Heap-problems

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heap-problems

Title text: I promise - when the kids aren't talking about philosophy, I let them play hopscotch and eat cake.

Votey

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Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts should also describe what happens in each panel.

[Describe panel here]

There's this concept in philosophy called a "heap problem."

You have one of something. It's not a heap. You add another. It's still not a heap. If you have ten thousand it's certainly a heap. So, at what point do you go from a non-heap to a heap?

Pfft. A heap is just a human concept. We ose it for intellectual book-keeping because we have limited cognitive capacity but, there is no heap just larger amounts of stuff.

It's only a problem" to the extent that we're upset by the fact that a heap isn't real. Not like a proton is real, anyway.

We live in aristotles world of stuff. But, we'd like to live in plato's world of ideas.

But, in a far off galaxy, you will find protons, you will find the same stuff. But, heaps are just an idea in the minds

Of limited organisms.

What about mountains or warmth or the color red or love or consciousness? They're some of my favorite things. They're real to me.

It's not the universe's fault if your favorites arent well-aligned

With the nature of reality.

Well, what's your favorite thing?

Quark-gluon interactions.

Caption: smbc-comics.com

Votey Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts should also describe what happens in each panel.

[Describe panel here]

Elementary particles are fundamental

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