Of course one cannot in all sincerity know. Today, and even yesteryear, are composed to entertain others, not oneself. They are seldom personal or about the singer, with exceptions like the well known songs by Carly Simon and others. In any event songs today are often written by others, passed around till they find a “home.”

> you Kant analyze pop music with confidence

Fun fact: The correct German pronunciation of “Kant” isn’t like “can’t”, but like “cunt”.

I agree with the sentiment.

But,

Whenever I catch myself reaching for “but” I recognize it is because I need to feel heard. What I did was unacceptable. But I didn’t do it in a vacuum and I need my grievances to be recognized. My belief is that omitting the “but” phrase is an act of faith. You need to trust that the other party cares about your feelings and side of the issue, too. Accepting an apology is just as delicate an act as giving one.

“I’m sorry I hit you with the blue shell.”

“I appreciate you saying that. I know you were in last place and that must have felt awful. I don’t want that for you either.”

Bieber was clearly trying to use the word "butt" here; it just does not come across in a vocal and was obviously transcribed incorrectly.

Bieber in this case refers to body as in "corps", the subject's collective professional or military associations. He laments the loss of power he enjoyed stemming from the subject's erstwhile allegiance.

Dank memes. She has dank memes on her phone.

Or it proves he's not a necrophiliac. I mean, there are more ways to read that sentence.

You're not clocking it?

Her money?

The irony is, as I read the OP I thought it was very much in the style of McSweeneys and then there is this.

It is a pretty obvious humor device so I assume the ideas are independent. And the Socratic dialog framing adds another layer of humor since this is closer to a juxtaposition, lampooning both Swift's vapidity and Plato's writing style.

If utilitarianisms only interest is the consequence of the action and whether it resulted in a positive outlook. the consequence that we care about is "your body" and if "sorry" is uttered in time, then we can receive the reward, If in the relationship you say sorry and there is an expectation of all actions being forgiven, then, this is the ultimate get out of jail free card. it is infinite because you can always use it, therefore although there is recognition of wrongdoing (at first), there is no need for a preventative measure to take place, because the recognition only looks at the consequence of reverting the status of "wronged" to "righted", not about the causes of the status "wronged" to have happened. This leads to an infinite loop of wrongful actions. What would happen if we constantly said "sorry" unnecessarily at a set interval, which we'll call the canadian way, there would always be our desired consequence and no wrongdoing to ever take place!

Without the recognition and admittance of wrongdoing, the wrong action itself will repeat forever in the relationship because its tolerable. making it an infinite get out of jail free card. If this was a system, fault tolerance would be at 100%, the error rate is probably the highest in any system that could exist, if it was code, then there wouldn't even be such a thing as bugfixes, the only recourse is "have you tried rebooting it?" method of recovery systems. Of course if the fault tolerance was not 100% then everything would be different.

> Iz it too late now tsh to say sorry? I think tsk the id-eology of time described here....

I can hear the sniffing now

The question might be asked "why would we assume the singer isn't singing about themself?" In modern pop music it's become it's become standard that the "character" an artist "plays" when they're performing or writing is themself; there's no suspension of disbelief like with a play where there's an entire context around knowing that what you're seeing is a portrayal. Same with a book or movie or other works of fiction, and with those forms of media it's clear when you're seeing or reading fiction or non-fiction.

In a sense, some artists write novels and some write memoirs.

Last time at a karaoke I sang a song that translates to "we're hitchhiking".

Little did the audience know that I wasn't hitchhiking at all and neither were they. I was just standing there, singing.

> Kant goes one level further. He says, basically: "before you do something, ask yourself: if everyone else in the world did what you're about to do as a matter of course, will it make the world better or worse? If it makes the world worse, then don't do it".

This is not the Categorical Imperative. What you're describing is more like Rule Utilitarianism. Kantian ethics is deontological, not consequentialist.

(4) is not actually co-extensive with any of Kant's four formulations of the CI. To break them down:

1. The "universal law" formulation (GMS 4:421) states that an action if permissible if and only if we can will that maxim of our action becomes a universal law. At no point does the FUL actually ask whether the world becomes a better place, it asks strictly whether there's a logical contraction between the maxim of one's actions and their universalization.

2. The "humanity" formulation (GMS 4:429) states that an action is permissible if and only if it treats its rational subjects (including the actor) as ends in themselves, rather than means. But this too is a logical construction without reference to outcomes: a plain reading of Kant suggests that the HF formulation permits actions that make the world a worse place so long as the maxim behind the action is derived from a basic source of respect for humanity as a means.

3. The "autonomy" formulation (GMS 4:432) is similar to the FUL, except that it asks us to imagine ourselves as a legislator of universal law. My interpretation of this formulation (IMO it's Kant's most confusing) is as his attempt to emphasize that we must not merely follow derivations of universal law, but actively legislate and derive it for ourselves. This effectively layers a constraint on the FUL, but preserves its basic logical structure, i.e. does not ask us to perform casuistry when determining whether an action is permissible.

4. The "kingdom of ends" formulation (GMS 4:439) is intended as a unifying formulation of the first three, and essentially challenges us to test the moral permissibility of the maxims our actions not merely through universalization, humanity, or self-legislation, but as acceptable to an abstract community (Kant's "kingdom") of similarly rational, self-legislating actors. This is arguably Kant in his most Rawlsian/Piagetian state, since there's an additional idea that the permissibility of our actions is qualified and constrained by whether our peers would accept them.

Of these, (4) is arguably the closest to us asking whether the world is made better or worse as our moral test. But two problems emerge. First, Kant himself sees his formulations as co-extensive, meaning that (4) cannot imply any consideration for outcomes if (1) through (3) do not (and they do not, as purely logical, non-casuistic constructions of duty). Second, Kant emphasizes acceptance of actions in the KOE formulation, and acceptance in turn is grounded in (1) through (3). If acceptance were not grounded so, the imperatives in question would be hypothetical rather than categorical.

> After spending most of today circling around Maxims

a sentence i have't heard since middle school at the local corner store with my bros hesitant about buying a lad mag

An Aristotelian Critique of “The Lazy Song”

Is it? I couldn’t tell and I’m pretty sensitive to machine generated text.

Also, the author claims:

> No AI was used to generate the text for this article. The cover image and the voiceover in the audio version of the article is AI-generated. The cover image is made using Google Gemini’s latest image model while the voiceover uses OpenAI’s tts models.

100p

The slop art gave me the wrong impression. I did enjoy the read even thinking it was AI though.

I was going to say for "What Goes Around Comes Around" by Timberlake, or maybe "F--- it, I don't want you back" by Eamonn, myself. Schopenhauer though. Great minds.

> from the lenses of Schopenhauer

Ha! Analysing (deconstructing?) poems was part of primary schooling in middle eastern traditions wherein Philosophy & Cosmology were considered to be the highest form of Knowledge (informed by Avicenna's ideas on pedagogy & education): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399623059_Islamic_E...

Then ask an LLM. I'm serious, if you like the style. This article, despite the disclaimer, is almost certainly LLM-written. It's one of many ephemeral blogs that have been cropping up on HN lately and that post single-theme content with striking regularity.