Twitter: @dawdlerspodcast • @TheAwkwardMelon • @rtpmck (@TheAwkwardMelon followed by 107 philosophers)
Site: www.dawdlersphilosophy.com
89 episodes
2018 to 2021
Average episode: 72 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Two Hosts
Podcaster's summary: Most hustlers won’t wait to put off to tomorrow what they can do today. Not us! We can’t wait to put off to tomorrow what we can do today. We’re overripe fruit of the late bloom. Dawdlers. But all things must come to a partial end and this is partially it! ...a whimper into the abyss... | | We do a podcast we call The Dawdler's Philosophy. It's just two of us, Harland and Ryan (maybe not making it even if we try). We mostly talk about ideas and science and stuff. We also talk about things. Stuffing! | | We try to define the terms we use and, well, we try to be nice to each other. | | Expect content. We aren't interested in spectacle or forced passion and drama. But we're also as advertised.
| Episodes |
| 2021-Nov-18 • 102 minutes E47: On Margin Haunting - Quo Bros, Margin Haunters, & Secular Gurus 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 drif... |
| 2021-Nov-13 • 31 minutes Shorts - E33: The World 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? |
| 2021-Oct-29 • 9 minutes Dear Dawdler - E5: To Every Philosophy There Is A Season Oh, the philosophical times they are a-changin'!! | "But HOW!?" you ask. | With the seasons... | And you thought it was all footnotes. Silly philosopher... |
| 2021-Oct-24 • 41 minutes E46: 10 Things To Hate About Nonfiction Books 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 ... |
| 2021-Sep-24 • 84 minutes E45: Dawdler Review - Triamonds, Episodic Synchronies, and NME Skeptics! 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... |
| 2021-Aug-23 • 29 minutes Dear Dawdler - E4: We Live in a Context (So I See) "Make a clear concise description of your podcast" they advise for this input. Umm... good luck with that. |
| 2021-Aug-21 • 15 minutes Dear Dawdler - E3: We Live in a (Complex) Society 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! |
| 2021-Aug-15 • 29 minutes Shorts - E32: Putting Thumbs on a Penguin 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". |
| 2021-Aug-08 • 15 minutes Dear Dawdler - E2: We Are All in the Same Boat 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. |
| 2021-Aug-05 • 14 minutes Dear Dawdler - E1: We Are All Mutineers 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? |
| 2020-Jul-26 • 27 minutes Shorts - E31: The Two Cultures 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 anythi... |
| 2020-Jul-13 • 43 minutes Shorts - E30: The American Dream 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.” |
| 2020-Jun-15 • 49 minutes E44: Subjective Chiroptera of Experience - Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" 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. |
| 2020-Jun-07 • 138 minutes Haunting the Margins - E3: Alan Watts 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 -... |
| 2020-Jun-01 • 60 minutes E43: Rorty's Mirror of Nature Part II - Dividing by Zero The thigh-ly anticipated second half of the Richard Rorty Dawdle. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Part II! | |
| 2020-May-26 • 78 minutes E42: Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature - Part I - An Ironic Kind of Fellow 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... |
| 2020-May-17 • 23 minutes Shorts - E29: The Great Server 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” |
| 2020-May-03 • 87 minutes E41: Every Theory of Everything Ever - The Evolution of Religions 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... |
| 2020-Apr-26 • 46 minutes Shorts - E28: Science NOW! 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 ... |
| 2020-Apr-20 • 20 minutes Shorts - E27: Luck vs. Karma 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… |
| 2020-Apr-05 • 33 minutes Shorts - E26: Planet(ary Problems) of the Apes 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 |
| 2020-Mar-27 • 18 minutes Shorts - E25: Pedants and Magisters 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] |
| 2020-Mar-22 • 18 minutes Shorts - E24: Deadlock 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? |
| 2019-Nov-24 • 63 minutes E40: Maniraptoran Gravy -The Dinosaur Episode Tastes like chicken! | What does? | Dinosaurs… | Happy Harrahdays, | -Dawdlers |
| 2019-Nov-16 • 64 minutes E39: We Don't Need No Stinking Badges - Whitehead on Laws of Nature 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. |
| 2019-Oct-28 • 55 minutes E38: Cognitive Combinatorialism - What Makes Humans Special? 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 // Ubiqu... |
