h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to have this theory that I was the only person in the world, and that everyone else were only robots.

Hey, I was young at the time

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one, and now I can add 'Weak Solipsist' to my list of things that I sort of, might have, once been. I'm just impressed there's a word for it

Actually, I've been interested to see that lately there have been movies out that have taken on this idea and used it as integral parts of the plot; not EXACTLY this, but close enough so that it's really only a lateral step away. Two that come to mind are:

The Truman Show: everyone in it WAS real, but most of the show centers around a guy who is the only genuine person in his society, and everyone else in his life are acting.

The Matrix: Once again, the people were real, yet their world was a complete set-up.

These seem to me to be related to the whole idea, anyway.

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Indeed - there's an awful lot of philosophy in the Matrix - if you go looking for it... like, is it right to tell people they are in a dream world, if all it will do is make them unhappy?

The belief that everyone around you has been replaced by robot replicas is called Capgrass' Syndrome, at least when it is in the form of a severe paranoid psychosis. Amazing what you can learn from Call of Cthulhu.

The belief that everyone around you are robots and/or that no-one in the world but you has any kind of feelings is a perfectly natural state for the amoral, utterly egocentric individuals known as children under five.

The Prophet.

Yes, you know I really understood Cypher when he said "Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?" You couldn't justify his method of getting what he wanted (I'm trying not to spoil here, just in CASE there's someone out there who hasn't seen it) but I could really identify with his motivation.

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On a similar vein, when wee I used to have a solipsist veiwpoint. Only I believed that only what I was currently looking at existed and, if I turned round quickly enough, I just might catch the world being built behind me. I had some very weird nightmares off that one I can tell you

BUT it would make an awfully good book plot!!

Mind if I make a note of it?

You never know, I MIGHT actually write something worth publishing one day....

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I expect ten percent

I once thought that I had the world figured out, and so when I opened my bedroom door I'd just see some kind of weird black void - and the bad guys (whoever they were) would get me.

Curiously, I can't remember what the 'answer' was... think I got brainwashed by the bad guys?

But you deserve fifty percent Munchie old boy. Good to see you exercising the noggin.

Just wanted to clarify Descartes famous saying which is always, sadly, quoted out of context. He actually said, "I think, therefor I am. I think therefor, I am unhappy." Hell, he was a Frenchman living in Belgium at the time. Of course he was unhappy. Think about it. He was designing forts. A military architect for crysake.

The problem of course is the translation to the English word 'therefor' ...ie: 'logical consequences of previous thought or actions' These are so culture bound as to be untranslatable. One man's logical consequences are another man's random fantasies.

Some Latin expert may stumble by and enlighten us all. I sure hope so. Because, I think, and therefor I hope.

Not a Latin EXPERT by any stretch, but the words Descartes used were quoted correctly in the article: "Cogito, ergo sum." Ergo is used today sometimes by uppity philosophers trying to sound smart and intimidate people at cocktail parties. The disturbing thing is that they use it in the right way -- that is, that the one things follows by logical necessiy from the other. This is the implication of ergo in the latin. Descartes' point was that he may be deceived by every sensory perception he has, and thus he can doubt anything that he once believed to be true based on experience. But in order even to be deceived, in order to doubt (i.e., to think), there must be SOMETHING that is deceived, that does the doubting. This something is the indubitable "I" that Descartes arrives at. The logical necessity of the I from the experience of doubt does seem to make sense in a formalized setting.

Munchkin

And I don't know, Lucinda, do you have weird dissociated memories involving bright lights shone in your eyes? Scars you can't explain? Were you ever the security chief of an Earth Alliance Space Station?

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Just excuse the fact that was actually posted as a new conversation. I've no idea how that happened.

Cogito ergo sum is taken out of context. It is only the first half of the whole sentence Cogito ergo sum, ergo cogito (unhappy)sum. Latin expert or someone with original text needed. Apply wit inn.

Ah, but wasn't it Popeye who said "I yam what I yam"

Sorry, old Red Dwarf joke

Red Dwarf is always a good thing.

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But if you had to choose between Red Dwarf and a curry...

Red Dwarf: You see, there's curry IN Red Dwarf: the best of both worlds!!!

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Yes of course! Really a no-brainer that one, eh? There wooden bee any Red Dwarf in a curry, wood there.
What about your three choices - Blueface, Angry Huffy or Devil?
Are we supposed to choose? Or is it all the same to you?

That was my very best Rimmer impression...
Did it leave you sad, mad or bad? Or is it all the same to you?

I'm glad you asked

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Kryton? Kryton is that you?