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Rating Philosophy Hot Takes From My Comments Section

Alex O'Connor | October 14, 2025



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– VIDEO NOTES

Rating Your Philosophical Hot Takes episode something.

– TIMESTAMPS

0:00 A Bad Haircut is Worse Than Death
6:49 Too Much Empathy is Bad
9:00 Alex Should Bring His Moustache Back
9:18 A Little Pain for Many vs a Lot of Pain for One
15:14 Nothing Cannot Exist
17:46 There Should Be an IQ Test for Voting
20:36 Monarchy Isn’t That Bad, When Done Properly
21:39 A Proof of Free Will
24:33 Drugs Should Be Decriminalised

– CONNECT

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– CONTACT

Business email: contact@alexoconnor.com

——————————————

Written by Alex O'Connor

Comments

This post currently has 37 comments.

  1. @huevosapo1541

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    If nothingness doesn´t contain contranstraining axioms, then it doesn´t have possibility axioms either. It has nothing. Nothing can arise from it because it does not have the possibility to arise anything. Remember, nothingness truly has nothing. Power, capacity, causation, being arising from something, they are all properties, and by definition, nothingness cant have properties.

  2. @playtimestitches

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    I love listening to your big discussions. I really do. The science and the philosophy often feel like a window to a bigger universe, and I'm grateful for the people who explore these ideas.

    But I have to be honest. Sometimes, I'll stumble into a conversation—maybe about whether numbers truly exist or a complex ethical puzzle—and I just have to switch it off.

    In that moment, it doesn't feel like a window. It feels like a game for people with too much time on their hands. A luxury.

    And in my world, where the day is a calculation about the cost of butter and the urgent need to plant yams so I can eat, that luxury can feel like a slap in the face. My mental energy is spent on survival: "Will I be clean enough to be allowed on the bus?" "Do I have everything to get water into my house?"

    So this isn't a complaint. It's a perspective from the other side of that window. Please, keep having your discussions. But know that sometimes, from out here in the bush, the most profound thought isn't about a lever on a train track. It's I don't have time for this. I have clothes to wash.

  3. @lemonboiyoutube

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    4:33 – …but what about the life they would have otherwise lived? say in world A you kill someone who would have otherwised lived 20 more years in world B. a counterfactual analysis would show they'd be better off had you not killed them. thus, we can say their death was bad for them because it deprived them of the life they otherwise would have had

  4. @dawnwpk9972

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    I believe that you can still say that it is morally worse to torture 1 person for eternity than to blow a spec of dust into the eyes of a graham’s number of people because you can actually argue that you still cause more total suffering to that one person than to all of those people combined. Since that person suffers for eternity, in that scenario you cause infinite suffering. However in the other scenario you only cause a finite amount of suffering. Even if it is a large total amount, infinity is still greater than any finite amount.

  5. @johnsours-h9v

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    i mean the counter argument to the speck of dust thought experiment making utilitarianism wrong is that the speck of dust is not specified to be permanent thus by getting rid of the speck of dust the total pain has dropped to zero. (and it drops to zero faster than the heat death of the universe so nyeh)

  6. @yeetwoodmac6920

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    I am in recovery from IV use drugs and alcoholism, why would you ever want to decriminalize this stuff?

    I’m grateful to have gained strength in specific ways related to heroine recovery, yet I would never wish for someone to have this strength.

    Addiction is like battling someone who knows me better than me, rather than decriminalize drugs, why not put effort into understanding how spirituality affects obsession.

    In recovery I have become addicted to many none drugs, money, work, food, anime, video games, and much more, I’ve been able to manage some of these with practice and program, some I’ve had to cut out.

    Don’t do Drugs! Choose Life.

