The Dozen Locker Dilemma
You have died. Before you move on - you must store your accumulated knowledge in 12 lockers. You can label the lockers - with categories as broad or as specific as you see fit. You can label two lockers the same if one is not enough, but you cannot leave any locker empty.
Comments (26)
Anyway, what use is my knowledge to me if I have died?
Must a dilemma have only two possible outcomes? Maybe the dilemma is do as instructed, or don't. Now you don't move on. Humans!
Looks like there's going to be a queue!
1. Nobody ever got smarter by talking
2. Oefening baart kunst it's similar to "practice makes perfect" but with the important distinction that "kunst" doesn't mean perfect but "art" or "craftmanship"
3. Speaking up is golden, silence is oppression
1. Socratic dialogue?
2. Catchy!
3. Inane chatter being the happy medium, I suppose?
1. It's the listening part where you learn.
3. Possibly a translation thing but I always interpreted "speaking up" as taking a (verbal) stance against injustice and unfairness
1. If you're going to be pedantic, it's the thinking part where you learn.
2. What happened to 2?
3. And for motherhood and apple pie?
Lockers 2 - 12. Labels 'Unimportant stuff, not wanted on voyage'; content, everything else.
I'm guessing you're leaving something out? What's the dilemma?
"Stuff I learned from birth to 8 years old"
"Stuff I learned from 9 to 15 years old"
"Stuff I learned from 16 to 22"
"Stuff I learned from 23 to 30"
etc.
Or even just
"Knowledge locker 1"
"Knowledge locker 2"
etc.
Or
"Stuff I learned in school"
"Stuff I learned from family"
"Stuff I learned from friends"
"Stuff I learned from books outside of school"
etc.
A place to store memory of your loved ones.
2. Skepticism Vol.1
3. Skepticism Vol.2
4. Skepticism Vol.3
5. Skepticism Vol.4
6. Arguments from skepticism Vol.1
7. Arguments from skepticism Vol.2
8. Arguments from skepticism Vol.3
9. Arguments from skepticism Vol.4
10. Conclusions of 8 volumes of skepticism and arguments based on all stored information.
11. Creative ideas and predictions on the universe.
12. Creative ideas and predictions on humanity.
All other experiences, emotions and the ego is irrelevant for the people who will use the knowledge in these lockers. I only leave that which I believe is of importance to others but put all mashed up memory in locker 1 to make room for further analysis of locker 2-12.
What I found instead was that knowledge is a never ending climb - with plateaus now and then, that offer new and increasingly extraordinary vistas. Early on - there was a tendency to imagine, that each plateau was the summit, but I soon realized that people always think they're right. Even when they apologize for being wrong "I'm sorry, but I didn't know that x, y, z and therefore..." Yeah, you were wrong, but would have been right if reality were different. Everyone always thinks they're right - and are willing to deny reality to maintain that belief, while searching for the magic apple.
It would have been useful to me, if I could have understood what your main influences are - how you would categorize and describe your knowledge. Things like: my mother, religion, school stuff, TV, science - those kind of broad headings. I don't want to invade your privacy, but instead what I got is a load of smart-arse remarks, which is just as telling in its own way.
If you want to know that, it's probably better to just ask it in a straightforward manner, and then you could request that we keep our answers to 10 categories or whatever.
It's not the easiest thing to list, because there's so much overlap or so much of a little bit of this and a little bit of that contributing to the "same piece of knowledge," but for me, I'd probably say (as a top 10, with some effort to order them, though that kind of fell apart in the middle):
(1) family, especially parents, maternal grandfather, sisters, a couple particular uncles and aunts, as well as wives
(2) closest friends
(3) teachers, especially high school and university as well as private music instructors (and also the music teacher at my elementary school)
(4) general work experience, including doing the work itself, reaction to the work, interaction with colleagues, etc.
(5) philosophy in general
(6) the sciences in general
(7) views of artists, including people I've worked with (I've mostly worked in arts & entertainment)
(8) the arts from a consumer perspective--films, music, novels, video games etc.
(9) leisure experience/travel etc.
(10) media more broadly, including Internet interaction
But even if I could get around all that, I’d still wonder....how in the hell do I put knowledge in a locker? It’s not like switching out from street clothes to a uniform. Or is it? I’m hardly in a position right now to conclude one way or the other.
Just a figure of speech, you say? Sure, maybe, but if I put part of my knowledge here and part of it there, don’t I lose it? What if the part I lose is the part that tells me what I know? How would I fill the lockers I’m not allowed to leave empty, when I don’t know what I know?
On the other hand, if I’m in the supersensible condition and I know arithmetic still works, and all kinds of stuff like that, because I still know what a locker is, and I can still follow directions, then I haven’t really put any knowledge in any locker anyway.
