[ExI] Philosophy Tech Support

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: [ExI] Philosophy Tech Support

 

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/51

 

Hilarious!   Thanks John.

 

That comic has me thinking of its counterparts.  What if we could set up a help-hotline analogous to a tech-help, but for people having philosophy questions?  I don’t see why not: we already have suicide-prevention hotlines and things that are not really tech help.  So why not a philosophy help hotline?  Why is the line hot?  Could you have a tepid line or a cold line?  If we had a hotline for fashion questions, wouldn’t that be a cool hotline? If we instrument the line with thermocouples, could we have a line of indeterminate temperature until a call comes in?  If data is coming across it, does it really change the temperature of the line?  While we are at it, wouldn’t it be cool to rig up a computer with voice recognition and speech synthesis so that it hands out tech advice with no humans on the receiving end?  Or would that be hot?  Perhaps the term hotline means there is a human on the other end, a hot body.  So what if the suicide hotline counselor is flabby or otherwise unattractive?  And if an attractive person is a hottie, what is the flabby counselor called?  A coldie?  And what if she is so-so?  And does this term reflect poorly upon the Chinese and Indian unskilled laborers?  And what if one of those Chinese coolies is really hot?  But has a second job in the fashion hotline?  Is he or she hot or cool?  Or does it kind of average out and he or she becomes a tepidie?

 

But I digress.

 

Back to philosophy for a minute, the whole notion of a philosophy tech-hotline is aptly named, for it raises more questions than answers.

 

spike

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