Here's why this is here instead of on Facebook.
Interests:
comedy, discussions [about philosophy, religions, physics, economics, math], board games, video games, sports, inventing games, teaching, reading, writing, anime, farmer's markets, gadgets, hiking, ping pong, weird people, fantasy, science fiction, house design / home automation, children, orienteering, hockey, squash, tennis, badminton, soccer, zipline, bubble soccer, dodgeball, roundnet
Religious views: Mennonite freethinker. Mennonites are a Christian denomination that believe in nonretaliation and environmentalism. Freethinking means to base your beliefs on logic and science rather than religious dogma. I don't think God cares whether you believe in him, only about your inner state. However, I don't usually relate to Christian culture.
Epistemological views: Scientific sceptical anti-postmodern rationalist. Scepicism means I attach a probability to beliefs rather than believing or disbelieving things. Anti-postmodern means I believe in absolute truth. Rationalism means I consider logic and reason to be more fundamental than scientific observation (i.e. true a-priori).
Ethical views: It's complicated (they can be found in my book).
Axiological views: Panpsychist (the belief that souls / consciousness can potentially be anywhere). Alternatively: Life is sacred (so quit destroying the planet).
Metaphysical views: Dualist (the belief that both matter and souls exist and affect each other through free will and consciousness)
Political views: Libertarian (the belief that the government should prevent unfairness, and not do anything else). However, I don't usually relate to libertarian culture.
Sociological views: Humans aren't rational, and therefore their behaviour is impossible to predict and any claim made about their behaviour is meaningless.
Relationship status: Single.
About me:
What is "me"? By "me" do you mean that point of view from which experiences come, or do you mean the personality of the person who happens to be the subject of those experiences? If the former, then I say that "me" is one of the stronger arguments against materialism. If the latter, I don't believe in personalities.
About you:
I think you're all cool but I can't figure out why you act fake, why you call me up on the phone to try to get me to subscribe to credit cards, or why you're so, so wrong.
Birth year: 1982
Favourite Books:
"The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, and sequels, except "Mostly harmless"
Pretty much anything else by Douglas Adams
"Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
"How I became Stupid" by someone whose name I forget
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Anything by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, but especially the DarkSword Trilogy, the Death Gate Cycle, and DragonLance Chronicles & Legends (though moreso when I was a teenager)
Anything by Terry Goodkind - first book is Wizard's First Rule.
"The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis
Many things by R.A. Salvatore - starting with the Icewind Dale trilogy.
"Sense and Goodness without God" by Richard Carrier
"The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis
"The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis
"Mere Christianity" by C.S Lewis
Father Brown stories by G.K. Chesterton
"A Story of the Days to Come" by H.G. Wells
"The Man who was Thursday" by G.K. Chesterton
"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn
"His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman
"The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis
The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
"Amphibian" by Carla Gunn
"Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" by Tom Robbins
"The Free Lunch" by Spider Robinson
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling
"The Reason I Jump" by Naoki Higashida
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
"The Humans" by Matt Haig
"36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction" by Rebecca Goldstein
"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein (uncut version)
"The Princess Bride" abridgement by William Goldman
"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson
The Callahan series by Spider Robinson
"Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card
"Xenocide" by Orson Scott Card
"Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" by David Sedaris
"Very Bad Deaths" by Spider Robinson
Favourite Movies:
Ace Ventura 1 and 2
The Mask
Liar Liar
Mafia!
The Princess Bride
Simon Birch
Run Lola Run (a strange movie, give it about half an hour before giving up on it)
Lord of the Rings (all 3)
Bruce Almighty
Office Space
The Matrix
Pay it Forward
A Beautiful Mind
Mr Deeds
V for Vendetta
Napolean Dynamite
Pirates of the Carribean
Millions
Saved!
