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Discourse on Intercourse: Difference between revisions
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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 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 ''[[constructively]]'' known. ''Ergo'', as all forthcoming deliberated outcomes can therefore be deduced without having to go through the pain of actually deliberating about them, and as a conference call is of its 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> — a conference call has no ontologically essential purpose and can be dispensed with.” | |||
This was, for a while, a moment of great joy, notwithstanding he had contradicted himself within the confines of a single, somewhat laboured, sentence. | |||
But this contradiction, of course betrays a [[paradox]], because the original logical inference generated by the theory of the conference calls is different ''if the call is not actually held''. That is, the information content of a conference call is path-dependent. If the conference call happens, it has one value. If the it does not, it has another value. This is a sort of Schrödinger’s cat sort of affair. [[Büchstein]] dubbed this the “[[substrate]]-ambivalence” of the conference call. It remained a genuine mystery in management theory until the impish German jurist [[Havvid Dilbert]] established that, whether you hold them or not, the informational value of a conference call for participants, observers, and indeed that sainted remainder of the outside world who remain quite oblivious to them, is identical: that is to say, zero. | |||
Thus, {{Buchstein}}’s paradox melted away with his sanity in that Mandalayan asylum, only to be replaced by a more intractable conundrum which Dilbert had not solved at his untimely passing, and remains with us to this day: ''why are there conference calls at all?'' | |||
===In popular culture=== | ===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}}. | ||
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{{c|Conference call}} | {{c|Conference call}} | ||
{{c|Paradox}} | |||
{{Ref}} | {{Ref}} | ||