Philosophy Bro

No, there’s no such thing as an “opposite synapse,” it’s not like you have “smily the smiley neuron” and “frowny the frowny neuron” and they’re, like, counterbalancing or some shit. That’s why some people can be happy, and they’re just happy. There’s no crash lurking around the corner.

The reason you’ve found nothing on this is because you’re so far off base that your inquiry doesn’t even connect to existing knowledge. No one can answer that question because it’s wrong on so many levels, like the question itself makes so little sense, that we’d have to start way back at how synapses even work.I’m not just being a dick, though I am unquestionably being glib and maybe dickish, but there’s a point here: don’t start with trying to research whatever pet theory you have. Or, if you’re not finding anything on your pet theory, start going even more basic. If Googling (or do you Bing? I’ll bet you fucking Bing, don’t you) “synapses zero sum” doesn’t turn up anything, try, just, “synapses.” Right? Like, maybe no one is talking about these things in the way you’re thinking about them, but surely someone is talking about emotions and synapses, right? So start there. Start with figuring out how those things work generally, and that’ll make it easier for you to discover whether they work the way you think they do. The worst case scenario is now you know a lot more about synapses and you can ask your question more clearly. Looking around on your topic and finding nothing should make you look around on supporting topics. Maybe the reason no one has answered your question is because it hasn’t been discovered yet, but if you want to be the one to answer it, you’ll have to know a whole fucking lot about all the related subject material.

But asking me is weird! I do philosophy, and you’re asking a question that has at least one dependency in, like, biology. I’m fucking terrible at biology!

Okay since you asked anonymously the only way I can answer is publicly, so here goes:

I’ve worked really hard on this book for two years now (I rewrote the entire fucking thing from the ground up at least once) and I’m really proud of it. I took this pile of absolute word-garbage:

SEVERAL years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences.  

And turned it into this:

what if I’m wrong about something even more important than Spring Break? That would be catastrophic. I built the foundations of my beliefs when I was, what, a kid? Kids are idiots. If I’m stuck on this gorgeous beach all day nursing a hangover like an asshole, I might as well tear down my beliefs and start totally from scratch so shit like this doesn’t happen again. This time I’ll make sure I have a firm, solid foundation for my beliefs; once I’m sure I have no false beliefs, I can safely build safely upward.

You can download and read the rest of my first chapter here; I hope you’ll agree it’s a vast improvement on the most frequently-used English translation.

I’m working with very cool and talented people on it! Look at how good these design drafts look: 

oh shit and then when you open it up:

The original, side-by-side with my version.

I think that $15+shipping is a really fair price, I’m super excited to get this thing into your hands, and I hope you’ll consider supporting it! A successful launch of this book will allow me to keep writing great summaries of great works and great answers to your varying-levels-of-stupid questions.

This is a really good example ofwhat we might call a "naïve" theory -- it's like "this prettysimple claim is true and there's not much more to it." Other naïvetheories include "naïve empiricism," where the naïve claim is "empiricismis the only way to know shit, thanks for playing let's all go home now." 

Naïve theories typically fallapart when you look even a little bit closer; in fact, usually whenphilosophers talk about naïve theories they're saying "Oh, you might thinkit's this easy but look, this fucking thing is full of holes and is ultimatelygarbage, let's come up with a more nuanced version of this idea." Soagain, rarely is a philosopher endorsing naïve empiricism; usually we'relike "oh, sure, you can't just assume that empiricism is the way to go,but let's see if we can come up with a more sophisticated version." 

Anyway, what I'm trying to say,anon, is that your idea basically just crumbles to shit when you really getinto it, but it's not necessarily a bad idea. It might be a springboardinto something deeper, or it might be totally unworkable. This is exactly thesort of idea that studying philosophy can help you refine! 

To start with, this theory isvague as hell. I mean, "zero sum" means something really specific-- it means that the only way for anyone to gain is for someone else tolose. But what the fuck does it even mean to have an increase or a decreasein emotion? You gave an example of happiness, but there'sthis whole range of emotions besides happiness/sadness. 

Like let's say I'm fucking pissedat my bro. Is anger a positive or a negative emotion? It seemsnegative, but that means that if I get angry, someone else has to getsome other positive emotion. But that doesn't have to happen, right? When onebro gets pissed at someone, usually that person get pissed right back.Or maybe they feel uncomfortable (definitely a negative emotion, right?!) orafraid or disdainful, but it seems like negative emotions tend togenerate other negative emotions. Sometimes when you get pissedoff it's because someone wanted to get a rise out of you, so maybe there"satisfaction" and "anger" cancel out, but"sometimes shit goes one way and sometimes shit goes another" isn'tnot the same as "this entire system is zero sum." 

