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[[File:God and Adam.png|450px|frameless|center]] | [[File:God and Adam.png|450px|frameless|center]] | ||
}}[[Discourse on Intercourse]] is a well-meant though basically wrong-headed philosophical tract formulated by delusional librettist [[Otto Büchstein]] in the depths of dengue fever delirium in 1769. It immediately preceded — and some say influenced — his last, great unfinished play {{dsh}}. | }}[[Discourse on Intercourse]] is a well-meant though basically wrong-headed philosophical tract formulated by delusional librettist [[Otto Büchstein]] in the depths of dengue fever delirium in 1769. It immediately preceded — and some say influenced — his last, great unfinished play {{dsh}}. | ||
===Conference call epistemology=== | |||
Outraged by [[René Descartes]] [[Discourse on the Method|suggestion in 1637]] that the only indubitable thing in the universe was one’s own existence, [[Büchstein]] set out to deduce an entire multi-personal [[epistemology]] from the commercial inevitability of [[conference call]]s. | Outraged by [[René Descartes]] [[Discourse on the Method|suggestion in 1637]] that the only indubitable thing in the universe was one’s own existence, [[Büchstein]] set out to deduce an entire multi-personal [[epistemology]] from the commercial inevitability of [[conference call]]s. | ||
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This led {{buchstein}} to a dark place. Rather than simply rebutting [[Descartes]]’ assertion that there ''must'' be a God, by illustrating one was not necessary, [[Büchstein]] went further: “a universe in which [[conference call]]s necessarily exist,” he contended, “is logically inconsistent with the continued presence of an omniscient, benign, omnipotent deity”. He took this as an ''[[a priori]]'' proof of the ''non''-existence of God. | This led {{buchstein}} to a dark place. Rather than simply rebutting [[Descartes]]’ assertion that there ''must'' be a God, by illustrating one was not necessary, [[Büchstein]] went further: “a universe in which [[conference call]]s necessarily exist,” he contended, “is logically inconsistent with the continued presence of an omniscient, benign, omnipotent deity”. He took this as an ''[[a priori]]'' proof of the ''non''-existence of God. | ||
===There is no new paradox under the sun=== | |||
As he fell deeper into his Dengue-inflected hallucinations, [[Büchstein]] went the other way, skirting dangerously close to a sort of [[High modernism|high-modernist]] nihilism. | |||
“If [[determinism]] is true,” he reasoned, “then everything is already [[known]] — or may be extrapolated from what is already known — and is therefore, is ''[[Constructive|constructively]]'' known. Now since all as-yet undeliberated outcomes can be deduced without having to go through the bother of actually deliberating them, and as a conference call is in its very essence a “deliberating thing” — a ''res deliberans''<ref>{{Buchstein}} seems, ''ad hoc'', to have assigned conference calls their own ''[[a priori]]'' [[ontology]] or even personhood here. There is no plausible justification for this, other than that he was very, very ill.</ref> — and ''only'' a “deliberating thing”, it has no ontologically essential purpose and can be safely dispensed with.” | |||
This, for a moment, brought the delusional librettist great joy, notwithstanding the self-contradiction within the confines of a single, laboured, sentence. | |||
Therein, a [[paradox]], because by {{Buchstein}}’s own calculations, the deliberated outcomes that he inferred would produced by conference calls ''if they were held'' — were different from the outcomes that would be produced ''if the call was not actually held''. The holding, or not, of the conference call ''itself'' determines the outcome. | |||
That is, the information content of a deliberated outcome is path-dependent. If the conference call happens, it has one value. If it does not, but is merely modelled, it has another value. This is a sort of Schrödinger’s cat paradox of business meetings. [[Büchstein]] dubbed this the “[[substrate]]-ambivalence” of the conference call. It remained a genuine mystery until the impish German jurist [[Dilbert’s programme|Havid Dilbert]] proved experimentally that, whether you hold them or not, the informational value of any conference call — whether judged from the frame of reference of participants, observers, or that remainder of the outside world who remains blessedly oblivious to them — is the same: ''zero''. | |||
Thus, along with his sanity in that mosquito-infested Mandalayan asylum, {{Buchstein}}’s paradox melted away, only to be replaced by a deeper conundrum, with which Dilbert wrestled fecklessly for the rest of his life: | |||
''Why are there conference calls at all?'' | |||
===In popular culture=== | |||
Buchstein’s theosophical musings, wanting as they were, found expression in the developed drafts of his final, unfinished play, {{dsh}}. | Buchstein’s theosophical musings, wanting as they were, found expression in the developed drafts of his final, unfinished play, {{dsh}}. | ||
{{quote| | {{quote| | ||
{{Dsh conference calls}}<ref>{{buchstein}}, {{dsh}} III, i.</ref>}} | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
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{{c|Conference call}} | {{c|Conference call}} | ||
{{c|Paradox}} | |||
{{Ref}} | |||