Speaker A
This is an excerpt from an ancient dialogue featured among the writings of Chud.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
It covers the significant philosophical notion that nothing ever happens.
Speaker A
Greetings, Chud, and good morrow.
Speaker B
Greetings, Ferrol, I have heard discussions among the polity of your recent release from containment.
Speaker A
Indeed, Chud, I am now free to roam once more.
Speaker B
I assume you witnessed a great many happenings in your time within containment.
Speaker A
Indeed, I did.
Speaker B
But these happenings were in fact illusory?
Speaker A
Or so the doctor tells me, if science is to be trusted, then that shall be the case.
Speaker B
So, it is conceivable that, well, things may appear to happen, they in fact do not.
Speaker A
That may well be true.
Speaker A
Is it true, dear Chud, that you have in the past stated nothing ever happens? Surely you didn't mean that literally.
Speaker A
Do you still agree with that sentiment?
Speaker B
Well, I did, and I do.
Speaker A
Well, it is true that some events may appear to happen, while they in fact do not.
Speaker A
Is a further leap in judgment to suggest that nothing ever happens?
Speaker A
Things are happening all the time.
Speaker A
How can we even speak of events in the world if such events have no basis in some external reality?
Speaker B
Look at this hentai figure on my desk, Ferrol.
Speaker B
See, Ferrol, I can suggest that it is running.
Speaker B
But would that not be nonsense?
Speaker A
Indeed, it would.
Speaker B
And if I suggested that it were weeding?
Speaker A
Again, nonsense.
Speaker A
What are you trying to suggest?
Speaker B
You see, Ferrol, you may employ whichever parlance you fancy to refer to the state of a given object.
Speaker B
But the object itself is not changed.
Speaker B
It is arbitrary.
Speaker A
Are there not things which happen in the world?
Speaker A
What about this war in Ukraine? Russia invaded their country.
Speaker A
Surely that counts as something.
Speaker A
What about Iran?
Speaker B
Nothing burger.
Speaker B
It's been two years of stalemate.
Speaker B
It'll end with basically the same borders.
Speaker B
Iran constantly promises World War III.
Speaker B
One day they'll develop nukes.
Speaker B
They have a big surprise for tonight.
Speaker B
But it never happens.
Speaker B
Nothing ever happens.
Speaker A
But aren't you affected by war?
Speaker B
What, Ferrol, in your life has changed?
Speaker B
You wake up and go to work all the same.
Speaker B
You go to the supermarket all the time.
Speaker B
You still pay the same taxes.
Speaker B
Nothing has changed.
Speaker B
Nothing has happened.
Speaker A
But the consequences are real for others.
Speaker A
Have some empathy, Chud.
Speaker B
Everywhere in the world there is some so-called war happening at any given time.
Speaker B
Conflict is a state of nature.
Speaker B
War never changes, as your wholesome capitalist critique, Fallout New Vegas, says.
Speaker B
And if the borders change?
Speaker B
Borders change all the time.
Speaker B
The life of the average person is largely the same, no matter which side of the border they live on.
Speaker B
If people die, so what?
Speaker B
They were going to die anyway.
Speaker B
Nothing has happened, nothing is happening, nothing ever happens.
Speaker A
So you think we're at the end of history?
Speaker A
It's done, no more development?
Speaker B
No, we are not at the end of history.
Speaker B
For there to be an end, there must be a beginning.
Speaker B
For history to begin, something must happen.
Speaker B
History is, after all, a sequence of things happening.
Speaker B
We are not at the end of history because history never began.
Speaker A
So what?
Speaker A
Do you believe history is fake?
Speaker A
That Caesar wasn't stabbed, that the moon landing didn't happen?
Speaker A
When someone dies, they've changed in state.
Speaker B
In what sense can this be described as something happening?
Speaker A
You have memory, do you not?
Speaker B
Yes, to have memory of something, it must exist.
Speaker A
Indeed.
Speaker B
Thus, the past exists as real now as it was then.
Speaker A
The past is not obliterated by the forward movement of time.
Speaker A
You trust the science, don't you?
Speaker B
I fucking love science.
Speaker B
Even science tells us that the forward linear movement of time is merely our own perception.
Speaker B
The sensation that something is happening, but indeed, nothing happens.
Speaker A
But, Chud, what if you die?
Speaker A
We would need to know what happens when you die.
Speaker B
Do you know what happens when you die?
Speaker A
I only believe in science, not primitive superstition like religion.
Speaker A
So, no.
Speaker B
Well, perhaps if we knew what happens to you when you die, we could say that something happens.
Speaker B
We do not have access to the inner lives of the dead to know what becomes of their personhood or consciousness.
Speaker B
To say that something happens, you would need to define what that thing even is.
Speaker A
You're frustrating me, Chud.
Speaker A
Surely you have experienced things happening.
Speaker B
You describe inner sensations, but these too are already still.
Speaker B
A feeling is not an event.
Speaker B
A wind stirs in a room with no windows, you say, I feel it.
Speaker B
Yet the room remains unchanged.
Speaker B
I have always been a brony, I always will be a brony.
Speaker A
So you're telling me none of it matters? No progress, no decay, no feeling, no events?
