Thursday, March 11, 2021

this is why I rarely make comments on YouTube

YouTube comment threads are filled with idiots, so it's not a good idea to leave a comment and thereby join their ranks.  But on rare occasions, I do leave comments.  God knows why.  In most cases, my comments are ignored, but once in a blue moon, one of my comments will catch fire, and I'll end up with dozens, or even hundreds, of upvotes.

One of the YouTube channels I watch is called Emergency Awesome.  It's run by a guy who calls himself Charlie, and he's got encyclopedic knowledge of movie, comic-book, and even literary trivia.  A cynic might say that Charlie has misspent his life by becoming a high priest of pop-culture knowledge, but I rely on Charlie to keep me from falling too far behind when it comes to what's currently trendy.  (As you get older, the urge to stay current may or may not start to fade.  Your mileage may vary.)  Lately, Charlie has been commenting on the Disney-Marvel TV series "WandaVision," starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany.  I never bothered to watch the series, but I found Charlie's commentary interesting, especially when he talked about how Wanda (Olsen's character, the Scarlet Witch) is a so-called "nexus being," i.e., a being who occupies all the universes of the multiverse at once.  Wanda doesn't have to travel between or among alternate universes:  she's already in them.  So I left the following comment, which has received 87 upvotes (or "likes") as of this writing:

So a "nexus being" is Marvel's version of what philosophers call a "necessary being," i.e., a being who exists in all possible worlds.

A commenter named Dan even offered a nice response:

It’s rare that I see a philosophy reference in the comments section. Gets me all giddy. I love Alvin Plantinga’s take on it.

Everything was going well until this idiot chimed in:

No, there cannot be more than 1 necessary being, a nexus being is simply a sealed fate across infinite realities.

The poor punctuation and the lack of clarity of expression were immediate clues that this guy was an idiot talking out of his ass.  But I tried to be civil in my response:

In modal logic, for something to be considered "necessary," it must exist in all possible worlds. If your claim that "there cannot be more than one necessary being" is a reference to how theists view God, i.e., as the lone necessary being, then yes, that's the theistic view as bolstered by modal logic. Theists consider God to be a logically unique case. But the term "necessary" isn't confined to theistic viewpoints, as I'm sure you know: modal logic applies to more than theistic matters. As for whether a "nexus being" is "simply a sealed fate across infinite realities"... I don't read comic books, so I don't have the knowledge to respond to that, although I would note that defining a "being" as a "fate" is problematic.

My above explanation was the textbook definition of "necessary" as used in modal logic.  It's inarguable.  This is what people with a background in philosophy understand the term "necessary" to mean.  But, no:  my interlocutor responded with something he thought clever:

theism isn’t what my viewpoint was based from, simply let’s say hypothetically I’m stated to “hold all reality together” and one day I get bored and leave, but it doesn’t collapse. Two scenarios are left, either I was never the necessary being in which held reality together OR the real necessary being is still present in reality. Knowing this if I was actually necessary which is simply needed, it would’ve collapsed as if there was another necessary being It would be contradictory as I’m NOT necessary because their is another existence which binds reality. So to sum it all up if ur confused a necessary being is above the 12th dimension, which is above infinite parallel 3-D dimensions which Wanda the nexus being is a part of. Inaccessible cardinals state each dimension is infinitely above or below, therefore Wanda would inevitably be inferior to the REAL necessary being who is 9 infinites above her existence. Fate to be something in every timeline has nothing to do with everyone and everything else within cosmology as a necessary being as stated previously needs to live. Wanda will die, she has died, she will continue dying which proves she isn’t the necessary being of marvel cosmology.

Sigh...

When you're dealing with someone who uses terms like "9 infinities above her existence," you're dealing with a moron.  Maybe his language makes sense to a fellow comics nerd, and that is, I think, the universe in which he's based—the comic-book universe.  While I'm tempted to make all sorts of tart replies to this obvious nonsense, I think it's better just to let this genius have the last word.  To that end, I clicked on "hide this response," and I'll interact with him no further.  Life is too short to get caught in the ego-vortex of flame wars.  I did a lot of that crap in my younger days, but these days, I'm just too tired.  Better to use my blog as a humble mountaintop from which to broadcast my opinions and convictions; if someone wants to challenge me in my comments section, s/he can do so freely as long as s/he follows my stipulations regarding conduct.  Speech on my blog isn't totally free; there are strictures.  But I'm generally happy to engage in civil discussion.  Just don't tell me I'm wrong when it's screamingly obvious I'm not wrong.  That's the quick way to piss me off.

So to sum it all up if ur confused a necessary being is above the 12th dimension, which is above infinite parallel 3-D dimensions which Wanda the nexus being is a part of.

Whatever you say, buddy.

I have other examples of idiotic responses to various comments I've made on YouTube, but as I said, I'm tired, and I don't want to waste more time than I have to on the retardation of mental midgets. Call me a snobby elitist for talking this way; I don't particularly care.  Anyway, I hope you found the above amusing.  I'm not sure I did.



4 comments:

  1. If I were looking for a definition of "clueless", this post would be it. No, not the commenter you engaged, me. It was all completely over my head, but it still somehow managed to make my head hurt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 12th dimension? Sheesh. I thought your response was perfectly understandable and correct, but that person's response to you was a lot of nonsense.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for confirming that I haven't gone insane, Dr. Pepple. Always an honor when you visit!

    ReplyDelete
  4. John Mac,

    I don't blame you for having a headache.

    ReplyDelete

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