Scrawled on the box in black Magic Marker were the words “TIME MACHINE.”

January 31, 2016 3:28 PM

The Philosophers
posted by anotherpanacea (16 comments total)

Shagohod?
posted by kafziel at 3:41 PM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Gödel believed that you could never manage to kill your grandfather, when time travelling. Something would always go wrong. The gun would misfire, or he'd be unexpectedly called into work, and you'd shoot the guy your grandmother was screwing on the side, instead.
posted by thelonius at 4:08 PM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

This reminded me of The Aristocrats! joke in that I feel Mr. Sachs had more fun writing this than I had reading it.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:14 PM on January 31, 2016 [7 favorites]

Can't the son directly record his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's eyelid twitches? Can't they use an error correcting code to reduce the chance of mistakes? I hope they're at least using Morse code and not "A=1, B=2, ..., Z=26". </taking-things-too-seriously>
posted by Rangi at 4:33 PM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Feels like short sketches for Ted Chiang stories. Interesting that his theme seems to be the relation between sons and fathers.
posted by vacapinta at 4:40 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

That last one was particularly good. Also, a great excuse to use on your parents why you aren't better in school.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:27 PM on January 31, 2016

As a woman-person who studied philosophy and science and all that whatnot, this story just made me feel left. out. So much so that I considered recording an gender-flipped audio version sans commentary.
posted by lauranesson at 8:46 PM on January 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

Nil humanum me alienum puto, lauranesson.
posted by Segundus at 11:40 PM on January 31, 2016

These read to me like smirking parodies and/or tributes to Italo Calvino by someone who doesn't get it.
posted by bleep at 12:17 AM on February 1, 2016

I can't stand stories about "philosophers" by people who have no concept of the discipline of philosophy. Stop using philosophy as a lazy shorthand for 'profound stuff,' hack writers!
posted by leotrotsky at 5:38 AM on February 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

A philosopher had spent his lifetime pondering the nature of knowledge and was ready at last to write down his conclusions.

That's not how epistemology works !
posted by leotrotsky at 5:41 AM on February 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

I found this because it was shared on FB by a Kant scholar who is both a kickass philosopher and a woman.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:15 AM on February 1, 2016

I found this because it was shared on FB by a Kant scholar who is both a kickass philosopher and a woman.

It's gotta be good; Kant scholars only FB share insofar as they would will it to be universally FB shared.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:18 AM on February 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

I really enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing, anotherpanacea.
posted by slackdog at 11:59 AM on February 1, 2016

I enjoyed it too!
posted by languagehat at 8:34 AM on February 2, 2016

(I would, of course. It has hats. And baseball.)
posted by languagehat at 8:34 AM on February 2, 2016 [1 favorite]