstein-Brian Greene spacetime loaf idea comparison 00:51:54 – Harland asks, “So what?” 00:52:53 – Third narration interruption 00:53:52 – Ryan's answer to Harland's question // Part 1: improving judgments and decision making // Part 2: Hauntology is a symptom of important human cognitive processes // Conceptual blending // Arthur Koestler's Buddhist monk riddle // Foreshadowing the next episode

In this episode Harland engages in some more of that pesky normative semantics and proposes a new definition of the word 'definition' (n): a paraphrastic replacement function.  Huh?  Well then he defines all those words too!  The primary intent is to provide a pragmatically, anthropologically useful interpretation of current usage while not relying on a putatively unsupportable definition that includes notions like 'meaning' or 'speaker intentions', or other conceptual frameworks that Harland doesn't like.  Instead it hopes to accord smoothly with physicalism and functionalism, which the Dawds suspect are probably the best models we have available at this time.  Let's try to bring philosophy of language into closer consilience with the rest of our intellectual edifice!   

Fnord.  This week the Dawdler's dip a toe into the wild and wacky world of parody religion and spread a few memes and participate in their small way to the Pan-Pontification Project.  Duck!  Here comes a golden apple, thrown into our little party.  Let's not fight over it, k?   ~The Dawds The Principia Discordia Online: https://principiadiscordia.com/book/1.php

Do we need to explain to you what breathing is? It's obvious. The evidence is in the doing. Or is it? In this Short, we discuss Harland's disdain for the phrase and its strange loopiness. Song: Can't Get Used To Losing You Artist: Andy Williams

A first for the Dawdlers, they speak to a third person. No longer are they experiencing what it's like to be a duo. Keith Frankish is here to tell them their duality is but a mere illusion and he is the proof! Something like that. Enjoy their conversation with Dr. Frankish as Harland and Keith plumb the depths of their degrees of eliminitivism on consciousness. Song: Ritual of a Take Artist: Fresh Cut Orchestra

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose… Been a bit, but the Dawdlers are back. And, yes, things change but we're still the same ol' Dawdlers. Yer welcome. This week enjoy our exploration of some mind bending philosophical musings from philosopher Nelson Goodman. Ryan thinks a scientific orientation can help. Harland thinks philosophy can find more problems for him. Nelson thinks these are just versions. 00:02:00 – Introduction to the topic // Equations grazing in a field // Worldmaking 00:42:20 – Versions // Memes and “felt stubbornness” // Conservatism and progressivism // Change is required for stasis and safe is dead 01:00:07 – Grue // Metamorphosis // The “two cultures” tension (aka, “science vs. philosophy”) // Science and philosophy can undermine each other's independence 01:36:15 – Choke by Sonn

“To remain the same in function, animals must change their form.” - Stephen Jay Gould, 1979 Gould wrote the quote above a couple times in different articles. Ryan likes it because he thinks it can apply to systems in general. Thus, to remain the same in function, systems should change their structure provided there are changes in their throughput. In organisms this happens with changes in scale. To get bigger and taller on Earth's surface, an animal's legs must also get thicker. Otherwise, gravitational acceleration will break them as they buckle under the mass of the body above. But nature does not ask a five gram shrew to stand as tall as a ten foot elephant either. Its muscles could hardly move its legs. Yet sometimes, society asks its citizens to do similar feats by moralizing the damn prosocial empaths into feeling as if they're not doing enough. Well, to that, *we* say, “Enough!” Enjoy this bitchfest about personal accountability. -Dawds Song: How I've Missed You; Artist: TIM

In this Short the Dawdlers play a game. Everyone loses. The end.