| 2019-Oct-23 • 69 minutes E37: The Memory of an Old Idea No One Ever Had - Derrida's Hauntology 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 – Back... |
| 2019-Oct-13 • 56 minutes E36: The Man on the Street - A Definition of 'Definition' 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. ... |
| 2019-Oct-06 • 29 minutes Shorts - E23: Discordianism 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/b... |
| 2019-Sep-29 • 17 minutes Shorts - E22: Self-Evidence 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 |
| 2019-Sep-22 • 91 minutes E35: An Irenic Kind of Fellow - A Discussion on Illusionism with Keith Frankish 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 |
| 2019-Aug-04 • 101 minutes E34: More Vice Than Virtue – Nelson Goodman’s Fake News 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... |
| 2019-Jul-07 • 30 minutes Shorts - E21: Personal Accountability “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 acc... |
| 2019-Jun-30 • 29 minutes Shorts - E20: The Monty Hall Problem In this Short the Dawdlers play a game. Everyone loses. The end. |
| 2019-Jun-23 • 79 minutes E33: Massimo Pigliucci's Hard Problems - Multi-Level Selection & Cultural Evolution 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 episod... |
| 2019-May-26 • 33 minutes Shorts - E19: Repeatability in Science 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. |
| 2019-May-19 • 22 minutes Shorts - E18: Depression Life may be meaningless, but is it hopeless? | This week the Dawdlers do a little Short on depression. Don't?...enjoy this? |
| 2019-May-12 • 97 minutes E32: Anatol Rapoport's Man-Made Conflicts - General Systems Theory 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. |
| 2019-May-05 • 129 minutes E31: The Helm of the Mutineers - On Sociopolitical Revolutions 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... |
| 2019-Apr-28 • 70 minutes E30: The Imbalance of the Century - Zizek v. Peterson 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! |
| 2019-Apr-14 • 35 minutes Shorts - E17: Life is Meaningless 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 |
| 2019-Apr-07 • 18 minutes Shorts - E16: The Good Life One way or many ways or any ways... Is there a recipe to live The Good Life? |
| 2019-Mar-31 • 21 minutes Shorts - E15: Health What's a healthy podcast release schedule? We sure don't know but are trying to figure it out! |
| 2019-Mar-24 • 23 minutes Shorts - E14: Fairness This week the Dawdlers talk about Fairness. Medieval fairs, County fairs...everything... |
| 2019-Mar-17 • 111 minutes E29: Hustling Past the Graveyard - Ideation in the New Gilded Age “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 y... |
| 2019-Mar-10 • 123 minutes E28: The Pleistocene - Part II 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 E... |
| 2019-Mar-03 • 100 minutes E27: The Pleistocene - Part I 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) hu... |
| 2019-Feb-24 • 22 minutes Shorts - E13: The Future 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 sin... |
| 2019-Feb-20 • 19 minutes Shorts - E12: Scarcity 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!! |
| 2019-Feb-17 • 120 minutes E26: Hofstadter's Scrumptious Edibles - Analogy as the Core of Cognition 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”? //... |
| 2019-Feb-13 • 24 minutes Shorts - E11: Authority 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? |
| 2019-Feb-10 • 24 minutes Shorts - E10: End ofs How 'bout another Short!? This time the Dawdlers go off about "End ofs". You know, the "End of the World" type ideas. Consider us ambivalent. Enjoy for the world will soon be over! |
| 2019-Feb-06 • 31 minutes Shorts - E9: Stupidity Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity. ~Voltaire Present audience excepted-- surely --but Carlo Cippola, George Carlin, and Jonathan Swift aren't the only ones who think that there's a bit too much Stupidity exhibited by the human race. In this week's Short, the Dawdlers join the chorus. |
| 2019-Feb-03 • 132 minutes Haunting the Margins - E2: Terence McKenna We all dull and enhance our senses in various ways. Some of us, few of us can explore the extremes of sensory manipulation. Even fewer can understand what it means. The Dawdlers return to the theme of Haunting the Margins. This time they take a trip with Terence McKenna, the late hallucinagenic experimentalist of the 20th Century. Uncle Terence had loads of ideas and a remarkably lucid penchant for expressing them. A man of his time who is worth our time. McKennas, the Anderson's of Ireland (the Johnsons of... |