So the naïve claim  -- emotions are zero sum -- is, as naïvetheories often are, way too fucking strong. It just covers way too muchterritory and it's too easy to disprove. 

So maybe we could fix it bysaying that happiness is zero-sum "in our society," which is aweaker claim, still a little vague, and probably still too strong. Why in thefuck should we think that happiness is zero-sum? Again, yeah, sometimes whenyou're happy it's because of something that makes someone else sad, but the claimyou're making is way stronger -- because of how competitive "oursociety" is, it's always zero sum. But our society isn't socompetitive that everything is a trade-off: consider when I tell a funnyjoke and all my friends are suddenly happier? Where is the correspondingdecrease? Maybe some people are like "aw fuck I wish I'd thought ofthat, I hate that I'm not as clever as he is" because it's true, I'm veryclever, but do people wish they'd thought of my joke so much that it exactlycounterbalances how much they enjoyed it? 

So maybe you want to say that incertain competitive contexts, emotions/happiness are zero-sum, andthen later we can argue how common those contexts are in "oursociety." Like I've heard people say that the Olympic village where athletesstay during the Olympics is actually like the saddest place on the planet,because for every gold medal winner a shitload of people did not winanything, at all, whatsoever. It's going to be hard to argue that it's societywide, but at least you have contexts to use your theory. SO maybe now we'reclosing in on something workable. 

Except that you also needsome explanation of how emotions connect to competition. We're reallycompetitive, but maybe we're competitive in a way that values excellence ratherthan just victory. Like if ten people run a race and four of thembreak the existing world record, are we sure the three of them that didn't alsowin are bummed? This seems like an empirical question, OH SHIT whichreminds me: 

Don't make sweeping claims aboutshit we can look out and test. Like, you're telling me everyone sad when theylose but that’s a huge generalization that's probably true butfucking who can say? There are a lot of ways it might be false, like if peoplevalue competition for its own sake, and are happy to lose but perform well. 

It might just be that what you'reobserving is "when some people win, other people lose, and people wouldrather win than lose" which isn't really a profound or difficultobservation. Or maybe you're noticing that "when resources are limited butour wants are unlimited, some people get what they want and other people don'tget what they want" which is also probably true, but doesn't mean thatit's zero-sum (for more on that read literally any intro to economicsbook). 

So notice the difference between formallyincrease and intuitively unrelated. That's the whole paradox: if wewant to know whether ravens are black, it seems like we shouldn't give ashit about non-black non-ravens, but it actually does matter in aformal, technical sense. 

So every time you see a raventhat turns out to be black, it counts as a little more evidence for"all ravens are black." It doesn't prove that all ravens areblack, of course, but it helps. If you saw one raven, and it happened tobe black, you'd be like "huh, okay, so black is one color a raven can be,I guess" and then you see like ten more ravens and they're all blackand you're like "okay so black is pretty common for ravens" and thenon your world travels you see like a thousand more ravens and every single oneof them is black and so now it's like "Look, a raven, and sure enough,it's black. Holy shit, I'm pretty sure just all ravens are black. If there werenon-black ravens, surely I'd have seen one of them by now, right?" 

Okay, so far so good. As soon asyou saw a non-black raven, the whole idea would be out the window, but untilthat happens, seeing black ravens makes it easier to believe that all ravensare black. 

But here's the thing: "Allravens are black" is logically equivalent to "All non-blackthings are non-ravens." Which makes sense, right? If all ravens are black,and you see something that isn't black, you've gotta be like "Well,if that thing is a raven, it would have to be black, since all ravensare black. But it's non-black, so it must be not a raven after all. Allnon-black things are non-ravens." 

Now, is it true that everynon-black thing is also a non-raven? Well, look around you. I'll bet you see aton of shit that isn't black, right? Is any of it a raven? Or is itmostly normal shit like furniture, food, empty Solo cups, clothes? You see onenon-black thing that isn't a raven, maybe you're like "Okay, so some shitthat isn't black is also not a raven." But it keeps happening! "There'sa non-black thing and, I'll be damned, it's also not a raven. I'm starting tothink that all non-black shit is non-raven." 

And because "all non-blackthings are non-ravens" is logically equivalent with "all ravens areblack," the same thing would falsify it: if we saw a non-black thing and holyshit it IS a raven! Well, I guess that's out the window. 

Carl Hempel, who first proposedthe Raven paradox, thought that it was pretty easy to explain: it doesmatter that all non-black things are non-ravens, but we don't give a shit aboutit because we have a bunch of background information already and so we don'tbother to give a shit. 

The other thing is, there are somany non-black non-ravens, that maybe each one only does a teeny-tinybit to help prove that all ravens are black, so little you never notice. 

