There once was a shipmate who chose,
This serious question to pose,
Can there still be a thread
If nothing is said
Or are we being led by the nose?
Reply:
That poses another, we've missed
And this can be seen as it's gist
If the test of a thread's
Whether anything's said,
Then does even this ship exist?
Of course the thread exists. Posit a most perfect Ship of Fools thread. Now clearly a perfect Ship of Fools thread that exists is more perfect than one that does not exist. Therefore, the most perfect Ship of Fools thread exists.
Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic. Nobody seems to know how to deal with it (he would, of course), and plain persons generally are reported to have little difficulty in saying, seeing, hearing, and doing nothing. Philosophers, however, have never felt easy on the matter. Ever since Parmenides laid it down that it is impossible to speak of what is not, broke his own rule in the act of stating it, and deduced himself into a world where all that ever happened was nothing, the impression has persisted that the narrow path between sense and nonsense on this subject is a difficult one to tread and that altogether the less said of it the better. —P.L. Heath
Comments
And I can post anything I like and no-one can see it, because it doesn't exist - and this is possibly not a good trick to know.
¹
This serious question to pose,
Can there still be a thread
If nothing is said
Or are we being led by the nose?
Reply:
That poses another, we've missed
And this can be seen as it's gist
If the test of a thread's
Whether anything's said,
Then does even this ship exist?
With deference to the late Monsignor Ronald Knox
I read a thread that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish it'd go away...
(with apologies to Hughes Mearns
Nothing to see here...
Well, it wasn't when I looked...
Or it may be. There is no proof, either way.
All depends on how one defines April. If one must. And who am I to say?
Or is he not here either?
If this thread were to exist, that post would have won it.
a chimera²
¹
²
Good links, both.
Nope, guess not.
That first one was unintentional genius. It should have been this, don't know what happened there. Nothing, I guess.
It was not there again today.
Does that mean it has gone away?
I confess to liking the mistake better.
O
O
O
O
O
O
That doesn't exist either.
Or perhaps not.
Oi.
Is this a real thread? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, or escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see
Clouds.
A trick of light and colour, smoke and mirrors, coding and pixels,
No arcane knowledge required
I agree!