Comments | hipnessmolecule: A kind of self-reference

hipnessmolecule

A kind of self-reference

Aug 10, 2005 03:15

This idea had been kicking around for quite some time, and surely not just with me, but it's become more compelling over the last week or two ( Read more... )

Comments 10

Indirect Proof hipnessmolecule August 10 2005, 08:39:49 UTC

This is related to the mathematical method of indirect proof, sometimes called reductio ad absurdum, where you assume something and from teasing out its consequences you discover a contradiction, thereby disproving the assumption. An example is the very short proof that there is an infinite number of prime numbers. (Assume that the number of primes is not infinite. Then there is a largest one. But if you multiply all the primes and then add one, don't you get a new, larger prime? After all, it can't be divided evenly by any of the primes in our list; you'd always get a remainder of 1.)

So Freud was a Fraud? anonymous August 10 2005, 15:51:14 UTC

So Freud unconsciously developed his Oedipus Complex theory in order to suggest to his mother that she should sleep with him?

Re: So Freud was a Fraud? hipnessmolecule August 10 2005, 15:54:00 UTC

Charles Mingus wrote a piece called "All The Things You Could Be Right Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother".

Freud's mother was apparently a real hottie.

Re: So Freud was a Fraud? anonymous August 11 2005, 07:48:46 UTC

You said "Freud's mother". Did you mean his wife?

Wife or Mother...? hipnessmolecule August 11 2005, 08:08:32 UTC

If you apply Feud's method to his own work, do you find that it makes any difference if I say "wife" or "mother"?

And to apply Hipnessmoleculean method, does the use of '"' above or not make a difference? (By "say" I mean "write" or "note".)

(Notice the Feudian slip in the first line! The use of the same word in the previous sentence was deliberate, but it wasn't in the first line.)

Thread 5

This idea... hipnessmolecule August 11 2005, 08:07:09 UTC

...is quite big, and very open-ended, with a lot of ripe possibilities. Even just going over Freud could be a full-time task, let alone getting into the really meaty parts. I'll have to step back and chew up what I can bite off.

Hmmmm lyttlefyre August 12 2005, 01:32:35 UTC

One of these days I'm going to actually NOT be so tired that I can't think straight, and come up with an idea for this. Really I am. I swear. :-) I wonder if Marx, Freud, etc were ever self-aware and objective enough to do this sort of analysis. On a semi-related note, I saw the movie "Kinsey" the other week - as depicted in the movie, Kinsey certainly did this. Dreadful movie, by the way, despite Liam Neeson, whom I usually adore.

Re: Hmmmm hipnessmolecule August 12 2005, 23:00:37 UTC

I'm just glad that someone else is here, coherent or not. That [coherence] will come, eventually

Self reference? hipnessmolecule August 12 2005, 22:58:44 UTC

I realized that a better term would be "self-application", though this conjures up images of someone filling out their own application form, or someone applying paint to themselves.

There is an old phrase, "Hoist with his own petard". And so "self-application" could also mean "painted with their own brush".