Dawdler’s Classic is back! In this episode we discuss margin haunting in light of the Decoding the Gurus "gurometer." Then we tour a couple frameworks Ryan has come up with for margin haunting. Plus we unveil a neologism you will want rush out right away and use in the world as soon as you learn it! Yes! HAVE A GREAT DAY -Dawds 00:03:23 - Evaluatio…

Episode never sent. This time we release upon the world...The World. Back when we took a year long break without telling anyone we had some recordings we never did anything with. Here is one of these recordings. Harland and Ryan have different styles of thinking about things and that includes "everything." So enjoy this brief excursion into our pas…

Oh, the philosophical times they are a-changin'!! "But HOW!?" you ask. With the seasons... And you thought it was all footnotes. Silly philosopher...Door The Dawdler‘s Philosophy

Preeeetty self-explanatory this time. Ryan goes over 10 things he hates, doesn't like, despises, etc., in nonfiction books. Harland does his best to disagree. Next episode: 10 things Ryan hates about devil's advocacy! Jk. -Dawds #1 Maps & Legends - Chapter Maps #2 Show, Don't Tell, Nonfiction-style #3 Style & Substance - Epigraphs #4 In The End - F…

Whoo boy! Ryan is back in the swing of things with his kids in school and sports and ballet and covid and everyone's FREAKIN OUT! Harland is on a journey through the red states lookin' for a poker game or two. Apparently, Austin is nice...and hot. But they're back with your best interests in mind. Except there is no "mind" and they don't know what …

"Make a clear concise description of your podcast" they advise for this input. Umm... good luck with that.Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Another letter. Another obsessive and compulsive repeating of oneself over and over again. Ryan replies to Harland's reply because he can't help but indulge in his thoughts and justifications. Maybe Ryan misses the point. Maybe he's on point. Tune in to find out!Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

No one needed this. Few people wanted it. But here it is, world. Basically, we're standing near an on-ramp to the infosphere holding a black markered cardboard sign which reads, "Will podcast for beer - God jest you".Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Here I am, never-minding my own business when I stub my toe on a liter litter bottle full of semantics. Well how's about that?! It's from my old buddy old pal Sci-Guy Ry-- what a nice surprise! I should really not Dawdle too long and get back to him, lest remain least on the list of priorities! Feel free to listen in, dear old friends.…

We Dawdlers are as advertised. But we're back. Don't get all excited. In this new kind of episode Ryan Writes Harland a "letter." Will Harland write back?Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

The value of history is that one has the chance to make sense of their present circumstances. How did we get to now? Can we come up with the best solutions to our problems if we think we understand how those problems arose in the first place? Fingers crossed. In 1959, author and scientist, C.P. Snow, gave a lecture on what he saw as a problem in th…

What is a dream? How do we come to form “cherished aspirations” as one dictionary put it? Why do we bother? And how can such aspirations be American? How can such aspirations be shared widely? Equality, egalitarianism, opportunity. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For whom do these bells toll? Is it a good dream? And does one “have to b…

This episode is slightly different, in that it is our first attempt at recording while doing a Live Stream! Sounds about the same I reckon. But we're excited anyway. An analysis of Thomas Nagel's 1974 paper "What is it Like to Be a Bat?", which initiated "decades of confusion" in the philosophy of mind literature, and gave us the phrase still in us…

After another mammoth Dawdle, the Dawdlers finally return to the Margins seeking specters, and find this time the anti-improvement, anti-guru, self-improvement guru Alan Watts. They consider some of Mr. Watts' most controversial opinions with oodles of juicy quotes. As is the nature of considering the centrality / marginality of thinkers, many gues…

The thigh-ly anticipated second half of the Richard Rorty Dawdle. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Part II!Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Can’t we all just get along and get awards for attendance? Or not? Your science is not better than my poetry! This week we talk about Richard Rorty’s “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”. In Part 1 of this topic (WHAT!?) there are plenty of misgivings, mischaracterizations, and misunderstandings along the way. But we keep retuning to this framewor…