I don’t know anything about Winncott/Klein, and I’ve never really read much Lacan seriously, so I’m not directly familiar with psychoanalysis and you shouldn’t take my comments very seriously, but I’ve never heard anyone who self-described as a Lacanian say anything about him or in his defense that didn’t make my eyes pop out of my skull and roll around like pigs in shit.Part of the reason I’ve read almost no Lacan is no one has ever, ever given me any reason to even start to engage with what seems like insane obscurantism. Lacan is hard to read and I’ve had Lacanians tell me “well it’s SUPPOSED to be hard to read, that’s where it gets its value” and last time someone said that to me I went into a fugue state and beat them to death with the collected works of Quine?

And I don’t feel like I’m missing a lot. Like I’ve never been made to feel the loss of Lacan.I’ve never read any piece of philosophy that drew on psychoanalysis and thought “This was for sure a better use of my time than getting kicked in the nuts.” So, what, I can’t read Zizek? I’m managing.

Well, “unarguably wrong” tends not to survive peer review, but of contemporary philosophers I’d say David K Lewis was the headscratchingest, and the thing is Lewis fucking knew it. He ate that shit up. An entire section of his magnum opus, On The Plurality of Worlds, was called “The Incredulous Stare” and his point was “You think I don’t know this sounds fucking stupid? But find a flaw in the argument, I fucking dare you.”

Wittgenstein's Lion refers toparagraph 327 from Philosophical Investigations: which I think we canall agree is super cryptic even for an Austrian enigma likeWittgenstein. How romantic!

It's the sort of thing thatphilosophers just fucking looooove to spill ink over. Like, books get writtenabout it and shit. So, I can give you a rough overview, but I don't think I'mgoing to comprehensively solve the problem or anything.

But I think there's a standardinterpretation I can give you.

This comes in the middle of along section where he's talking about whether we can know the thoughtsof others or not. Lots of philosophers were (and still are!) concerned with theidea of these inner states, where it's like "Oh man what's on yourmind is a secret!" and Wittgenstein was saying something like "What?No it's not, you can frequently guess what someone is thinking based on howthey're acting and what you'd expect them to say."

Like let's say your boy is at thekeg and he's pumping the handle really aggressively and then thumbing thespout, but it's just sort of sputtering foam, and he looks pissed. You knowwhat he's thinking, right? He's probably not thinking "wait was it Monetor Manet who did mostly portraits?" or "It's hard to keep myrisk aversion from having an outsized impact on how I evaluate delicategeopolitical scenarios, or even which scenarios I think of as 'delicate'"or even "Man, I sure hope the Cavs cover the spread tonight."He's thinking "Goddammit the fucking keg is empty already, are youshitting me," and you know that just from seeing how he acts in thisreally familiar context.

That's a really normal partinteracting with other people, having a sense of what they're thinking based onhow they're acting, and according to Wittgenstein it's an important part of ourability to communicate and co-exist. After all, so much of communication iswhat goes understood but not said.  So when your roommate of two years is like"hey we're almost out of fresh fruits and vegetables," you know frompast experience and your close friendship that what he's really saying is"We're real low on whiskey and you've got the fake ID, I need you to takecare of that."  There doesn't haveto be anything mysterious about inner thought.

On the other hand, there arepeople we can't get a good sense of, and when that happens, it'sactually kinda weird, right? No matter how much time you spend with them you'realways like "it has been six months and I still have no idea whatto talk to him about. I tried to make a joke about that thing I know he lovesand he just right through me like he was plotting my death? Not even a weakchuckle. I can never tell what that dude is thinking." There, you'rehaving trouble communicating even though you're speaking the samelanguage, and isn't that what language is for? But language is informed bya culture and we constantly rely on shared conventions and unspokenrules and so on.

So Wittgenstein goes, "I'mnot saying it's always easy to tell what someone is thinking. We've all metsomeone who makes us think, 'Oh, that guy is a total mystery' but it's notbecause we can't literally read minds; it's just that that persondoesn't really seem to conform to our shared conventions or something. In thatsituation, even when we DO understand the words they're saying, it's hard toknow what they're saying."

And then comes the weird part,which is just such classic Wittgenstein. He's like "I mean, what if LIONScould talk? We'd have no fucking clue how to relate to them." As far as Ican tell, what he's saying is: even if we spoke the same language as a lion,would we know what the fuck he's saying? If a lion was like "Hey Ilike your scent" you'd be like "Wait, what? Is he saying he likes mycologne or maybe he's about to eat me and I should run or do lions use scent tochallenge each other? Maybe he's saying I smell afraid and so he knows I'm notgoing to challenge him, or maybe it's just a general compliment thatlions give each other? What the FUCK is going on right now." But it'dprobably be even worse than that. Lions are so fucking different than weare. The reason we can't talk to animals isn't a language barrier, it'sa holy shit we live totally, radically different lives barrier.