| 2019-Jan-30 • 25 minutes Shorts - E8: Artificial Intelligence Are there inherent limits to the behavioral capacities of artifacts? How would that differ from human bodies? Are not both arrangements of universe, of "stuff"? Why would one substrate permit abilities inaccessible to others? In this week's Short the Dawdlers muse about Artificial Intelligence: what are its limits, if any-- and should we fear? |
| 2019-Jan-27 • 82 minutes E25: A Fetish of Fallacies - Are All Fallacies Created Equal? “Live” but “not live”, that’s what The Dawdler’s Philosophy Podcast is. “Live” in that it is generally unscripted where we tend to not know exactly what the other host will say. And “not live” in that you can’t listen to it as it is unfolding for the first time. We’re fine with this; obviously, or we would change it. But it does require some preparation in order to pull it off in as constructive a way as possible. This episode, the Dawdler’s ask: are all fallacies created equal? Well, hard to say if we lear... |
| 2019-Jan-23 • 26 minutes Shorts - E7: Anything is Possible No, this isn't a New Age affirmation. It isn't a derisive denouncement of low likelihood. It's the Dawdlers giving their takes on modal logic! Herein are considered types of possibility, and how responsible epistemology might interface with metaphysical musings. Who has the arguments to back up absolute impossibility claims? If not us, then, well, as far as we know: Anything is Possible! |
| 2019-Jan-20 • 102 minutes E24: In Lieu of Arguments - The Gettier Problem In art, genius is forgiven if it isn't consistent. Hell, it's probably revered more if it's inconsistent. It's fluid. Not so in philosophy. Consistency is king. Without it one becomes lost and strays from the path. In this episode the Dawdlers (well, Harland, mostly) try their best to explain why a cherished method and paper are inconsistent and are representative of bad philosophy. It's a famous paper too. Not sure how famous the method is. What are these things, the paper and the method? Why, Edmund Getti... |
| 2019-Jan-16 • 22 minutes Shorts - E6: What Came First: Thinking or Language? Ever try and prank someone but it back fires and they just go about their business as if they were not even remotely aware of what just didn’t happen? Yeah, that’s this episode. |
| 2019-Jan-13 • 100 minutes E23: The Moonlight Walks - Aesthetics in Science Yeats repeats “a terrible beauty is born” in his poem “Easter, 1916”. The poem expresses the emotional limbo of Yeats as he grapples with the post World War I Irish rebellion in response to the broken promise of Irish liberation. Out of acts of violence, comes the hope of freedom. Or is it the hope of freedom that fuels acts of violence? Whence progress? Do we make progress with ideas, and if so, does it not require a "terrible beauty" as a means of initiation? In this episode the Dawdler’s use Sabine Hosse... |
| 2019-Jan-09 • 35 minutes Shorts - E5: Reproducing Ya like how last week we did death? This week we do birth. It also sucks! Can a Dawdler catch a break? What's that? Is that what we are basically known for? Look, don't be a hater. We mean, hustler... |
| 2019-Jan-06 • 113 minutes E22: A Farewell to Armchairs - Philosophy Without Intuitions Imagine a beginner's luck without a point of reference, without any obvious design and you'll have a better picture of intuition and the role it plays in ego and illusion. So there is no luck. There is no accident. Some thinkers are just so in touch with the universe they need not appeal to another authority because they ARE the authority. In this episode we Dawdlers try to critique how intuition is used in philosophy. Fair warning however. Harland gets pretty chimpy and Ryan enjoys Harland's chimpy-ness ... |
| 2019-Jan-02 • 23 minutes Shorts - E4: Mortality Tick, tick, tick, tick... Happy New Year! Tick, tick, tick... The clock doesn't stop ticking when the ball drops. Another trip around the sun and we're all another year older. They haven't fixed aging yet. Death still seems a likely part of our future. What's your take on that? |
| 2018-Dec-30 • 127 minutes E21: Ever Since the Universe Invented Imagination - What Do You Believe but Can't Prove? We are as much our biases as we are our perception to others. Fallibility. It works in mysterious ways. This week the Dawdlers present a discussion from an earlier time than the present moment. It's a conversation they've been meaning to have but not really sure when to have it. But they did...eventually. The topic? An Edge.org annual question: 2005's What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? Harland and Ryan wax on about some things they think fit the bill, but not until after Harland re... |
