One of the most common (and most baffling) phenomena of the internet is the constant stream of polls and surveys we are subjected to. The amount of time people spend reading them and filling them out is simply staggering.
So, naturally, I had to get in on the action.
I've written a list of questions which may be slightly different from the usual fare of the internet quiz. Not all of them really have answers, but hopefully most of them make you do a double take, or at least think about the answers for a moment.
So, too, I have tried to steer away from the obvious and well-worn philosophical questions and instead present you with a list which I imagine is much more characteristic of my own branch of philosophical and political thought.
In no particular order:
1. How much would you pay to see a dragon?
2. How much would you pay to eat dragon meat?
3. Would you switch genders for a day?
4. If offered the chance, would you become a vampire?
------- b. How about a werewolf?
------- c. A merfolk?
------- d. A selkie?
------- e. Are there other mythical creatures you would be willing to become?
5. If God offered to trade places with you, would you do it?
6. If you were given the chance to be one of the colonists on humanity's first extraplanetary colony - knowing that it would mean never seeing Earth again - would you accept?
7. If a magical, religious, or technological artifact of immeasurable power was discovered - for example, the Holy Grail, the One Ring, or the Monolith of the Watcher - should we try to harness that power, or is it best to leave such things alone?
8. If the dinosaur-cloning pseudoscience from Jurassic Park would work, should we do it?
9. Do you believe in the existence of sentient alien life forms?
------- b. Is your answer a good thing?
10. If you could have robotic limbs that were indistinguishable from the real thing in all ways - including feeling - except stronger, more resilient, more precise, and faster, would you be signing up for the replacement?
11. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the worst thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
12. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the best thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
13. Is there a limit to knowledge? Is there a finite amount of stuff that can be known?
------- b. If so, how long will it take us to get there?
------- c. If not, is acquiring new knowledge a fruitless endeavour?
14. What are you actually doing right now?
15. Did you answer all the questions truthfully?
------- b. Is it possible to answer a question truthfully?
So, I hope those questions were interesting, bizarre, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say by way of answers.
Also, if you haven't already, have a look at the comments on the previous post. I'm not sure how happy I am with the post itself, to be honest, but oh man, am I ever happy with the comments.
Moving (New Blog)
13 years ago
7 comments:
1. Well let's see. I pay $10 to go see the penguins at the Biodome (penguins are awesome). I'm not sure dragons are as awesome as penguins. So...20 dollars?
2. Dragons don't look very edible. I probably wouldn't pay to eat one.
3. Yes, but it would be a very bad idea as I would maim myself within the first five minutes.
4. Vampire? No, I don't like blood that much.
b. I don't like hair all over my body either. That's what depilatories are for.
c. TOTALLY YES! When I was little I wanted to be the Little Mermaid.
d. I don't know what a selkie is, but it sounds familiar.
e. I would totally become a unicorn. Do they count?
5. No, too much responsibility. There are a lot of things I'd rather not know.
6. No, I'm not that adventurous I guess. I don't need to be one of the first of something, I like what I'm comfortable with. Also, I'm pretty sure Pizza Pizza doesn't deliver to Mars.
7. The second one. I've seen the movies and it never ends well.
8. I've never seen or read Jurassic Park, so I'm going to skip this one. I like dinosaurs though. My favourite dinosaur is the Pterodactyl.
9. Yes, and yes. I find it hard to believe it's just us, and if there are other life forms we could probably form some sort of symbiotic relationship with them.
10. No, it would still feel fake inside. I don't use my arms for much that needs robotic precision.
11. That's a really really hard one. I would say the moment we realized we could make fire. It seems that it sparked everything else going downhill (haha). I mean, other animals can't make fire and they're also not ruining the planet. Fire was what set us apart and let us evolve more.
12. Same moment as above, because we set the course for more knowledge than our predecessors would have ever imagined. We've truly revolutionized the world, and not all of it's good but some of it definitely is.
13. No, I don't think there's ever an end to knowledge; the fact that we don't know whether it ends means there's always a little more to learn.
c. Of course it's not fruitless. You can stop people from being wrong on the internet! That's fulfilling.
