Episode 340: The Sublime Folly of Hope
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What does an exclamation point in a text actually mean?
Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Fizzaro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. That's like the the the dream of everyone. They want to be cool because of this, cool because of that, blah blah blah. And more people need to know that they're not fucking cool.
Okay. Pay no attention to that man behind us.
Who are you? Who are you? I'm a very bad man. I'm a very good man. What? They think we boss and with no more brains than you have Made no attention. Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.
Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamlar Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, since we're doing some Gen Z shit in the opening segment, I here's a question that I have. And I don't even know if this might be millennial more than Gen Z, I don't know. But like what does the exclamation point on a text signify?
Dude, I have no idea. I think it might be millennial because like some of my Evangen X friends have like picked up on it and I am so confused. I need help. Like I need help to understand this. Like it is meaningless to me. It's like it just happened to me. Like I texted a friend, happy birthday, and he's like, Oh, I'm here with my parents and I was like, Oh, give them a hug from me. And he just put an exclamation.
It's completely opaque to me. Like a lot of the time. Sometimes it's like like when I use it it's like like holy shit. Yeah. Or
like what? You know?
Whoa. Yeah. But then it just seems like it's being used in ways that I I can't understand. This is a good cause for li c listeners, please explain this.
It reminds me of that boondocks episode where the teacher uses the N word and it's like based on a real like a real thing. And he's like Yeah. And he goes, I need your help. Like I don't He's like, I thought it was fun. I thought with the uh it was friendly. I'm telling you I don't understand and I need your help.
But it it's like the possibilities are even greater in this case. It's like there's some other dimension or something that I uh that I don't have access to. Does it just
mean I saw your text? I had you
We're trying to immerse ourselves. Funny that you should say that actually, because in the second segment, we are going to be talking about an article by I'm just seeing that his name isn't on the title. Wait, Malonovsky? Yeah. Uh Bronislav Mono. He should consider putting his name on his most famous papers. Uh Branislav. Uh Mollin O Magic, Science and Religion, uh Classic nineteen twenty five paper, I think. Yeah, it
was like weirdly published in a collection of things that were posthumously published. So I don't know what it was in uh originally, but he wrote it b around the twenties.
And that's in some ways the secondary text, or at least it started out that way. It started off that way. Yeah, 'cause you put a nice, uh, much shorter piece. Baseball magic by George Gmelch.
I know. I was I was hoisted by my own petard here where I picked like a nice short one and we were like, oh, we need a companion piece uh that maybe gives us more meat to the theory. And but like I'm glad we read this one actually. Me too.
It's really good. I really enjoyed it. Anthropologists, sociologists uh can do really good things. Everything that
we're
not. Exactly. They're everything that we're not. Um, but what they don't do is conceptual analysis. That is the purview of analytic philosophers like myself and like you in spirit.
In spirit, you know. This is this is philosophy in the wild. This is applying the tools and methods for the improvement of critical thinking, life understanding.
A hundred percent. And it is public philosophy in the best sense of the term, I think. And unlike certain people, we make this free for everybody. That's right. That's right. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay us. No, not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. So yeah, so today we're gonna we've been doing conceptual analysis of Gen Z words for the most part, like contributions of the concepts of this new generation.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does an exclamation point in a text actually mean?
0:00–8:32
2
How do the hosts define and analyze a “crash out”?
8:32–17:08
3
What are the main arguments of Malinowski’s “Magic, Science, and Religion”?
17:08–24:22
4
Why do baseball players have more superstitious rituals than athletes in other sports?
24:22–36:15
5
How does magic differ from religion and superstition in controlling uncertainty?
36:15–45:51
6
What modern phenomena (AI, social media, politics) illustrate the same loss‑of‑control anxiety?
45:51–54:48
7
How do personal “crash out” moments reveal the tension between agency and helplessness?
54:48–1:04:52
8
What is the “sublime folly of hope” and why does it matter for everyday life?
1:04:52–1:15:44
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Very Bad Wizards
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