| 2018-Dec-26 • 26 minutes Shorts - E3: Time Travel The Dawdlers offer some takes on the concept, possibility, and consequences of time travel. Not the kind we're all doing every day [real time "forward"], but that kind from the movies where you can go at high speeds in both directions on the entropic autobahn. Does the idea even make sense? What might happen if we succeeded? What's your take? |
| 2018-Dec-23 • 108 minutes E20: The Great Silliness - Consciousness Does Not Exist Harland and Ryan were born on the same day 3 years apart. December 22. To celebrate they're doing an episode on consciousness and how you, yes you, dont have it!! Happy birthday to us, eh? Eh... They don't know philosopher Keith Frankish's birthday, but he doesn't think you have consciousness either even if he doesnt say it explicitly. C'mon Keith!! It's the Dawdlers' birthday!! Jerk. Here's deep birthday vibe dives into a piece Keith wrote about Illusionism and Consciousness. -Dawds 00:00:00 The Great Sill... |
| 2018-Dec-19 • 23 minutes Shorts - E2: Determinism In this episode, the Dawdlers take on determinism. Are killers gonna kill? Haters gonna hate? Chefs gonna cook? Eh...Anyway, Harland plays therapist and Ryan plays games because they're fun. And this is just the way it is because it has to be, as all things must be in the Determiverse. |
| 2018-Dec-16 • 103 minutes E19: The Muck Raker's Son-in-Law - R.A. Fisher's Science and Statistics People love to talk about the pitfalls of statistics and how we can "lie" with it. Those people don’t do statistics. In science, statistics is often quite difficult. It's there to help us with very complicated problems, not to hurt others with simple craven power leveragings. The Dawdlers discuss the positive side of this dichotomy through a paper by the mid-to-late 20th Century statistician George E.P. Box. Here, he forays into the big vistas of Science and Statistics with his mantra in hand--"All models a... |
| 2018-Dec-12 • 31 minutes Shorts - E1: Does Everyone Have a Right to Their Opinions? Hello World. It’s us Dawds, trying out yet another new thing. We thought we’d discuss a kinda off-the-cuff, shootin’-from-the-hip type format in addition to the usual 2+ hours we do. It’s more of a relaxed stroll with intermittent skipping as opposed to the marathons we’ve been doing so far. This time the Dawdlers wanna get each other’s take on whether or not everyone has a “right” to their own opinion. Do they? Should they? What does that even mean? Listen to find out what they think and let them know what... |
| 2018-Dec-09 • 139 minutes E18: Wittgenstein's Inner Parliament - Exploring "On Certainty" There are these people in workplaces who have a talent for completing assigned tasks well. Their results are basically always excellent and up to the specifications and requirements for getting the job "done right". Worker bees, we call them. And they are essential for the consistent and routine operation of a workplace. Without them the riffraff hand in a suboptimal and incomplete product. What if someone had this type of talent, but for thinking? How might it look? What is a correct and (nearly) complete ... |
| 2018-Dec-02 • 135 minutes E17: The Final Induction - The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses Ryan has kids. Kids have diseases and general poor hygiene. Thus, Ryan has diseases and sometimes poor hygiene. But he loves ‘em, those little rascals. In this episode, the Dawdlers explore this kind of parental affection, but for ideas. How much affection should we give to our brain children? The discussion centers around a little old paper that holds the key! And the key is as Harland says, “The Method”. In this case, it is the method of multiple working hypotheses. So drink plenty of fluids, get some res... |
| 2018-Nov-25 • 126 minutes Haunting the Margins - E1: Robert Anton Wilson "If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there. It's like being a politician in opposition; that's where you can be most sincere. But, of course, you sometimes look at people taking lead parts and think they've got all the gravy." -Colin Firth Unremitting travelers rarely play it safe. How could they? They are in motion. Momentum is both a liberator and a killer. But these adventurers just don’t care. They are obsessed. They are possessed. They are living on the edge… Here, The... |
| 2018-Nov-18 • 160 minutes E16: Episodic Synchrony - Diversity in Consumer-Resource Systems “I suppose most scientists—most authors—have one piece of work of which they would say: It doesn’t matter if you never read anything else of mine, please at least read *this*.” Richard Dawkins wrote that in a note to a 1989 paperback edition of his book "The Extended Phenotype". Ryan appeals to this sentiment when it comes to the idea he outlines in this episode. Poor Harland has to sit and listen to Ryan talk about his “big idea”; one of resource-driven evolution that either drags a population down where a... |