  7. @AeonWaves

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    @6:49 Regarding "Too Much Empathy Is Bad". My mother has a severe case of Complex PTSD. One of her symptoms is, indeed, "excessive empathy". She is constantly obsessed by other people's feelings, to such an extent that she requires a pharmacopeia of medication to even leave the house, and even then with great effort and hours of mental preparation. She will always put the needs and desires of others wholly before her own even though she lives in great poverty and many of her loved ones do not. I can testify to the fact that it's crippling, particularly because despite her excessive concern for other people's thoughts and feelings, she's far from proficient at figuring them out, being instead remarkably bad at this feat… which entails that she's constantly worrying about things she should not be worrying about.

  8. @Luffy.D.Monkey_1

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    20:38 I agree with the take, but i think saying, “if done properly” isn’t a valid argument. I could say something like, “communism is a great idea if done properly.” Yeah but the whole point of communism being bad is about the commonality and ease of someone taking it over and transforming it into a dictatorship. That’s obviously not being done properly. Of course the idea of everyone getting mostly equal luxuries while some do more work to earn them than others is bad, but that’s just with the specific example of communism. “Prisons which force people to work to reform them and integrate them into working is a good idea if done properly.” Yes, I agree. But it’s not done properly in most cases and that’s the problem.

  9. @AgustoRamirez-fv3kg

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    Not believing in free will is the same as not believing in the multiverse. All actions cannot already be decided for me bc out there there is a me who has the same circumstances but made a different choice than me. ‘I think therefore I am’ also disproves this. My own Consciousness justifies my own free will to do what I want.

  10. @LexWelles

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    Here's my hot take that makes everyone mad: Procreation is indefensible. If a child cannot consent to being born, if that child will eventually be forced to conform to any system requiring them to pay for the privilege of being alive, and/or if that child will ever experience even mild discomfort… Then procreation is a crime.

    Here "crime" simply means "any act which subverts the autonomy of or causes preventable harm to a separate person.

  11. @daisybull8300

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    If determinism is true, there is no such thing as a multiverse. If the multiverse theory is true, but determinism is still true, then all universes must be exactly parallel.

  12. @razorend22

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    I'm in agreement with the nothing comment. I'll go even a step further, or rather two steps. One, in the context of the universe, not only does nothing not exist, it's actually just space. Empty or not, it's still space. Two, time as we perceive it doesn't exist, in a sense that you could (as a mind experiment) go infinitely back in time and observe the universe, and things would just be changing their states. You couldn't go to the "beginning" since you could always ask "well, what about before then" which would then imply that everything (in the universe) always existed (or rather, exists), it just changes states.

  13. @bronsoncarder2491

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    So, if a person makes a specific choice based on the input, and it's impossible that they would make a different one… are you saying that the multiverse cannot exist?

    Also, it's fine if you're tired of talking about drug legalization, but in that case… maybe just don't talk about it at all? Saying you're "tired of the people who are in favor of it" firmly places you against it, and seems to be overall against the spirit of this channel. I've never actually seen you address the issue, only ever seen you have these reactions to being asked about it. And frankly it reminds me of how Jordan Peterson reacts when being asked about… basically anything.

  14. @sirondium

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    Nothing cannot be, but anything (defined as not including “nothing” within anything) can be or cannot be, and so there can not be nothing, but there can, not be anything.

    Im high af.

  15. @harrisonwinton1562

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    13:30 relies on the assumption that the utility monster consumes infinitely, however if you believe that one can be satisfied (or that pleasure has a capacity or that to have pleasure it must be balanced with suffering as a means to valuing the so called unit of pleasure) then the monster may exist and utilitarianism can still stand

  16. @BB-9E_top-1

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    Just got here after reading the thumbnail and death is what makes life beautiful and why i hate the idea of an afterlife death is something to celebrate not mourn

  17. @braedenhunter6501

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    I was like, “Wow that was a surprisingly staunch reaction from someone who I feel wouldn’t mind debating similar things things endlessly.” It was the first time I’ve just felt like we genuinely disagree on something hotly debated, and I came to find out you were picking at a guy who felt that way so hard he left.

  18. @E4RTH_

    October 14, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    On the dust in eye vs torture for eternity one, the surely the ‘eternity’ part of that makes it obvious in the utilitarian sense that as the suffering is infinite its the less desirable option

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