THE PLATONIC SOLIDS
alright. so plato and socrates. they're kinda the same guy, because our socrates is based on plato's socrates. socrates was killed, remember, because he wouldnt shut up about this shit. PLATO tells the tale.
so what did PLATO do for us lately?
im pretty sure that dice existed before plato but he's the guy that gives the PLATONIC SOLIDS their name so we'll give him that, its classic.
by the time plato is on the scene the classical elements have been established by the guys who come before, and we have too many of them now. all things are fire and water and air and earth. hard to explain. PLATO proposes that different elements are different shaped atoms.
he's not-quite-right-and-wrong about this, but they're good shapes that he proposes. every side the same shape, there are only so many simple forms you can make like that.
naturally, this is what you want for dice, is every side the same. the romans had all the kinds of dice we use for d&d. The implication is that these shapes (which do appear in nature, after all) are so good they must have been involved in the creation of the universe somehow. this is thinking too much in maths. mathsocraces teaches us that all things are maths. but PLATO said this, so it's official and we can use it.
you can see that we still do the same thing with grids and stuff. grids are an abstraction, they don't really exist. but we made them real, and so they do exist. we understand that we live in three cartesian dimensions. and we can stretch out the model so we understand more dimensions. but the thing to remember is that it is a model and some guy made it up (DESCARTES I GUESS) and we could make up a different model to get a different kind of world. maths is all abstractions and models, you can make up your own maths. its a thing people do. just keep the maths thats useful for what youre doing.
so um, heres all i know so far about dice math:
http://evilbaboons.blogspot.com.au/search/label/DICE%20MATHWHAT ABOUT SHADOWS TOCKY
the thing we usually talk about is the shadow of racism, which is why you're not really allowed to draw racist cartoons, even if you, in the present, are not a racist. (this is relevant, remember when that anti-muslim game guy come on here a couple years back to tell us he's not really racist? total racist.)
that is, you can be shadow-racist, which is not as bad but still pretty bad. it's ignorance, and wilful ignorance, which is bad, not as bad as prejudice, but similar, because it requires a wish to not care about prejudice. and it creates this space, where prejudice can hide.
but PLATO doesnt talk about racism, he talks about shadows. SHADOWS is his metaphor for ignorance of philosophy. in socrates' model the worst thing you can be is to not be a philospher. a philosopher learns from mistakes. if you do not learn from mistakes you are not a philosopher and you are not a good person. that's plato's philospohy, not mine. but mine is pretty similar.
so like, imagine you're chained up in a cave and all you ever see is the shadows of people projected on the wall when they pass through the moonlight at the eye of the cave. you've never seen a real person but you've seen the idea of a person. thats ignorance.
so when tocky comes in here and all you see is the image of tocky and not the message, you are the guy chained up in a cave, not me. listen, plato teaches us this.
WHAT ABOUT THE SOCRATIC METHOD WHATS THAT
socrates is not a fun dude to argue with. socrates is a guy who asks you if you really do know what you know. if you really think so. if you're willing to examine the premise. thats his main thing.
so like when a kid asks 'why? why? why?' that's philosophy, thats actually the basis for western philosophy. socrates made it an artform. dont try that shit on me, though. I am immune to trickery.
but you guys, you really don't know what you don't know. i know a lot of shit you guys don't know, and i'll try to teach it to you. I've had to learn how to teach myself though, and that's the point. tigsource is a place where wrong ideas flourish because we are unwilling to examine them. we can do better than this.
anyway, i like plato more than jesus. and i like him better than whoever the tigs jesus is. anyone who can't at least argue like socrates could stand to learn how to do it. that's what i'm getting at. it's a skill, and the trolls on here are pretty fucking weak because they never learned to argue. they've never had to learn it.
so like: you can learn every trick and not this one and still you're not a philosopher. learn to look for faulty premises. learn to examine them. learn how to argue.
END OF SERMON. i'll put off utopias until later.