| 2018-Nov-11 • 110 minutes E15: The Rolling Wall of Fog - Science v. Philosophy There may not be philosophy-free science, but there *is* radical-free philosophy. Harland tries it out for as long as he can in this episode on the possible differences between science and philosophy. Buckle your chin straps, Truth Seekers! 00:04:50 – Science? Philosophy?/Thought experiments/Provisionalism vs Definitionalism 00:42:48 – Modes of Indeference/Progress 01:02:26 – “Social” science/Wolf packs & bears/Singer-songwriters & jazz musicians/Science is data collection, philosophy is everything else/The... |
| 2018-Nov-04 • 138 minutes E14: Nietzsche's Rich Pageant - Exploring "Will to Power" If we're lucky, we're able to add a little sumptin'-sumptin' to the end of the line. Maybe it's a good twist or we bring more than a few threads together. But every once in a while someone comes along and braids so far ahead they leave us all behind. Perhaps one day we'll arrive at Nietzsche's fray...again, if we're lucky. Until then we just have to try and keep moving forward, try to understand. This episode is just one of those attempts. 00:14:42 - Nihilism (Active & Passive)/Morality (Master & Slave)/Art... |
| 2018-Oct-28 • 127 minutes E13: Footnotes to Fermi - The Aliens Episode So, this guy Enrico trolled humanity once and it’s left us reeling ever since. This week the Dawdlers discuss the implications of this troll and explore a few threads on why we don’t get no satisfaction from our attempts to catch signals emitted by extraterrestrial intelligences. A hope and a calculation, but no USS Enterprise. Grab your ankles if you want, but get comfortable at least. It may be a while before you’re “visited”. 00:07:45 – Fermi’s Paradox/Kardeshev Scale/Civilization Types 00:25:00 – More F... |
| 2018-Oct-21 • 120 minutes E12: Daniel Dennett's Easy Problems - Content, Consciousness, and Intuition Pumps This time the Dawdler’s examine Daniel Dennett’s book “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking” (2013). Regardless of all that, these two tools think they think. Topics explored are philosophical zombies, Occam’s Razor, black boxes, and sorta operators. Do you smell that? It’s the sweet potpourri of Dennettian thinkadinks. -Dawds 00:08:24 – Thinking Tools 00:39:32 – Folk Psychology, etc. 00:51:21 – Heterophenomenology and Zombies 01:15:01 – The Tuned Deck and Two Black Boxes 01:39:09 – Ryan does not Un... |
| 2018-Oct-14 • 130 minutes E11: I Just Wanna Get off the Bus - The Overpopulation Episode Typically, people may describe a “wide-ranging” podcast conversation as covering topics from A to Z to あ. Maybe that’s the case for those podcasts. Us dawdlers? Eh… Ryan thinks this episode is on the psychology of “over”-population and Malthusian growth dynamics. Harland thinks Ryan just doesn’t like being one-of-many and is heavily invested in the narrative of Lockean individualism or something. Whatever the case may be, they cover a wide range of topics from—Hey, look! Sections! 00:04:45 – Thomas Malthus ... |
| 2018-Oct-07 • 127 minutes E10: The Argument Argument - Walking the Tightrope 'twixt Truth and Nihilism The free world is kind of a mess right now. Seems we've lost something in a trade or hit a wall. We're so team oriented sending and receiving messages is like exchanging alien signals. Naturally, if we are to decode these strange outbursts, it's time to get innovative. We have a suggestion! As one can probably surmise from the title, this episode is about arguing. We explore some of Harland's thoughts and ideas on the middle ground between dogmatic appeals to truth and defeatist egalitarianism. You may not ... |
| 2018-Sep-30 • 128 minutes E9: Megadeath - The Mass Extinction Episode Once again, Earth gets the bullet too! This episode the Dawdlers yammer on about Mass Extinction. Ryan is trying not to screw up and Harland is working on his impromptu pun skills. Hopefully something is learned but likely it's just not nothing. Oh, and we've now a little ditty. Enjoy the Good Death, The Dawdlers |
| 2018-Sep-23 • 124 minutes E8: Curing this Guy's Headache - Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics Hey you! Yeah you, dummy. You know what time binding is? No? Good! We (Ryan) don’t either. This episode the Dawdlers get in over their heads with Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics. Well, Ryan is in over his head. Harland just can’t get his out of his bum. Badum ching! Rim shot! Pun intended. Anyway, it’s the thought that counts and the thoughts count mostly when spoken properly. And that’s what this episode is all about. Don’t forget to thank us. -Da Dawds |