Again, we return to “The Great Filter”. Ryan is obsessed! This time, Ryan, like millions before him—millions!—has a solution to Fermi’s Paradox and “The Great Silence”. It’s “The Great Server”! Yaaaaaaay! Bury those ear buds deep in your ears! It’s about to get virtual! -“The Dawdlers”Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Man does not live by bread alone. He also lives with social anxiety and is a bit of a control freak. These neuroses fuel him too. Oh, and lies. This is also critical. Lies must be told. How else can you get people to do shit you don’t want to? In this episode you will be treated to a Pre-Covid discussion had back in December of 2019 that these Dawd…

Still getting our footing here at Dawdler’s HQ. Hence this klunky transition back we’ve been doing since we dropped out after American Thanksgiving. This episode is a long short. Not much structure like a typical long episode, but it is what it is, right? This time we use a twitter thread Ryan saw that raised some flags for him. It’s a thread discu…

Intent or accident? That is the question. No good deed goes unpunished! But in what world is that!? One where shit is just banging together towards a blah entropic state or one with biased negentropic filters that favor the hustlers? This week the Dawdlers discuss the notions of luck and karma and the preference for inhabiting systems—especially so…

Take yer stinkin’ proteins off me you damn, dirty microbe! This time Harland asks the question: Is there any way for us provincial primates—with all our adaptations for dealing with smaller scales—to address planetary-sized problems? We discuss from there topics ranging along the lines of logistics, motivational strategies, and hopelessness and hel…

Stay in yer lane, puny pedants!! This time the Dawdlers ponder the question: What is preferable, being a pedant or a magister? Tune in to find out which! Then celebrate by doing the ma-corona! [moves: go to beach, dig hole in sand, stick head in]Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Longest. Dawdle. Yet. But we come back to you now at the turn of the tide. This time Ryan asks a question and Harland gets it wrong (of course). But we're ok. Are YOU ok? Let's talk about how the world will end then, shall we?Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Tastes like chicken! What does? Dinosaurs… Happy Harrahdays, -DawdlersDoor The Dawdler's Philosophy

Metaphysical outlaws? Does our universe operate according to some set or other of fixed, eternal rules? Enforced by whom/what? Could these "laws" themselves "evolve"? This week the Dawdlers consider some lawlike generalizations from Alfred North Whitehead's book Adventures of Ideas where he presents a quadruple of suggestions for how "laws" might f…

What makes humans special? Is it language? Culture? Throwing? Semiotics? Impossible burgers? Ryan thinks it’s the extent to which we combine ("meat", cheese, bun - see!?). In this episode we Dawdlers discuss this in this “short long” and will perhaps revisit it again sometime. Join hands and feel our infinite combinatorial power, people! -The Dawdl…

To be or not to be, that’s the question, isn’t it? In this episode, we Dawdlers discuss Jacques Derrida’s idea “Hauntology.” Not an easy philosopher to understand, we do our best to work out what spooks a Frenchman. In the end, this was but a first foray into the thoughts of an intellect that dealt in as much enigma as he did in misunderstanding. H…

In this episode Harland engages in some more of that pesky normative semantics and proposes a new definition of the word 'definition' (n): a paraphrastic replacement function. Huh? Well then he defines all those words too! The primary intent is to provide a pragmatically, anthropologically useful interpretation of current usage while not relying on…

Fnord. This week the Dawdler's dip a toe into the wild and wacky world of parody religion and spread a few memes and participate in their small way to the Pan-Pontification Project. Duck! Here comes a golden apple, thrown into our little party. Let's not fight over it, k? ~The Dawds The Principia Discordia Online: https://principiadiscordia.com/boo…

Do we need to explain to you what breathing is? It's obvious. The evidence is in the doing. Or is it? In this Short, we discuss Harland's disdain for the phrase and its strange loopiness. Song: Can't Get Used To Losing You Artist: Andy WilliamsDoor The Dawdler's Philosophy

A first for the Dawdlers, they speak to a third person. No longer are they experiencing what it’s like to be a duo. Keith Frankish is here to tell them their duality is but a mere illusion and he is the proof! Something like that. Enjoy their conversation with Dr. Frankish as Harland and Keith plumb the depths of their degrees of eliminitivism on c…

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose… Been a bit, but the Dawdlers are back. And, yes, things change but we’re still the same ol’ Dawdlers. Yer welcome. This week enjoy our exploration of some mind bending philosophical musings from philosopher Nelson Goodman. Ryan thinks a scientific orientation can help. Harland thinks philosophy can find mor…

