Episodes
Sunday Apr 14, 2019
Shorts - E17: Life is Meaningless
Sunday Apr 14, 2019
Sunday Apr 14, 2019
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 matter. Nothing does!!
-Ye olde Dawdlers
Sunday Apr 07, 2019
Shorts - E16: The Good Life
Sunday Apr 07, 2019
Sunday Apr 07, 2019
One way or many ways or any ways... Is there a recipe to live The Good Life?
Sunday Mar 31, 2019
Shorts - E15: Health
Sunday Mar 31, 2019
Sunday Mar 31, 2019
What's a healthy podcast release schedule? We sure don't know but are trying to figure it out!
Sunday Mar 24, 2019
Shorts - E14: Fairness
Sunday Mar 24, 2019
Sunday Mar 24, 2019
This week the Dawdlers talk about Fairness. Medieval fairs, County fairs...everything...
Sunday Mar 17, 2019
E29: Hustling Past the Graveyard - Ideation in the New Gilded Age
Sunday Mar 17, 2019
Sunday Mar 17, 2019
“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 episode the Dawdlers talk about the state of ideation in the world today and the possible undercurrents that are determining its low quality.
Pinch pennies, not yourself. You’re awake in this nightmare. We’re naming names, people!!
00:00:00 – Dawdlers dawdling
00:05:48 – Ideas are of low quality in a Gilded Age
00:10:47 – Framework I: Secular cycles // Gilded ages // Dawdlers & hustlers
00:33:12 – Framework II: Resources enrichment // Tolerated variation // Technology as a resource
00:47:17 – Elite overproduction & fragmentation // Billionaires today are like the ancient Greek gods
00:57:20 – The Intellectual Dark Web, billionaires, and conspiracy!! // Dogmatists are easily manipulated
Sunday Mar 10, 2019
E28: The Pleistocene - Part II
Sunday Mar 10, 2019
Sunday Mar 10, 2019
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 Toolmaking
00:47:03 – Control of Fire (and Its Effects)
01:16:06 – A Toolmaking Origin of Language
01:24:40 – Migrations
01:37:35 – Megafaunal Mass Extinctions
01:49:14 – The Holocene & Anthropocene (Lightin’ Rounds!)
Sunday Mar 03, 2019
E27: The Pleistocene - Part I
Sunday Mar 03, 2019
Sunday Mar 03, 2019
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, for fear of being alone in his appreciation of this topic) may say is the “boring part”. The next part, then, is the “exciting part” where we’ll go into (actual) human evolution, the megafuanal mass extinction, and the aftermath of our psychopathic devotion to world domination.
Bundle up, people! Yer about to face into some cold, hard facts!
00:02:36 – Introduction to the topic
00:06:05 – Geological time primer
00:16:09 – The physical environment
00:47:25 – Pleistocene ecology and evolution
Sunday Feb 24, 2019
Shorts - E13: The Future
Sunday Feb 24, 2019
Sunday Feb 24, 2019
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 always make you feel bad about yourself.
Or maybe you're gonna watch a movie in 5 minutes and you're excited because you've heard it's good and it's been a while since you saw a good one.
In all these cases you think you are in the future. But can you be IN the future? What is the future anyways? Tune in and see what we Dawdlers think!
Wednesday Feb 20, 2019
Shorts - E12: Scarcity
Wednesday Feb 20, 2019
Wednesday Feb 20, 2019
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!!
Sunday Feb 17, 2019
E26: Hofstadter's Scrumptious Edibles - Analogy as the Core of Cognition
Sunday Feb 17, 2019
Sunday Feb 17, 2019
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 – Analogy and category // Category, concept, and classification
00:32:22 – Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian styles
00:37:02 – What makes all “A’s” the “same”? // Conceptual skeletons at the gist level
00:43:26 – Ryan derails the discussion (homology)
00:50:06 – A test of analogies (?) // Aesthetics in analogy-making // Analogy-making is quasi-arbitrary
01:03:22 – Ryan derails the discussion once more (homology again)
01:15:31 – Influences on encoding // Organs of perception, etc. // A “biology” of convenience
01:27:44 – Ryan’s natural history of Doug’s abstractions on cognition
01:34:35 – Intelligence via analogy-making
01:39:01 – Einstein’s analogical quantum leap