| 2018-Sep-16 • 130 minutes E7: Summer at Aphelion - The Climate Change Episode Hot topic alert! This episode the Dawdlers pull focus on planet Earth. They talk about Earth processes, especially climate. I guess one could say this is the climate change episode. Yaaay! Earth gets the bullet too! BUT they spend much of their time on the science and much less on the politics. So if you came in wanting to hear the familiar repetition in the echo chamber, y’ain’t gonna find it! Well, maybe you will, but with much less emotional emphasis, fear mongering, and triggered sobbing. Buckle your ch... |
| 2018-Sep-09 • 139 minutes E6: NME Skepticism - Pyrrho was Right! Last time the Dawdlers had an original idea it was pretty goofy. This time it is less goofy. So “less goofy” in fact, anyone who listens might get downright pissed off. How dare us! For shaaaame… Anyhoo, this topic is a take on skepticism. Some may say it’s radical. Harland would probably be fine with that. But in any case, it is—we think—important. Trying to change the world here folks…One. Chimp. At a time. Cheers, The Dawdlers |
| 2018-Sep-02 • 169 minutes E5: This Reminds Me of Another Future - The Emergence Episode New rule: no new ideas after two hours! This time we talked about the idea of emergence and naturally, its counterpart, reductionism. Of course, supervenience was all thinking it’s host to this party like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters, “Hiya doin’! Why don’t you have some of the brie. It’s at room temperature. You think it’s too warm in here for the brie?” But never mind, we soon bailed on that party. Nearly as many names get dropped as threads in this full-on geek-out sesh on radical metaphysics. Make no m... |
| 2018-Aug-27 • 114 minutes E4: The Tiger in the Bushes - The Truth Episode Uh oh. We're talkin' 'bout the truth. There are various positions on the truth these days. Truth, post-truth; we take a different direction. We think it is a better direction. But, at this point, it's hard to remember what that direction was exactly. You'll just have to listen zero members of the audience. Also, we're at Harland's deeeeeep in Minnesota. It's basically Canada. And Canada is basically the North Pole. And the North Pole is where Santa lives. And that is NOT NORMAL. :-) |
| 2018-Aug-27 • 131 minutes E3: Triamond Joy! - A World Beyond Truth Seeking Triangles. Diamonds. Triamond Joy! In this episode the Dawdlers go deep into lesser known territory: original ideas. Truth Seekers, Game Players, Overseers, and Engineers are united in a unique interpretive mechanism for evaluating contributions to inquiry. Our number one fan is present but we tried to reduce the constant cheering using tek-nah-luh-gee. Unfortunately, this means Harland sounds like he has a cold or is talking through one of those cardboard tubes in a roll of paper towels. Ryan sounds great,... |
| 2018-Aug-26 • 142 minutes E2: An Immense Investment in the Utterly Obvious - Gould and Lewontin's "Spandrels of San Marco" Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Harland and Ryan tackle Stephen J Gould and Richard Lewontin’s paper “The Spandrels of San Marco” and discuss adaptationism’s benefits and flaws in evolutionary biology. This is a topic we thought we could shoot off. Well…hard to tell…it’s hard to tell if we just fucked off or if we got anywhere. Maybe we get somewhere in some places. Hopefully this is more than just listening to two people talk and making no sense (especially Ryan). Our best to all those in... |
| 2018-Aug-26 • 139 minutes E1: John Searle does not Understand - The Chinese Room Argument This time the Dawdlers are attempting to make sense of being in a room where they have to understand Chinese. John Searle sure can’t help! To remedy this, Harland and Ryan take a deep dive in a shallow pool, with a close consideration of John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument in the Philosophy of Mind from his 1980 paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs”. Can computers “understand”? What is the function of intuition in philosophy? What good are “intuition pumps”? What can the Turing Test establish? And more… |
| 2018-Aug-26 • 56 minutes E0: Dawdlers & (but mostly) Hustlers - Introducing the Dawdler's Philosophy Dawdlers, Harland and Ryan, discuss The Dawdle. Admittedly a less popular concept in 2018 America than The Hustle, but this dichotomy is considered and arguments presented that perhaps too many underestimate the virtues of Dawdling. P.S. This is episode zero. Why? We don’t know! Guess it’s a thing we Dawdlers are not up to date on like those Hustlers out there. P.P.S. In this episode you will hear great pauses of unedited connection failures and foolish people talking about their failings. Naturally, a podc... |