The Tell-Tale Heart
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in James Russell Lowell's The Pioneer in January 1843. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is often considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and is one of Poe's best known short stories. It is related by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed.
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- The top 10 best-selling titles according to The Guardian [1]
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/04/communist-manif...1. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 2. The Beautifull Cassandra - Jane Austen 3. The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe 4. Aphorisms on Love and Hate - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 5. How Much Land Does a Man Need? Leo Tolstoy 6. The Great Fire of London - Samuel Pepys 7. Socrates' Defence 8. Circles of Hell - Dante 9. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime - Oscar Wilde 10. The Night is Darkening Round Me - Emily Brontë - The coolest thing here is the Emoji to English translation, IMO, which builds grammatically-correct sentences from an unlimited number of emojis. Translating english -> emoji -> english makes for some interesting mistranslations.
It's good enough that I'm wondering whether they're drawing off recent english->emoji translations to reverse emojis back to the source material.
Example of Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart:
English:
>True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
(Emoji doesn't display properly on HN or I'd quote it here, but it's encoded into the URL here [1])
Translating the emoji back to english:
>True! — nervous — very , very afraid of a sudden I have; but why will you say that I'm grumpy? crisis has made my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them . Above all the sense of ear acupuncture . I heard all things in heaven and earth . I heard many things in heck . The question , then , I'm grumpy? please! and understand how to consume — how calmly I can tell you the whole story .
[1] https://translate.yandex.com/?lang=emj-en&text=%E2%9D%8C%20%....
- In no US jurisdiction are you allowed to cut out someone's heart and store it under your floor. You're also not allowed to threaten someone that you'll do this to them, or incite others to do the same. You're not allowed to get on a street corner and say "The time has come to find Bob Jones, drag him out of his house, and cut his heart out of his chest."
You are, however, allowed in all jurisdictions to write a story like Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" where the narrator does the same.
The question that arises in rap music is, when the rapper says, "Imma kill Bob Jones and cut his heart out his chest," is it more like the former or the latter? Is the "I" the rapper, or like Poe's narrator? It's a hard question for the law, because yes, the distinction between a novelist and a rapper is deeply tied into structural discrimination along lines of race and class, but also there are many more rappers than novelists who become the perpetrators and victims of violent deaths.
- > How would you convince a Solipsist that there is an objective truth?
"I refute you!"
Joking aside, I feel Solipsism is immature. Do you know which demographic also comprises Solipsists? Two year olds. "Mommy doesn't exist when I close my eyes." This gives Solipsists an excuse to stop thinking critically about things like ethics, et al. So in this sense, Solipsism's just a cop-out which justifies laziness. When someone says "objective reality doesn't exist", what I really hear is "everybody's equal; you all get a trophy; we all have a right to our opinions". You might recognize this as the Red Herring Fallacy. I think Solipsism is a subtle version of this same fallacy.
Paul Graham says something similar about the subjectivity of aesthetics * : "Your mother at this point is not trying to teach you important truths about aesthetics. She's trying to get the two of you to stop bickering." I think this applies to Moral Relativism, Solipsism, and generally most philosophies which deny the existence of objectivity.
* http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
Post Modernism is often said to have been a reaction to Modernism. But I think it's even more important to realize that Post Modernism is a reaction to World War I and II. After WWII, I imagine people realized "Science and objectivity gave us cars and electricity, but it also gave us mustard gas and nuclear weapons. Maybe this whole Modernism gig isn't so great after all..."
According to Literary Post Modernism, there's lots of conflicting narratives rather than a single objective perspective. During the chaos of World Wars I and II, I imagine war-stories naturally contradicted one another. I like the conflicting POV aspect because it can encourage the reader to question the author's reliability, like in Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. Unfortunately, Post Modernism can also have the opposite effect: encouraging readers to quit thinking too hard and to accept the text as it is since "it's all equally valid". This negative aspect fits really well with the self-esteem movement, which (I'll say again) I think is a cop out for thinking critically.
You may notice I'm not refuting Solipsism per se, but ulterior motives for believing Solipsism is valid. This is because going down the road of "formal proofs" probably won't yield anything convincing. We'd simply talk past each other, and in circles, and bicker over definitions. But at the end of the day, it's pretty difficult to disprove abstractions and ideologies sin finding an inherent contradiction. And I'll even admit, maybe Solipsism actually is true. Who knows? I won't claim outright that Solipsism is false. But in my own experience, I find it very unlikely that Solipsism is true * . And I do want to acknowledge a possible bias for believing "Solipsism is true" due to it's convenience.
* http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes
p.s. I do find the Harry Potter fan-fic kinda weird...
