Do Chairs Exist?

What people said

axolotlgod · 2023-07 · Strong recommendation

First off, I think everyone deals with this at some point. I think, also, since you are always changing as a person, what helps you cope at one point of your life might not work as life goes on. Various things have all contributed, in some way or another, to helping me in the past and present. Most recently, I came across a VSauce video from a year ago: "Do Chairs Exist?" by VSauce [1]. Now, the thrust of the video deals with mereology [2]. However, the final line from Michael at the end surprised me a lot, and in the days since watching it, has been an extremely strong comfort for me: "I am not a thing that dies and becomes scattered, I AM death and I AM the scattering." I think it is worth spending the 40 minutes to watch the whole thing, as makes this line make more sense and extremely impactful. Anyway, this helped me recently, maybe it can help someone else :) [1]: [VIDEO] [2]: [LINK]

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throw0101b · 2025-05 · Recommendation

Given the title, as good an excuse as any to point people to the Vsauce video "Do Chairs Exist?": * [VIDEO] (Can't believe a half-hour video on ontology has >13M views.)

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crazydoggers · 2023-09 · Recommendation

Love this vsauce video for some examples [VIDEO] There’s still a lot of value in philosophy when we use it to think about how we structure and rationalize the world. Even if science gives us ever better models of the underlying reality of the universe, there’s still the understanding of how we conceptualize that reality and what it means to us. Specifically in ways that don’t require religion or supernatural beings, nor in purely psychological means of perception or physiology. I think of it as the study of the emergent properties of complex information processing. It can do things like help us talk about the minds of others, for example future AI, potential extraterrestrial intelligences, or even other terrestrial intelligences (dolphins, octopus, etc)

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