14. Filling out this quiz. Also thinking about making pancakes, because pancakes are delicious.
15. Yes, and I would say truth is relative rather than absolute. It means I can keep telling my parents that someone else ate the cookies.
1) If there was only 1, at least a hundred dollars. I figure, at that rarity it's not so much akin to visiting the zoo as the pyramids.
2)
I imagine it wouldn't be very good, and I'm opposed to eating animals purely for the novelty value
3)
Probably not.
4)
a) I probably wouldn't sign up for it (it's distressingly permenant) but I would certainly enjoy it.
b) No. Too little control over the change.
c) See question 3. I would however, be willing to become a merman.
d) Is a selkie really that different from a mermaid?
e)
Almost certainly, I just can't think of any of them off the top of my head.
5)
As a solophist, I believe I am god.
6)Absolutely. My greatest regret is that I wasn't born late enough to see us colonize the stars. I feel that humanity needs to expand, so I would be a bit of a hypocrite if I didn't volunteer.
8)
Probably. The chaos-theory explanation he gives for the security lapses is terrible, and the boon to science would be immeasurable.
9)
a) Yes
b) We won't make contact for at least another million years, and judging by the state of humanity, it's nice to know that we aren't sentient lifes only hope.
10)
Probably not. Anyone who puts something artificial in their body is a cyborg, and shouldn't be allowed to vote.
11)The detonation of the nuclear bomb. Untill then, for all humanities faults, we'd never had the ability to destroy the world.
12)Depends entirely on whether life has some value outside us continuing to procreate, and I'm not sure on that.
13)
Theoretically, Science will advance to the point where nobody will be able to learn all there is to know about his subject matter within one lifetime. When it becomes impossible to advance knowledge in ANY field, we've reached the limit. Computers will probably continue to research, so advances will continue (scientists predict we will be designing computers more intelligent then ourselves within the next two decades)
c) No. Every race has an end, but that doesn't mean theres no point in running it.
14) Thinking about whether my previous answer was incorrect. Once quantum physics gets worked out, we may find theres nothing behind it. Then it wouldn't be so much an inability to learn, as an absense of things to learn about,
15)No. I'm not a solophist. Atleast not entirely.
b)Only relative to one's individual plane of truth.
1. A couple sheep, maybe a cow... I don't imagine a dragon would have much use for other currency.
2. That depends on the situation. Is a small, previously undiscovered... herd? flock? uhh... group, of dragons discovered, but are endangered? Or that this is some alternate universe where dragons are extremely common? In the first situation, I would be strongly opposed to killing the dragons for food. In the second, I would only eat it if it was delicious, and I don't imagine I would pay any more than I would to eat any other kind of meat.
3. Yes, I think that would be interesting, if terrifying.
4. a&b, no. That really doesn't appeal to me.
c&d, maybe, but probably not. The ocean is too cold for my liking.
e... I don't know. This question is far too complicated. There's all the little factors. Would I retain all of my memories? Would I still be able to communicate with humans? Would I be the only one, or are there others? In any case, I would very likely be willing to become a fairy, and depending on the answers to those questions, possibly other things. Things that fly are tempting, like a griffin, dragon, or phoenix.
5. Heck no. Too much responbsibility, too much work, too much having to listen to whiny people. Also, giving me the power to punish people just because they're stupid or annyoing? Probably not the best of ideas.
6. Hmm. Probably, a new start would be enjoyable. Although, I would only go if other people had already been living there for a while to make sure everything waws okay. Unless, of course, by this time, Earth has gotten so bad that it's probably safer to take your chances with a new, untested extraplanetary colony than to stay behind.
7. That depends. If the artifact was meant to be used for good, then yeah, it's probably okay. But things that are meant to do harm, or are just meant to sit around and be powerful without actually doing anything, then no. And how does the using of it work? Do we just activate it and then it does its thing? Because that would probably be alright, but if someone has to control it... that sounds sketchy. There might have to be a committee...
8. Um, no. You did read/see Jurassic Park, right? All-around bad plan, if you ask me. Besides, even if things did go well in that respect, introducing foreign species nearly always wreaks havoc on the ecosystem.
