The Dawdler's Philosophy

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!

“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