Times change and the recent past can sometimes become obsolete as the gaze of the mainstream world focuses on its new moment. But it wasn't long ago when Richard Dawkins was calling for “militant atheism” and Dubya Bush stood on an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished”. Heck, there was a time when the 90's did a collective eye roll at the 80's. Tigers once roamed Ireland's economy and it was *Columbia* that was unstable while Venezuela was a working democracy. In this episode, Ryan brings to the table a recent exchange between two evolutionary biologists, David Sloan Wilson and Massimo Pigliucci (https://letter.wiki/conversation/34). These two have been involved in much development of the field and it's always a treat to see such engagement about topics not so completely related to the present moment. This time, the two VIPs spar over the application of multi-level selection theory to cultural evolution and the Dawdlers attempt to explore it further. That said, we are the Dawdlers and we can be goofy and silly and, well, not always super charitable. But, Ryan at least, hopes listeners think of our takes and views the way a comedian's impression of another person is sometimes a sign of appreciation and not scorn. Let yourself be bashful, we're flirting with a mode of discourse seen much less these days.  00:03:20 – Ryan's nostalgia for this episode's context // A disagreement between David Sloan Wilson and Massimo Pigliucci on Twitter and Letters.wiki 00:09:10 – The letters // Ancient Greek alerts // Guilt trips and gadflies 00:20:56 – Massimo opens the doors for a bigger picture // What is reproduction? What is a group? What is an individual? Whence memes? 00:37:49 – A fidelity and permeability framework for evolutionary change // Harland is having a difficult time understanding Ryan's genius 00:58:39 – MLS1 and MLS2 // Penguin huddles // Perhaps the Peloponnesian War is an MLS1 scenario 01:13:36 – Conscious volitional decision making 01:17:31 – “Falling Fast” by Cheeki

Everything is unique, yet almost everything is ignored. Herein may lie the crux of history as we fashion it for our purposes. Repeatability is a most productive bias.

Life may be meaningless, but is it hopeless? This week the Dawdlers do a little Short on depression. Don't?...enjoy this?

This week the Dawdler's take a step back from the previous weeks and dig down behind to examine an example of a general conceptual framework for thinking about systems, identity, and conflict - evolution, memes, and perspectivism; while they examine Anatol Rapoport's 1974 book Conflict in Man-Made Environment.  

There's a poem by Portia Nelson called “There's a hole in my sidewalk”. In it, she keeps going down the street, falls in the hole in the sidewalk, and struggles to get out. The poem is about repeating patterns that ultimately hurt you. The punchline? Walk down another street. In this episode, we Dawds discuss sociopolitical revolutions and the effectiveness of protests and movements that hope to precede them. We meander through various texts and ideas that have come about from the study of such historically significant (and insignificant) events. But in the end there are more questions than answers. -Dawdlers 00:02:56 – Ryan starts it off with some anecdotal shlock about protests he's seen // A proportional analogy // Power, etc. 00:25:05 - The Arab Spring and Occupy movements // The effectiveness of protest 00:37:53 – Understanding revolution // A unified theory of revolution // New approaches to protest // Memes as the leaders 01:14:17 – Structuralism // Median age theory of revolution // Resource enrichment episodic synchrony (again and again!!) // Early 20th Century high school movement 01:36:56 – Socrates on democracy 01:48:58 – The Sunflower Revolution // vTaiwan // Consensus making 02:02:53 – Breaking the cycle // What do we want?

Who's interested in current events!? This week, the Dawdlers talk about the Slavoj Zizek/Jordan B. Peterson "debate": Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism. ...and there's not much else to say! So, declaw your lobsters and have a listen!

Do you laugh in the face of the abyss? Or do you sob uncontrollably? Either way, it doesn't matter you tiny speck of nothing! In this Short, the Dawdlers use Thomas Nagel's 1971 paper "The Absurd" as a guide for a discussion of the meaning of life (or something like that). Enjoy the discussion or cry yourself to sleep while listening. It doesn't matter. Nothing does!! -Ye olde Dawdlers

One way or many ways or any ways... Is there a recipe to live The Good Life?  

What's a healthy podcast release schedule?  We sure don't know but are trying to figure it out!

This week the Dawdlers talk about Fairness. Medieval fairs, County fairs...everything...