I’m not making fun of the OP, honest; I just don’t have a clue how I would accomplish what it wants. I suppose, though, if the negation is so much easier than the affirmation, there’s something wrong with the exercise to begin with.
Thanks for trying this. I appreciate it's not easy to condense the sum of your knowledge into 12, or 10 categories - and there is no right answer. But I was looking for the labels on the locker door, not the contents of each locker.
How you go about labeling the lockers is one of the interesting things. Still, from your list, I see that you had a lot of influential people in your early life, or I somewhat prejudiced your selections by the things I suggested in my earlier post. That's something I was trying to avoid. I think you must have had a good life though, that's pretty clear. And it's that kind of thing that can be deduced as meta analysis. That's what I'm trying for. Thanks again for being the first person to take this at all seriously.
Re labels, it would just be "family," "friends" etc.
If you were looking for dividing up knowledge into categories, that would be different than focusing on influences.
Oh boy, is that a mistake! Reality is subject to entropy - which means the easy road leads ever downward unto stagnation and death. Everything good is uphill, and going uphill requires effort. We need to expend energy just to stand still - or we fall apart. It's an absolute physical law.
As for this exercise, it's a thought experiment. Einstein didn't actually throw a guy off a roof when thinking about gravity, and similarly, you're not actually dead. It's a hypothetical scenario that creates the objective distance from your knowledge - that you can categorize it. A thought experiment.
For me, one of my labels would certainly read 'the need to know what's true' - but in that locker, would be hidden a difficult childhood, in a troubled family in which I was the youngest child - and my parents and elder sister made great sport from constantly lying to me, and fooling me to make an idiot out of me. Without going into too much more detail it gave me a desperate 'need to know what's true.' So that's how I'd label that locker.
But that's just me. It could be anything. Song lyrics, nature walks, Mr Phillips my amazing math teacher - anything! It could be your first three lockers were labelled Plato, Aristotle, Socrates - suggesting you were heavily influenced by the development of Greek philosophy, or those three labels could read Greek philosophy, Christianity, science - which describes in overview, the European mindset. I honestly cannot tell you what I'm looking for up front. But the more people participate the better the meta analysis.
Yeah, well, some thought experiments were intentionally constructed to exemplify a theoretically impossible situation.
And, if I’m putting my knowledge in a locker, fercrissake.....let’s just make it an isolated system, forego all that entropy stuff.
But it was fun to play with, while it lasted.
This is a thought experiment for adults. People who have some knowledge and life experience to store. I'm guessing from your tone you're about 14 - going through that dismissive phase. We've all been there - don't worry about it, you won't come across as a wanker forever.
(Charlie Chaplin shuffle, stage left)
Ain't nothing wrong with falling apart but I want to believe the principle that it is absolutely good to endure as along as possible. The energy used to go uphill causes other things to do downhill.
The unusual perturbation of global weather due to burning stored energy to go up hill will cause some things elsewhere (life) to fall apart (go down hill). China absorbs the pollution of global consumption. The horizon of a local arboretum is contaminated with windmills. Once thriving fertile grounds turn to desert. Mosquitos carrying malaria (the biggest killer of all time) expand their territories. Then we try to adapt, still at cost of future adaptation.
My parents both worked full time jobs. My father was next to non-existent (like his father before him). My brother was a mean bastard who believes himself to be a victim (possibly rightly of being unloved and emotionally abused). He was the most successful of the progeny, who severed relations to his family.
In 6 grade I put on a puppet play about suicide. The hero (Superbunny) tried to save someone who jumped off Niagra falls but was moments too late. My teacher was disgusted, I then became target for a few occasions of class humilation ("this is an example of what not to do"). My friend, who played the hero puppet, was an ostracized kid whose family situation terrified me. He was being supported by his Stepmother (father missing) one got the impression that she'd love to be rid of him. If I was in his place I didn't think I'd be able to cope.
I feel myself to be alone in the universe, sometime amidst people I love. But maybe by a measure of action (of doing) it can be said that I don't love anyone. I can't call my indifference a type of love.
I believe in the power of Metta (love and compassion practice). We could have been anyone. We could have been the placid cow, chewing cud, enraptured in bliss, or the cow seized with existential fear before the gate of an abattoir. Or we could have been stuck in a cattle car headed to a concentration camp, separated from mother and father. Mother might have had to choose whom to leave behind.
We should try to treat people well. Vile nihlistic children, puerile hellions seeking the flame annhiliation, and ornery wearied masters seeking five star accommodations. All will be invited to be. They have been.
Nothing worth while.
Nothing worth while.
Nothing worth while.
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Nothing worth while.
Nothing worth while.
Nothing worth while.
Nothing worth while.
Nothing worth while.
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Nothing worth while.