Your Comments: God, Logic, & Being Famous

Here's me answering your comments about the paradox of omnipotence, and about what fame and celebrity are. PLUS a special something for reaching 100,000 subscribers!

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[emilyfishie]

i teared up and clapped seeing your silver button!

im so happy!!!! good for

[Genzar]

I love how Olly is one of the few people who doesn't mispronounce my last name!

[SimplyMayaB]

Your excitement at the play button is adorable. Well deserved!

[michaeldrane]

I don't think this is said often enough, but your videos, apart from being interesting and engaging and all of that, make me very happy (not just a happiness from learning, but a happiness that sort of emanates from you)

[WBWhiting]

I don't think it makes sense to say 'the moon is famous'. I think it makes more sense to say 'the North Star is famous' because there are multiple visible stars and that one is distinct from the others for various reasons. I think fame is a relationship that requires contrast.

[mullac]

I have *very* high expectations of the moon. When the waves are bad, I know who's to blame!

[goktrenks]

I would love if you could make a video on Universal basic income:what it means, its implications, arguments for/against.I really love your channel, congrats for the 100k subs!

[herrottenheart]

I like young professor x doing philosophy videos.

[klop]

Avoided the question in terms of Santa, I see. But we know he is famous 'coz he's clearly real

[ceulgai]

Eating a bowl of chili, not expecting to be in one of these videos, day = made. Though it doesn't matter, it's pronounced with a hard 'c.' Thanks for the tuatara knowledge (of which there are two extant species ;) ). Congratulations on 100k!

[IrontMesdent]

Congrats on the 100, 000! It's nice to see the community getting bigger and bigger everyday :)

So about my comment, I wasn't only talking about influencing political opinions. A starlett, like you said, could be influencing other things than political opinions about a person. Let's take someone like Jennifer Aniston from Friends as an example. Her political opinions didn't really matter, true, however how many people did get an haircut to look like Jennifer Aniston? In a way, she influenced people's idea of fashion in the years of popularity of the show. We could say the same thing about the Kardashians who establish some sort of beauty standard for their followers, thus, affecting the subjective standards of beauty in every people's mind.

Anyway, that's how I saw it.

[ryanpearse]

Congrats on the 100K subs Olly, well deserved! ^^

[CDeruiter]

I think it makes sense to say that objects created by people can become famous. For example, there are many famous paintings like the fresco of Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa. This leads me to believe that Harry Potter and Santa Clause aren't famous as characters themselves, but the stories about them are famous. Whether or not this distinction is important, I cant say.

[abbasmoosvi]

You're so excited about your silver button, Olly you cutie!

[PilkScientist]

1:37 I think what greg was trying to say is "if god is omniscient, he cannot learn. therefore, there is an action god is incapable of, and therefore he cannot be omnipotent"

[thisaccountisdead]

I think the main thing I am interested in looking into at the moment is an objective way of understanding the relationship between Emotional Labour - Identity - Personality - and Burn Out in the context of financial, political, environmental, climate and species crisis as a model for understanding humanity better than using profit and GDP. So naturally I think this should be a number one priority for the globe :P ...I understand Identity and Burn Out to a biological level and I wish I had a Personality.

[Garland]

Kind of going off of Everybody Loves Rasmus' comment, couldn't Harry Potter or Santa Claus be said to exist in a sort of Modal or Ideological reality? What I'm trying to bring across is the idea that these beings has their beings in the form of ideas. For example, Descartes Cogito is famous, Locke Tabula Rasa is famous. Maybe in the vain of Deleuze's Conceptual Personae from his book What Is Philosophy? Harry Potter being the Conceptual Personae of JK Rowling?

[Grayhome]

I think Wikipedia is actually a great test for showing whether someone is famous, and fairly good test of HOW famous someone is. The more famous you are, the more words you tend to have on your Wikipedia page. Not a perfect measuring stick by any means, but it's not bad.

And I don't think fame is just about WHO is writing the Wikipedia articles, but more about the fact that Wikipedia plays a large role in developing and setting our expectations for a person.

As far as Harry Potter and Santa Claus go, I'd have to say yes, they are famous. Santa Claus is a little bit different, because there are people who believe he exists. Harry Potter is famous because we have expectations about how he will behave, and about how he will be, in any story in which he appears. Granted, those expectations are tempered and further developed by the medium in which the story is written -- I have different expectations about movie Harry Potter than I do about book Harry Potter, and WAAAAY different expectations about fanfic Harry Potter. Still, there are many expectations that I have of cross-media appearances of Harry Potter.

Margaret Atwood spoke of having two selves, as a famous author: one self that she really is, and one that her culture constructs for her. The cultural construct of Margaret Atwood is the only famous one because it is the only one we have expectations of. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is ONLY a cultural construct, and doesn't have a second "true" self. In this sense, Margaret Atwood and Harry Potter, insofar as they are famous, are both cultural constructs.

[Plunkcown]

on the "is Harry Potter famous" question: i do think it's something that could be explored when a fictional character from is well known and easily recognized. in particular because i feel like more people "know" about harry potter, recognise him, what he does etc than people do about JK Rowling herself

[prisimran]

Someone needs to make a wikipedia page for Olly