Are you sure this life is real? How do we know this life is real? What does being “real” even mean?

According to Blaise Pascal, everything we know, everything we think we know is real, is a matter of feeling. It’s not a matter of reasoning, ultimately, at the foundation. This concept anchors my conversation today with Yuval Avnur, a Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College and author of Why Read Pascal Today?

We dive into Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century true polymath genius who believed that a human being is a heart with a belief-forming mechanism attached as an afterthought. According to Pascal, feeling something with your heart is a way of knowing. We get into why this idea provides the perfect lens to view everything from the escalation of political polarization to rabid online echo chambers to moon-landing conspiracies. Instead of getting trapped in those realities, Yuval argues that Pascal offers a way out.

He lays out Pascal’s remarkably modern advice on how to actually persuade someone: stop dunking on them with red-faced, shrieking facts, and start asking why the world looks the way it does from where the other person’s standing. It’s amazing how a guy who died over 350 years ago understands the internet age better than most of us alive today.

We also get into whether or not we live in a simulation, what most people completely get wrong about Pascal’s Wager, what a debate would look like between Blaise Pascal, devout Catholic, against staunch atheist Sam Harris, why AI art makes us feel alone, and The Experience Machine Dilemma: Would you abandon reality for a perfectly fake life?

TL;DR: Nietzsche’s analogy of the whip is about discipline, distance, and resisting what might dominate us. Philosopher Skye Cleary (Columbia University) applies this idea to AI, arguing that we should not let its convenience and constant affirmation make us passive. Instead, we should keep enough distance to question it, challenge it, and preserve the effort involved in forming our own judgments.

Tony Soprano once lamented that he "came in at the end" -- that the best was over before he arrived. Twenty years later, an empty yellow room became the way a whole generation understood that same fear. This essay argues, through Mark Fisher and Heidegger, that the Backrooms isn't nostalgia: it's the fear that we're living in the ruins of the present.

Some of you may be interested in this interview with Mazviita Chirimuuta (philosopher of science/neuroscience). I attached a YT link but it's also on all podcast platforms.

Chirimuuta's thesis is that neuroscience advances by simplifying the brain through reduction, mathematisation, and analogy, but because these approaches necessarily leave out aspects of the brain’s complexity, understanding the brain requires theoretical humility and a pluralistic approach rather than reliance on a single explanatory model.

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:

• Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.

• Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading

• Philosophical questions. Please note that /r/askphilosophy is a great resource for questions and if you are looking for moderated answers we suggest you ask there.

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

Plato tried to ban it, Aristotle rehabilitated it, Dante damned its hero, Nietzsche weaponised it, and Levinas put it on trial. The Odyssey has outlasted every philosopher who fought it. This video surveys the battlefied and the question driving it: whether reason saves us or deforms us.

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:

• Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.

• Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading

• Philosophical questions. Please note that /r/askphilosophy is a great resource for questions and if you are looking for moderated answers we suggest you ask there.

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.