Majikthise.typepad.com
Q:Who is Majikthise?
A: Majikthise the philosopher is a minor character in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Q: Why name a blog after him?
A: The supercomputer Deep Thought announced that he was going to work out the answer to life, the universe and everything. Initially, Majikthise called a wildcat strike on behalf of "working thinkers everywhere." Majikthise was afraid that outsourcing to DT would put philosophers out of work. But Deep Thought won him over. The answer wouldn't be ready for millions of years, and in any case:
"It occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually going to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourselves? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, and so long as you have clever agents, you can keep yourselves on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?" --Deep Thought
Sounds good to me.
Q: Who are you?
A: My name is Lindsay Beyerstein. I hold an MA in philosophy from Tufts. Eventually I hope to enroll in a PhD program, but for the time being I support my contemplative lifestyle as a freelance pharmaceutical writer.
Interests
Analytic philosophy, liberal politics, science
A: Majikthise the philosopher is a minor character in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Q: Why name a blog after him?
A: The supercomputer Deep Thought announced that he was going to work out the answer to life, the universe and everything. Initially, Majikthise called a wildcat strike on behalf of "working thinkers everywhere." Majikthise was afraid that outsourcing to DT would put philosophers out of work. But Deep Thought won him over. The answer wouldn't be ready for millions of years, and in any case:
"It occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually going to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourselves? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, and so long as you have clever agents, you can keep yourselves on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?" --Deep Thought
Sounds good to me.
Q: Who are you?
A: My name is Lindsay Beyerstein. I hold an MA in philosophy from Tufts. Eventually I hope to enroll in a PhD program, but for the time being I support my contemplative lifestyle as a freelance pharmaceutical writer.
Interests
Analytic philosophy, liberal politics, science
posted by Alice at
Thursday, April 28, 2005
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