Proof by contradiction: suppose this method is true. Then anything which can be mocked is false. Consider the following mockery:
“Right, so political scientists and philosophers have debated these issues for thousands of years, and all of a sudden a humorist can figure out how to obtain a quick truth-value merely by using the average person’s laughter as library, laboratory, and debate floor?
If this works, I envision elections run solely on attempts to mock the candidates involved. As Barack Obama makes a speech, a solemnly convened panel of Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O’Brien will feverishly interrupt with the best one-liners they can craft. Recording devices will be in place all around the room to measure laughter volume to the decibel.
Then Obama’s opponent gets up. As Letterman makes fun of his tax policies, the crowd goes wild. Fifty decibels, sixty...seventy decibels of laughter. As the chortling dies down, Chief Justice Roberts announces what everyone already knows—Obama will have four more years in power.
Gone are the economists and statisticians and bureaucrats, as forgotten as alchemists and astrologers. In there place rises the New De-mock-racy, in which comedy is recognized as the key to good policy. Laughter really is the best medicine—as is tangibly proven when doctors switch to making diagnoses solely by mocking how stupid all the other possibilities are. ‘Dr. Johnson thinks you have Alzheimers’? He must have Alzheimers’ himself to forget to account for your thyroid test results! HAHAHAHAHA!′
The world is transformed into utopia—until it’s wiped out by a paper-clip-maximizing robot created after someone got the Singularity Institute closed by calling it ‘rapture of the nerds’ and got a good chuckle out of a few people who enjoyed sticking it to the eggheads.”
Since the method can be mocked, it must be false. But then we have arrived at a contradiction: the method is both true and false. Therefore, the method is false.
Proof by contradiction: suppose this method is true. Then anything which can be mocked is false. Consider the following mockery:
“Right, so political scientists and philosophers have debated these issues for thousands of years, and all of a sudden a humorist can figure out how to obtain a quick truth-value merely by using the average person’s laughter as library, laboratory, and debate floor?
If this works, I envision elections run solely on attempts to mock the candidates involved. As Barack Obama makes a speech, a solemnly convened panel of Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O’Brien will feverishly interrupt with the best one-liners they can craft. Recording devices will be in place all around the room to measure laughter volume to the decibel.
Then Obama’s opponent gets up. As Letterman makes fun of his tax policies, the crowd goes wild. Fifty decibels, sixty...seventy decibels of laughter. As the chortling dies down, Chief Justice Roberts announces what everyone already knows—Obama will have four more years in power.
Gone are the economists and statisticians and bureaucrats, as forgotten as alchemists and astrologers. In there place rises the New De-mock-racy, in which comedy is recognized as the key to good policy. Laughter really is the best medicine—as is tangibly proven when doctors switch to making diagnoses solely by mocking how stupid all the other possibilities are. ‘Dr. Johnson thinks you have Alzheimers’? He must have Alzheimers’ himself to forget to account for your thyroid test results! HAHAHAHAHA!′
The world is transformed into utopia—until it’s wiped out by a paper-clip-maximizing robot created after someone got the Singularity Institute closed by calling it ‘rapture of the nerds’ and got a good chuckle out of a few people who enjoyed sticking it to the eggheads.”
Since the method can be mocked, it must be false. But then we have arrived at a contradiction: the method is both true and false. Therefore, the method is false.