Radio
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Idiocracy
The Sixth Sense
Hackers
Princess Mononoke
Castle in the Sky
An Inconvenient Truth
Futurama: Bender's Big Score
The Golden Compass
Arsenic and Old Lace
Lars and the Real Girl
Monty Python's The Life of Brian
UHF
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Planet of the Apes
Terminator 2
Micmacs
Paul
District 9
The Croods
Harold and Maude
Frozen
Mrs. Doubtfire
Dogma
Frankenweenie
Willow
Guardians of the Galaxy
Meet the Robinsons
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Zootopia
Adventures in Babysitting
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
What We Did On Our Holiday
My Cousin Vinny
Ready Player One
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
Heathers
Don't Look Up
I Heart Huckabees
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Favourite TV shows:
MacGuyver
Death Note
Futurama
Simpsons
Mr. Bean
Fawlty Towers
Arrested Development
Firefly
The Big Bang Theory
IT Crowd
Sherlock
Doctor Who
The Black Adder
Freaks and Geeks
Scorpion
Merlin
Trigun
Parks and Recreation
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet
3rd Rock from the Sun
Brooklyn 99
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Red Dwarf
The Good Place
That 70s Show
The Orville
Star Trek Picard
Disenchantment
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Father Ted
Lucifer
The End of the F***ing World
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
The Umbrella Academy
Wednesday
That 90s Show
The Mandalorian
Young Sheldon
One Day At A Time
Schitt's Creek
Favourite Philosophical Works
"What Is It Like to Be A Bat?" by Thomas Nagel
"The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant
"Practice in Christianity" by Soren Kierkegaard
"Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals" by Immanuel Kant
"Pensees" by Blaise Pascal (though some of this is more like Pascal's blog than philosophy)
"The Four Loves" by C.S. Lewis
"The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis
"Existentialism Is a Humanism" by Jean-Paul Sartre
"On Vivisection" by C.S. Lewis
"Ishmael" and "My Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn
Favourite Board Games:
Things (Humour in a Box)
Battlestar Galactica
Dutch Blitz
Bohnanza
Attribute
Cranium
Axis and Allies
Abalone
Bausack (or Bandu)
Settlers of Catan
Stratego
Taboo
Crokinole
Spy Alley
Mao
Galaxy Trucker
Hive
Power Grid
Dominion
Game of Thrones
Castle Panic!
Android: Netrunner
Splendor
Telestrations
Evolution: Climate
Tyrants of the Underdark
Scruples
Spirit Island
Dungeons and Dragons
Terra Mystica
Eclipse
Root
A Few Acres of Snow
Favourite Multiplayer Video Games:
Super Mario Bros. Wii
Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
Mario Kart 64
Star Fox: Assault
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Pac Man Vs.
Ikaruga
Wii Play Tank Game
Pokemon Puzzle League
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Advance Wars
Worms: Armageddon
New Super Mario Bros
Just Dance (any)
Dance Dance Revolution
Battle for Wesnoth
Mario Bros. Battle Mode (either from Super Mario All-Stars or the Mario Advance series of games)
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2
Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Mario Kart 8
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Starcraft 2
Zero-K
Ironclad Tactics
Civilization V
Wargroove
Age of Empires 2
Super Mario 3D World
Super Mario Bros. U
Favourite Single player Video Games:
Final Fantasy Tactics
Advance Wars
Fire Emblem
Ogre Battle
Super Mario 3
Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
Donkey Kong Country
Mega Man Battle Network
Zelda (most)
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy V, VI and IX
Mario RPG
Paper Mario
Super Paper Mario
Brain Lord
Mega Man (most)
Earthbound
Super Metroid
Metroid: Zero Mission
Star Fox 64
Star Fox Assault
Plants vs. Zombies
Battle for Wesnoth
Super Mario Maker
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2
Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Age of Empires 2
Zero-K
Undertale
Ironclad Tactics
FTL: Faster than Light
Into the Breach
Wargroove
Civilization V
Deltarune
Valkyria Chronicles
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (Disgaea PC)
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Triangle Strategy
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Favourite Quotes:
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done'; and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" - C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)
"You spoony bard!" - Tellah to Edward in the Super NES version of Final Fantasy 4 (then called FF2)
"'I will begin to worry about my philosophy', said Mr. Street, 'when Mr. Chesterton has given us his.' It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation." - G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy), who wrote about 80 books during his life
"People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad." - G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
"And, in fact, we find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment. Because of this there arises in many persons, if only they are candid enough to admit it, a certain degree of misology, i.e. hatred of reason." - Immanuel Kant (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals)
"Surely every man walks to and fro--like a shadow in a pantomime; surely for futility and emptiness he is in turmoil" - Psalm 39:6 (Amplified Bible)
"You cannot serve both God and Money." - Jesus (Matthew 6:24)
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" - Matthew 5:44
"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" - Romans 12:2
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried." - G.K. Chesterton
"The explosion was now officially designated an 'Act of God'. But, thought Dirk, what god? And why?" - Douglas Adams (The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul)
"If you were not quite yourself when you climbed the wall last night ... then who were you, - and why?" - Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)
"Don't do anything, and you'll be a good dog." - Snoopy in a Peanuts comic by Charles Shultz
"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity." - Thomas Huxley
"Atheism is an urban phenomenon." - Bernard Boyd
Me: "Bye Robbie, thanks for being born."