“To remain the same in function, animals must change their form.” - Stephen Jay Gould, 1979 Gould wrote the quote above a couple times in different articles. Ryan likes it because he thinks it can apply to systems in general. Thus, to remain the same in function, systems should change their structure provided there are changes in their throughput. …

In this Short the Dawdlers play a game. Everyone loses. The end.Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Times change and the recent past can sometimes become obsolete as the gaze of the mainstream world focuses on its new moment. But it wasn’t long ago when Richard Dawkins was calling for “militant atheism” and Dubya Bush stood on an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished”. Heck, there was a time when the 90’s did a col…

Everything is unique, yet almost everything is ignored. Herein may lie the crux of history as we fashion it for our purposes. Repeatability is a most productive bias.Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Life may be meaningless, but is it hopeless? This week the Dawdlers do a little Short on depression. Don't?...enjoy this?Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

This week the Dawdler's take a step back from the previous weeks and dig down behind to examine an example of a general conceptual framework for thinking about systems, identity, and conflict - evolution, memes, and perspectivism; while they examine Anatol Rapoport's 1974 book Conflict in Man-Made Environment.…

There’s a poem by Portia Nelson called “There’s a hole in my sidewalk”. In it, she keeps going down the street, falls in the hole in the sidewalk, and struggles to get out. The poem is about repeating patterns that ultimately hurt you. The punchline? Walk down another street. In this episode, we Dawds discuss sociopolitical revolutions and the effe…

Who's interested in current events!? This week, the Dawdlers talk about the Slavoj Zizek/Jordan B. Peterson "debate": Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism. ...and there's not much else to say! So, declaw your lobsters and have a listen!Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Do you laugh in the face of the abyss? Or do you sob uncontrollably? Either way, it doesn't matter you tiny speck of nothing! In this Short, the Dawdlers use Thomas Nagel's 1971 paper "The Absurd" as a guide for a discussion of the meaning of life (or something like that). Enjoy the discussion or cry yourself to sleep while listening. It doesn't ma…

One way or many ways or any ways... Is there a recipe to live The Good Life?Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

What's a healthy podcast release schedule? We sure don't know but are trying to figure it out!Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

This week the Dawdlers talk about Fairness. Medieval fairs, County fairs...everything...Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

“If you want new ideas, read old books.” -Ivan Pavlov This was the sentiment Ryan witnessed at an evolution conference a few years back. On the one hand, it is a condemnation of the state of originality in science. And, on the other, it is a commendation of its resourcefulness. But why the need for such resourcefulness? What’s the problem? In this …

Back with Part II of The Pleistocene, Ryan blathers on as H-dog harnesses a mega-punnage. This is the exciting part so are you not excited!? Anyway, enjoy the data dump. Yer welcome. “The” Dawdler’s 00:04:27 – Housekeeping (Sammy Harris-style) 00:17:06 – The Epistemological State of Human Prehistory 00:30:14 – Hominine Lineages 00:36:21 – Stone Too…

Finally!! Ryan gets to talk about the Pleistocene—the epoch in which a new ice age began and we sapiens evolved…into incredible narcissists the likes of which the world has never seen. Two things: In this episode 1) Ryan nerds out while Harland lends intermittent support and 2) this is the first part of a two part series some (specifically Ryan, fo…

If you've got a 401k you might think you have comfort that awaits you in 20-30 years. You might consider yourself able to live without working, seeing yourself eating simple meals and meeting friends on easy adventures without a thought toward responsibility. Or maybe you have a dentist appointment tomorrow and you hate the dentist because they alw…

How much do you really want something? Is it worth the price? Who decides you want it anyway? In this Dawdlers Short, we explore our thoughts on scarcity. And to commemorate this topic, it will only be available for 100,000 days so get it while it lasts!!Door The Dawdler's Philosophy

Does A = A or not!? Or is it just approximate? Or none of it… We Dawdlers take a dip into the book Surfaces and Essences by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander on the significance of analogy-making in thinking. 00:04:40 – The book itself 00:14:30 – The man himself // Form and content 00:18:06 – The form of the content // The main thesis 00:25:15…