Friday, August 3, 2007

God Is Dei-licious!

This is a fictional conversation between Thematic, a guy on my forum, and Belial, another guy on my forum, and writer of the conversation. Behold!


Thematic: There is an alligator in that room to the north.
Belial: Is there?
T: Yes.
B: How do you know?
T: I just know.
B: Have you been in that room?
T: No.
B: Have you spoken to someone previously about the room?
T: No.
B: Have you read something about the room?
T: Yup, I found a really old scrap of paper saying "Alligator in there".
B: Huh.
T: Yup.
B: Is there some way of seeing into the room that I'm unaware of?
T: No.
B: Can you hear the alligator?
T: No. Do alligators even make noise?
B: They bark sometimes. Or hiss, if they're angry.
T: Huh.
B: Yeah.
T: Learn something new every day.....
B: So you didn't hear any of....
T: Nope.
B: Do they maybe have a specific sme-
T: Listen, Belial, Shut the fuck up. We could do this all day. I don't have any way of gathering information from that room, either. I just know.
B: Uhh...huh. Okay.
T: You don't believe me.
B: Nope.
T: You think I'm lying
B: That's the long and the short of it, yes.
T: Well, that's not fair.
B: You just admitted you have no way of knowing there's an alligator, and then you're telling me there's an alligator. You're lying.
T: You can't prove that. You have no way of knowing there *isn't* an alligator in the room.
B: Even if there *is* an alligator in that room, and I severely doubt it, you'd still be lying.
T: Wait...so even if I'm telling the truth, I'm lying?
B: Pretty much. Because you have no way of knowing you're telling the truth. Even if there's an alligator, you just got lucky. You told me something with full knowledge that it may very well be, nay, that it was probably a lie, and you just happened to be wrong.
T: But I *do* believe there's an alligator in that room.
B: If that's true, it's an interesting experiment in self-delusion, but it doesn't change the fact that you have no way of knowing you're telling the truth. You don't even have a good reason to *think* you're telling the truth. So even if that door opens *right now*, and there's a goddamn alligator sitting there, you were still lying.
T: Hmpf.
B: Whatever.



I love these guys.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He he, yea they're awesome.
*XKCD lurker*

And I wonder if there's actually a disorder like the one in that video.

Anonymous said...

I can really relate to the latter half of your essay--it's the reason I don't plan on having kids.

And I love Where is My Mind, I blame Fight Club (in a good way).

Also, "Sir, are you going to buy those toads or just lick them?"