Robbie: "Thanks, I'll try to do it again sometime."
[It's funnier if you're religious.]
"Your man has become accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false' but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous - that is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about." - C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
"Professor Openshaw always lost his temper, with a loud bang, if anybody called him a spiritualist; or a believer in spiritualism. This, however, did not exhaust his explosive elements; for he also lost his temper if anybody called him a disbeliever in spiritualism ... But woe to the simple-minded and innocent materialist ... who, presuming on this narrative tendency, should advance the thesis that ghosts were against the laws of nature, or that such things were only old superstitions ... Him would the professor, suddenly reversing all his scientific batteries, sweep from the field with a cannonade of unquestionable cases and unexplained phenomenon, of which the wretched rationalist had never heard in his life, giving all the dates and details, stating all the attempted and abandoned natural explanations; stating everything, indeed, except whether he, John Oliver Openshaw, did or did not believe in spirits; and that neither spiritualist nor materialist could ever boast of finding out." - G.K. Chesterton (The Blast of the Book)
"I foresee two possibilities. One -- coming face-to-face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock, and she'd simply pass out, or two -- the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!" - Back to the Future 2
"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane." - Philip K. Dick
"There are three ways to tell the true nature of a person.
1) Live with them for a year.
2) Hold them, upside down and by the legs, over an active volcano.
3) Read their Perl code." - Gaelan
"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue." - G.K. Chesterton
"I feel it is my bounden duty to point out that 100 is *not* a "round" number. It is, however, a SQUARE number." - some girl named Sarah
A young man was taking his final exam at the police academy when he reached the following question:
You are on patrol downtown when an explosion occurs in a gas main in a nearby street. On investigation you find that a large hole has been blown in the sidewalk and there is an overturned van lying nearby. Inside the van there is a strong smell of alcohol. Both occupants--a man and a woman--are injured. You recognize the woman as the wife of the Chief of Police, who is away at a conference. A driver stops to offer you assistance and you realize that he is a man who is wanted for armed robbery. Suddenly a man runs out of a nearby house, shouting that his wife is expecting a baby and that the shock of the explosion has made her go into labor. Another man is crying for help, having been blown into an adjacent canal by the explosion, and he cannot swim. Describe in a few words what actions you would take.
The police candidate thought for a moment, picked up his pen, and wrote: "I would take off my uniform and mingle with the crowd."
"In the only world they know, an endless prattling 'Jolly' replaces the intercourse of minds.... Talk, by all means; the more of it the better; unceasing cascades of the human voice; but not, please, a subject." - C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
"Do not do unto others as you would have others do unto you; they may have different taste." - George Bernard Shaw
"Without logic, reason is useless. With it, you can win arguments and alienate multitudes." - Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein (Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes)
"When a person at last understands the world as it truly is, they have but 2 appropriate responses to give it. To seek what meagre happiness can be found in transitory pleasures; or, in defiance, to give up their life in the hope of improving it. The one who is content with the world as it is is either a liar or insane." - me
"'After all, they were divinely commanded to "go forth, be fruitful, and multiply."'"
"'You mean their tribal antecedents were so commanded. Four thousand years ago. Before a person had to stand in line for an hour and a half just to get a whiff of fresh air. It's tough to say who's a greater threat to the world, an ambitious CEO with a big ad budget or a crafty cleric with an obsolete Bible verse.'" -Tom Robbins (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, pg 240)
"Well that's a semantically null sentence." - Sheldon from Big Bang Theory
"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." - Mark Twain
"Some people say the glass is half full, others say the glass is half empty. Adam says, 'Why did they make the glass twice as big as it needs to be?'" - my mom
"If we cannot be true to ourselves, then what is it in us that remains? If we cannot utter what we believe, then what is [life]? It is then a prison of the mind and soul." - my dad
"The automobile, from its humble start as a one-lunged horseless carriage, grew into a steel-bodied monster of over a hundred horsepower and capable of making more than a hundred miles an hour. They boiled over the countryside, like yeast in ferment. In 1955 it was estimated that there was a motor vehicle for every two persons in the United States.