“If you want new ideas, read old books.” -Ivan Pavlov This was the sentiment Ryan witnessed at an evolution conference a few years back. On the one hand, it is a condemnation of the state of originality in science. And, on the other, it is a commendation of its resourcefulness. But why the need for such resourcefulness? What's the problem? In this episode the Dawdlers talk about the state of ideation in the world today and the possible undercurrents that are determining its low quality. Pinch pennies, not yourself. You're awake in this nightmare. We're naming names, people!! 00:00:00 – Dawdlers dawdling 00:05:48 – Ideas are of low quality in a Gilded Age 00:10:47 – Framework I: Secular cycles // Gilded ages // Dawdlers & hustlers 00:33:12 – Framework II: Resources enrichment // Tolerated variation // Technology as a resource 00:47:17 – Elite overproduction & fragmentation // Billionaires today are like the ancient Greek gods 00:57:20 – The Intellectual Dark Web, billionaires, and conspiracy!! // Dogmatists are easily manipulated

Back with Part II of The Pleistocene, Ryan blathers on as H-dog harnesses a mega-punnage. This is the exciting part so are you not excited!? Anyway, enjoy the data dump. Yer welcome. “The” Dawdler's   00:04:27 – Housekeeping (Sammy Harris-style)   00:17:06 – The Epistemological State of Human Prehistory   00:30:14 – Hominine Lineages   00:36:21 – Stone Toolmaking   00:47:03 – Control of Fire (and Its Effects)   01:16:06 – A Toolmaking Origin of Language   01:24:40 – Migrations   01:37:35 – Megafaunal Mass Extinctions   01:49:14 – The Holocene & Anthropocene (Lightin' Rounds!)

Finally!! Ryan gets to talk about the Pleistocene—the epoch in which a new ice age began and we sapiens evolved…into incredible narcissists the likes of which the world has never seen. Two things: In this episode 1) Ryan nerds out while Harland lends intermittent support and 2) this is the first part of a two part series some (specifically Ryan, for fear of being alone in his appreciation of this topic) may say is the “boring part”. The next part, then, is the “exciting part” where we'll go into (actual) human evolution, the megafuanal mass extinction, and the aftermath of our psychopathic devotion to world domination. Bundle up, people! Yer about to face into some cold, hard facts! 00:02:36 – Introduction to the topic 00:06:05 – Geological time primer 00:16:09 – The physical environment 00:47:25 – Pleistocene ecology and evolution

If you've got a 401k you might think you have comfort that awaits you in 20-30 years. You might consider yourself able to live without working, seeing yourself eating simple meals and meeting friends on easy adventures without a thought toward responsibility. Or maybe you have a dentist appointment tomorrow and you hate the dentist because they always make you feel bad about yourself. Or maybe you're gonna watch a movie in 5 minutes and you're excited because you've heard it's good and it's been a while since you saw a good one. In all these cases you think you are in the future. But can you be IN the future? What is the future anyways? Tune in and see what we Dawdlers think!

How much do you really want something? Is it worth the price? Who decides you want it anyway? In this Dawdlers Short, we explore our thoughts on scarcity. And to commemorate this topic, it will only be available for 100,000 days so get it while it lasts!!

Does A = A or not!? Or is it just approximate? Or none of it… We Dawdlers take a dip into the book Surfaces and Essences by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander on the significance of analogy-making in thinking. 00:04:40 – The book itself 00:14:30 – The man himself // Form and content 00:18:06 – The form of the content // The main thesis 00:25:15 – Analogy and category // Category, concept, and classification 00:32:22 – Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian styles 00:37:02 – What makes all “A's” the “same”? // Conceptual skeletons at the gist level 00:43:26 – Ryan derails the discussion (homology) 00:50:06 – A test of analogies (?) // Aesthetics in analogy-making // Analogy-making is quasi-arbitrary 01:03:22 – Ryan derails the discussion once more (homology again) 01:15:31 – Influences on encoding // Organs of perception, etc. // A “biology” of convenience 01:27:44 – Ryan's natural history of Doug's abstractions on cognition 01:34:35 – Intelligence via analogy-making 01:39:01 – Einstein's analogical quantum leap

Are you talkin' to me?  This week the Dawdlers contemplate asymmetrical power dynamics regarding behavioral modification; from parent/child to peace officer/citizen, how do we feel about and deal with exertions of Authority?