Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Richard Fulmer ·
August 6, 2012 at 11:37pm
Sometimes a question is the best response.
Answer: I am a true solipsist. (Gorgias)
Question: So why tell me?
A: There is no truth. (Gustave Flaubert)
Q: Is that true?
A: Knowledge is unknowable. (Francisco Sanches)
Q: How do you know?
A: It is irrational to assume that tomorrow will be anything like today. (David Hume)
Q: So you learned to speak, read, and write because…?
A: All cultures are equally valid. (Franz Boas)
Q: Including those that teach that all other cultures are invalid?
A: Truth is created, not discovered. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Q: Did you just make that up?
A: There is no free will. (Baron d’Holbach)
Q: What makes you say that?
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Oct '10
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Jeff Richter: Not a question, but I still like it:
"God is Dead" (Neitzsche, 1882)
"Neitzsche is dead" (God, 1900)
· 10 hours ago
"'Neitzsche' is spelled wrong" (Walter Kaufmann--actual quotation)
May '10
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
whatmeworry: Q. Do I exist?
A. I talk to myself, therefore , I am · 4 minutes ago
A. But, we can't see you, so you're both dead and alive. (Schrödinger's cat)
Nov '11
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
A. Every law is an infraction of liberty. (Jeremy Bentham)
Q. How much liberty does a murder victim have?
A. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. (Karl Marx)
Q. How will encouraging people to minimize ability and maximize need improve things?
Jun '12
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
A: I think, therefore I am.
Q: What are you, a thkunk?
Jun '12
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Took me a while to find this, and it's not quite in the "Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers" mold, but I think it's interesting.
In David Hume's Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he writes:
What's interesting is that Hume's book itself wouldn't pass his own test. He has no math nor experiments in it.
Should we therefore commit it to the flames?
Jun '12
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Conservative Wanderer: ... Should we therefore commit it to the flames?
As a matter of fact, no. Leave it lie, as it does, a testament to the absurdity and grandeur of sophistry and illusion.
Or, conversely, yes, let us burn it, measure the BTU produced and calculate it's worth as fossil fuel, tracking it's carbon footprint. Might as well learn something useful.
Nov '11
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
A: Truth and facts are arbitrary constructs set up by the privileged to manipulate others. (Jacques Derrida)
Q: Who is this "truth" meant to manipulate?
[Tip of the hat to Victor Davis Hanson]
Edited on August 7, 2012 at 5:48pmMar '12
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Thought provoking and laugh-out-loud -- this type of thing is what I like best of Ricochet. Now, if some of you all could (and I'm sure you can!)come up with Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers for Romney bumper stickers, zingers for a debate, ask a Ricochet founder to get it to someone in the GOP who would actually use it, this is the type of thing that could set the Romney campaign on fire.
Jun '10
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Obamacare will lower the cost of healthcare.
By adding a layer of government bureaucracy?
Women and men are essentially the same.
Why does having women make things more diverse then?
Failure is proof of discrimination.
Couldn't it be lack of ambition?
We need to treat black people differently to make up for past injustice.
Wasn't the injustice that we treated them differently in the first place?
Humans are basically good before society corrupts them.
Would you babysit my two year old and we can revisit this premise?
Edited on August 8, 2012 at 2:51amSep '10
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
Richard Fulmer: Sometimes a question is the best response.
...
A: It is irrational to assume that tomorrow will be anything like today. (David Hume)
Q: So you learned to speak, read, and write because…?
...
A: Truth is created, not discovered. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Q: Did you just make that up?
...
· · Aug 6 at 2:37pm
I can't speak to the other instances, but these that I've quoted are examples in support of the importance of reading the writers' own works, rather than merely what men say that men say that they say. I think Hume was showing the reader that there are opinions necessary to life that are supported, not by experience, but by things in us or accessible to us that conform to the requirements of life. One can call them ideas, forms, or instincts.
Sep '10
Re: Snappy Questions to Stupid Answers
As for Nietszsche, I think merely substituting the word "understanding" for the word "truth" makes his opinion clearer and more persuasive. As I recall what he says in one place, it amounts to, "I have my understanding, and you have yours, and mine is so much more profound, that you can't have mine and must be satisfied with yours." Note that what he says, as I understand it, is not democratic or populist, but toweringly aristocratic or kingly. One must also bear in mind that Nietzsche sometimes aims to pose a problem and also to be funny, as when he says (as I recall), "Everything absolute belongs to pathology." That itself is absolute (as the interpreter Laurence Lampert points out), and I think (as Lampert also says) that such a thinker and prose stylist as Nietzsche was aware that it's absolute. He manages to pose a problem and be slyly funny at the same time.