9. Still undecided. And b, yeah, probably a good thing. I wouldn't want to go jumping to conclusions.
10. No, I like my limbs just fine, thank you. Besides, if I was meant to be "stronger, more resilient, more precise, and faster," I would have evolved that way.
11. The beginning of colonization, because it was also the beginning of slavery, racism, and widespread belief that the value of a human life is less than the value of making money of them.
12. This one's really hard, I have no idea. For the last one, there were a few really bad things that leapt out at me, but for this one, I'm getting a whole bunch of moderately good things. I'm not sure there was a particular "best" moment.
13. No, I don't think so. There's a lot of stuff we don't know. And if we do start to run out, we'll probably just invent new fields of knowledge. As for c, no, of course not. Just because we can't know everything doesn't mean that there's no value in knowing anything.
14. Actually? Answering this question, still trying to come up with something for question 12, thinking about what I'm going to do once I've finished this, and wondering if my friends are going to get their shit together and do something tonight.
15. As truthfully as truthful gets. What is "Truth" anyway? How do we *know* truth? Things we used to think were true have been shown not to be... Truth is relative, and can change. So, from my point of view in this moment of time, I have answered trufully.
Okay, so I've been told that it is cheating to offer this quiz but not to take it myself. I wasn't intending to do so, but here goes anyways.
1. In captivity? If dragons are intelligent, isn't that slavery? In the wild? Probably quite a bit.
2. Rather a lot, if only to say that I'd done it. Of course, the moral cost might be more than the physical cost.
3. Sure, why not? I'll try pretty much anything for a day.
4. Now? No. Later in life? Probably. Immortality is gonna start to look pretty attractive, I imagine.
b. Nope. Not subtle enough.
c. Not permanently.
d. It seems to me that they pretty much have it strictly better than humans, since they can be fully human if they want. So yeah, I'd go for that.
e. Not anything that couldn't pass in human society.
5. No.
6. Absolutely. It's a chance to do something with my life that's more important than anything else I could possibly do.
7. I believe that the inevitable destruction that comes from following this path in movies and books is a product of humanity's fear of the unknown. Something with the potential to do so much good couldn't simply be ignored. It would have to be used very carefully, however.
8. OH MAN SO MUCH YES.
9. If they exist, they are one of three things: very far away, operating with communications media we don't understand, or so far beyond our comprehension and alien to our perception that they may as well not exist. I hope for the former; I suspect the latter.
b. If humans are the only sentient life in the universe, that seems to be to be strong evidence for the existence of a divine plan. A divine plan would be a pretty horrible thing to have exist, because it doesn't seem to be going very well, does it?
10. Probably not, although all the reasons I can give for this ring false. Why would I not (And why would no one else, it looks like) take the opportunity to be better in every way?
11. This question came from a conversation with Simon, and thus I agree with his choice of the invention of nuclear weapons.
12. The colonization of other planet- Oh.
13. If the universe has a finite size and a finite amount of material, it is possible to know everything.
b. We'll kill ourselves way before this becomes an issue.
c. If there is an infinite amount of knowledge, acquiring new knowledge is a futile attempt to displace God. I hate infinity.
14. Actually? I honestly have no idea. Existing?
15. Hells no.
b. Nope. It's not that truth is relative. It's just that there is no truth.
Truth is a statement about reality. Are you saying there is no reality?
To the contrary.
Be warned, my arguments for this philosophy have yet to be developed properly, so this may not make a lot of sense.
It has, essentially, three tenets:
1. There is a fundamental, objective truth to the universe.
2. Humans, as subjective creatures, can never see or understand this truth.
3. There is, therefore, no such thing as subjective truth, or truth as we commonly understand it.
The basic idea is: If people are capable of deceiving, not only others, but also themselves, then it follows that they can never believe anything they perceive or understand; not because of some matrix-like outside force hiding the truth from them, but because they might be hiding it from themselves.
If this is the case, then there can never be such a thing as subjective truth: something that you believe entirely to be true.
Like I said, not fully developed, but I'll certainly be bringing this up more later on when I've thought about it some more.
An interesting point.
I do have a rebuttal, but my logic is a little in-eloquent. Remind me to make it in person.
(That's right folks - I know Etarran, internet celebrity, in person!)
Post a Comment