"They contained the seeds of their own destruction. Eighty million steel juggernauts, operated by imperfect human beings at high speeds, are more destructive than war. In the same reference year the premiums paid for compulsory liability and property damage insurance by automobile owners exceeded in amount the sum paid that year to purchase automobiles. Safe driving campaigns were chronic phenomena, but were mere pious attempts to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. It was not physically possible to drive safely in those crowded metropolises. Pedestrians were sardonically divided into two classes, the quick, and the dead.
"But a pedestrian could be defined as a man who had found a place to park his car. The automobile made possible huge cities, then choked those same cities to death with their number."
-Robert Heinlein (The Roads Must Roll)
Favourite Music:
Genres: rock and gothic metal
Songs:
Meatloaf: Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire)
Meatloaf: Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back
Meatloaf: I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
Meatloaf: Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through
Meatloaf: Everything Louder Than Everything Else
Meatloaf: Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)
Amanda McBroom: The Rose (as long it's sung by someone with a voice other than Amanda McBroom's)
Casting Crowns: If We Are the Body
Casting Crowns: Who Am I
The Styx: Come Sail Away
The Styx: Mr. Roboto
Billy Joel: No Man's Land
Billy Joel: Blonde Over Blue
Billy Joel: My Life
Meatloaf: Alive
Meatloaf: Peel Out
The Styx: Lorelei
The Styx: Mademoiselle
Nightwish: Bye Bye Beautiful
Sweet: Wig Wam Bam
Avalon: Testify to Love
Jaylene Johnson: Wonder
Van Halen: Jump
Visions of Atlantis: Lemuria
Toto: Africa
One Direction: Up All Night
One Direction: One Thing
One Direction: What Makes You Beautiful
"Banana Bread" by Laura Genschorek
Favourite podcasts:
CBC's The Irrelevant Show
Philosophy Bites
Philosophize This!
Welcome to Night Vale
Beautiful Anonymous People
Stuff You Should Know
Favourite software:
-thunderbird (email reader)
-firefox (web browser)
-vim (programmer's text editor)
-latex (write formal papers in a markup language instead of a word processor)
-beamer (prepare slide presentations in latex)
-XUbuntu LiveCD (Linux distribution install CD that lets you use it while it's installing)
-bash (command line interpreter)
-Quicksilver (Mac program to start programs - Gnome Do is a passable replacement on Linux)
-dmenu (even better than Quicksilver)
-Bashpodder (Get podcasts automatically)
-make (For software development, specify how to build applications)
-grep (Searches for text in files)
-find (Searches for files)
-less (Views files)
-uBlock Origin (Web browser extension that blocks ads on the internet)
-Portage (Package management system for Gentoo Linux, which lets you download, compile and install a piece of software and all its dependencies with a single command)
-rawdog (RSS feed reader that generates an HTML file for a list of feeds)
-Shazam (Android app that tells you the name of a song by putting your phone near speakers that are playing the song)
-thunar (file manager)
-i3 (tiling window manager)
-Discord (voice / video calling)
-VLC (video player)
-GIMP (Drawing program)
-imagemagick (Image manipulation program)
-valgrind (Finds memory errors in, and profiles, code)
-syncthing (syncs files between devices without needing a server)
Favourite programming language:
I dislike every programming language I've ever used. My least hated is probably either C++ or D, but I've never used D so it's hard to tell. The philosophy of C++ almost exactly matches mine, but in terms of details it has many problems and annoyances, largely due to the requirement for backwards compatibility.
Favourite philosopher: C.S. Lewis
Favourite writer: G.K. Chesterton
Favourite comics: Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot, xkcd, The Oatmeal
Favourite operating system: Linux
Ikaruga stats:
Number of lives required to beat Easy mode: 15
Number of lives required to beat Normal mode: 51