Buzzfeed's 7 Fantasic Ways To Distinguish Between Sense And Nonsense

November 14, 2013 1:04 PM

7 Fantastic Ways To Distinguish Between Sense And Nonsense from the listicle kings at Buzzfeed.
posted by blahblahblah (36 comments total)

Who ever wrote this should be silent about things which he cannot speak.
posted by shothotbot at 1:06 PM on November 14, 2013 [5 favorites]

13 Shocking Photos of Wittgenstein's Mistress
posted by theodolite at 1:07 PM on November 14, 2013 [8 favorites]

At least they didn't put each sub-point on a seperate page.
posted by jsturgill at 1:07 PM on November 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

The "Inception" sound plays three times as we zoom progressively closer into the words

Ludwig Wittgenstein
BuzzFeed Contributor

until barely-resolved individual pixels are the only thing visible on the screen
posted by ook at 1:09 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Eponysterical?
posted by sfts2 at 1:10 PM on November 14, 2013 [4 favorites]

I need help with this. Is Wittgenstein still a thing?
posted by colie at 1:13 PM on November 14, 2013

He is a totality of facts
posted by ook at 1:15 PM on November 14, 2013 [7 favorites]

I need help with this. Is Wittgenstein still a thing?

No.
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:19 PM on November 14, 2013

Damn, Buzzfeed on some Godel Escher Bach shit. When did they get so high concept.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:20 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is this something I need to be schizophrenic to understand? (If so I'm getting there).
posted by Caskeum at 1:22 PM on November 14, 2013

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posted by RogerB at 1:22 PM on November 14, 2013 [14 favorites]

Damn, Buzzfeed on some Godel Escher Bach shit. When did they get so high concept.

They're still riding that horse_ebooks high.
posted by codacorolla at 1:26 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Don’t worry, you’ll never understand it.
posted by thebestsophist at 1:26 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

depending on how you look at it, it can be a both a hackjob and a clever self-parody
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:33 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Hm this reads like a feedbuzz article.
I guess its their response to buzzfeed without gifs
posted by arsey at 1:33 PM on November 14, 2013

Two dead pigeons in water tank! Take out!
posted by gimonca at 1:34 PM on November 14, 2013

Definitely a Menger sponge of irony.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:38 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I used a trick that I've picked up in a few years of graduate level education, and if something is particularly dense then I'll browse the intro of the methodologies and the findings and then read the conclusion for the meat of it.

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

So what I'm saying is that it's a fairly useful skill.
posted by codacorolla at 1:39 PM on November 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

"Like"
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:41 PM on November 14, 2013

This is just a straight-up reprinting of the Tractatus, ain't it?
posted by saulgoodman at 1:44 PM on November 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

That is to say, "what!? huh?"
posted by saulgoodman at 1:48 PM on November 14, 2013

I need help with this. Is Wittgenstein still a thing?

Wittgenstein sold out when he wrote Philosophical Investigations, just flat out abandoned the work he made his name on. "Accessible" crap he tried to justify by saying there was no such thing as a private language. What you're reading here is his early, hardcore Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

This isn't just pretentious, it's philosophical hipsterism.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:50 PM on November 14, 2013

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...I meant, "mom."
posted by Wolfdog at 1:51 PM on November 14, 2013

When is Epictetus going to become cool? Only philosopher I ever gave a shit about.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:53 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

This, friends, is clearly the latter. Things that do not look like this, while not necessarily sense, are not self-evident nonsense.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 1:53 PM on November 14, 2013

I can verify 100% that, yes, I am still a thing.
posted by wittgenstein at 2:03 PM on November 14, 2013 [13 favorites]

"In the fact that there is a general rule by which the musician is able to read the symphony out of the score, and that there is a rule by which one could reconstruct the symphony from the line on a gramophone record and from this again—by means of the first rule—construct the score, herein lies the internal similarity between these things which at first sight seem to be entirely different. And the rule is the law of projection which projects the symphony into the language of the musical score. It is the rule of translation of this language into the language of the gramophone record."

See? Told you! I've been saying this for ages!
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:04 PM on November 14, 2013

*Hits Buzzfeed with a poker*
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:11 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

I can verify 100% that, yes, I am still a thing.
posted by wittgenstein

Ahem: "1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things."
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:12 PM on November 14, 2013 [4 favorites]

FACT.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:16 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I learned how to distinguish between stuff and nonsense from Split Enz.
posted by justkevin at 2:17 PM on November 14, 2013

I'll be thinking about my sins, and logic
posted by thelonius at 2:23 PM on November 14, 2013

Ok, that was funny.
posted by gwint at 2:34 PM on November 14, 2013

This is just a straight-up reprinting of the Tractatus, ain't it?

Yes, and it was a great idea.
posted by kenko at 3:53 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I started reading this in Cecil Baldwin's voice like it was the traffic report.
posted by Biblio at 4:26 PM on November 14, 2013

DirtyOldTown -- I thought Stoicism was somewhat in style, at least it pops up semi-regularly on places like Boing Boing.

justkevin -- That's a hard act to follow.
posted by jclarkin at 7:47 AM on November 15, 2013