Beetle in a Box

For nostalgia. Not mine.

I might as well remind people that a free download of my book is at: http://www.lulu.com/content/2381227

Transcript: http://www.azrienoch.com/Blog/Beetle-in-a-Box.html

Category:

Education

Tags:

• magic
• trick
• tricks
• wittgenstein
• ayn
• rand
• self
• interest
• philosophy
• language
• selfishness

[Chimneyfish00]

I don't understand how you could think that Ayn Rand's ethics were that "we are all inherently self-interested" since this was an idea she explicitly opposed. In fact there's an entire chapter in her book The Virtue of Selfishness called Isn't Everyone Selfish? written by Nathaniel Branden which argues against the position you attribute to her in your video.

[azrienoch]

@Chimneyfish00 I already admitted the mistake a long time ago. However, it's not completely wrong--not as incorrect as you or that video make it out to be. She had this thing about how what a thing is determines what it should do. She thought everybody SHOULD be self-interested, because everybody IS self-interested. Being immoral, to her, was denying your inherent self-interest.

[alarmclash]

great video! wittgenstein's experiment is quite clever

[azrienoch]

It is pretty clever, isn't it? He was always wonderful at making metaphors.

[ismfofbiggestfan]

does anyone know if this ludwig fella was a philosopher? i have to write a paper on a philosopher but i can't seem to find an interesting one. i was gonna do Paul feyerabend but couldn't find enough data

[azrienoch]

Search "Ludwig Wittgenstein."

[Ladydog333]

yea its harmelss with the word cat, but is it as harmless when it comes to the word god?

[LanceDirk]

Ha ha, that's a really good point actually. Since there is no reference point for god, and he is exclusively described through personal experience, this video pretty much proves that describing god is pointless, and impossible. I long ago realized that even if god exists, there will never be an objective reference point by which to confirm his existence, so all we can do is just haplessly bicker about our respective beetles.

[HappyWithWhatsThere]

Uh, have you read Wittgenstein? Saying "Everyone has self-interest in them" is a certain type of language game with certain "rules" or "criteria" for how we use it (thus giving it it's "meaning"). The way you interpret it as a "beetle in the box" is doing exactly what Wittgenstein is warning against in the first place! The mere idea of thinking we have anything inside our box is a mistake of grammatical possibility and physical possibility!

[MrSieish]

Webster lulz

[phillie101]

language is a medium. we use it to know what is "in each others boxes". why would language breakdown when communication is constant?

[DrCruel]

Why attack Ayn Rand in this way, of all people? Why not decontrauct the works of Karl Marx through this prism instead?

As for how we know about the contents of our "boxes", isn't the concept of a logical, consistent, real world that exists outside of our consciousness a good way to get around it? There certainly will always be a bit of fuzziness around the edges of meaning (a sort of Heisenberg Principle applied to semantics), but that doesn't mean that words have entirely arbitrary meanings.

[MUSICdisturbedMASTER]

dude... u lost me

[xxDEADxxPOOLxx]

smart words from the next Steve hawking. but without the disease....or the wheelchair....

[Chimneyfish00]

@Chimneyfish00 Oops, apparently there's already a mumbly video response pointing out this error.

[FlamingParanoiaSpoon]

interesting to think of this in terms of a Theory of writing, although it does slide away now and then on account of being a slippery little bugger and semi-graspable, and not always wanting to play when shoved into a writing context. ouch.

p.s. those boxes are really lovely. me likes.