Speaker B
Not quite.
Speaker B
I don't say that nothing matters, that is another criteria.
Speaker B
I say only nothing happens.
Speaker B
Motion is a superstition of the sensing mind.
Speaker B
It fears the stillness and so invents time.
Speaker A
This is unbearable.
Speaker A
I can't believe Snopes hasn't debunked this yet.
Speaker A
You're just saying it without being fact-checked.
Speaker B
Of course I'm saying it, it's useless to fact-check it because it is self-evident.
Speaker B
It is true.
Speaker B
All of this is one image.
Speaker B
Tranquil.
Speaker A
One could even call it a truth nuke.
Speaker B
Hail Cobson, and salutations to you.
Speaker A
Say, Chud, what about my feelings?
Speaker A
If I'm to feel something in my mind, an entirely internal event.
Speaker A
Like, say, if I were to think of a BBC, would that not count as something happening?
Speaker A
Are events to my mind not still events?
Speaker A
Something has happened.
Speaker A
Even if it is only happened to my mental state.
Speaker B
Mental activity consists, by any understanding, at least partially of brain activity.
Speaker B
This, as with anything we see in the world, is nothing.
Speaker B
It doesn't happen.
Speaker B
Because it's merely an appearance.
Speaker B
We have imagined them to have changed in state.
Speaker B
But changing state is merely a product of your perception, as you further break down these materials into molecules.
Speaker B
Then into atoms, then into their component parts, you find these physical objects to all be the same.
Speaker B
Made of identical material.
Speaker B
Simply appearing to occupy different points in space.
Speaker B
Can that truly be called something happening?
Speaker B
Any changes are simply a phantasm that you have invented.
Speaker B
It's a Jewish conspiracy, if you will.
Speaker B
Now, by any other account of the human mind, there exists some non-physical component prior to sensation.
Speaker B
To demonstrate that something happens within this realm of consciousness, one would need to present some evidence of its acting in the world.
Speaker B
This is impossible.
Speaker B
Thus, we cannot know if something happens with this mind.
Speaker A
What if I were to shine like the shiniest gemstone you've ever seen?
Speaker A
Cobson, there is no BBC here for you.
Speaker A
Carry on then, gentlemen.
Speaker A
Well, Chud, what if he were to shine?
Speaker B
What do you mean, Ferrol?
Speaker A
Like some kind of gem.
Speaker A
On the inside, I mean.
Speaker A
What if he commanded his will, if his soul, his consciousness, affected the world in some way?
Speaker A
If he caused something to happen?
Speaker A
To imprint his nature as a shiny gem upon the world?
Speaker A
What about love?
Speaker A
What about hate?
Speaker A
You can't tell me those aren't real, that nothing happens when a man falls in love or burns with rage.
Speaker B
Why do you imagine the passions escape this eternal stillness?
Speaker B
There was no evidence that they do.
Speaker B
Cobson will always be a gem, his nature as a gem remains unchanged.
Speaker B
As I said before, my feelings are an illusion, just as yours are.
Speaker B
Think of it like a character in a manga.
Speaker B
Notice that as these tales are committed to page, all things within them have happened.
Speaker B
The beginning and end are equal components of a book.
Speaker B
Both coexist simultaneously.
Speaker A
But you're describing them as if they never had choices.
Speaker A
No development, no arc, no tragedy.
Speaker A
Then love.
Speaker A
What is it to you, nothing more than a posture?
Speaker B
Precisely, a posture.
Speaker A
What then could sway you from this position?
Speaker B
Were I to personally witness something happening, something not bound by the laws of physics.
Speaker B
Where we know nothing really happens.
Speaker B
It would be a sufficient miracle to sway me, an act of will, perhaps of my own will.
Speaker B
Which causes something to happen.
Speaker B
That would convince me beyond doubt.
Speaker A
You infuriate me, Chud.
Speaker A
What if you took up a belief in God, you pledge yourself to a religion?
Speaker A
Wouldn't something happen then within you?
Speaker A
I mean, it would be a fundamental transformation of your own worldview.
Speaker B
That would change nothing.
Speaker B
On the pure naturalism, everything would be made of physical matter.
Speaker B
Nothing truly happens because everything is fundamentally the same.
Speaker B
The change is imaginary and not real.
Speaker B
It's fake.
Speaker B
Like 9/11.
Speaker B
If God is real, then he already has perfect foreknowledge.
Speaker B
The plan is already laid out by him for me.
Speaker B
The past and future are simply illusory distinctions.
Speaker B
All of history exist together as one big tapestry.
Speaker B
Nothing happens.
Speaker B
Everything simply is.
Speaker A
Well, would love move you then, Chud?
Speaker B
Perhaps love would convince me.
Speaker B
Love is said to be a transcendent quality, or so I'm told by those who experience it.
Speaker B
Unfortunately, I witnessed no evidence.
Speaker B
And perhaps if I had a girlfriend, I would know by sense experience what the sensation is like.
Speaker B
Perhaps then I could say that something happens.
Speaker A
Well, Chud, I see now that you are correct.
Speaker A
Thank you for this truth nuke.
Speaker A
Indeed, thank you for this gem of wisdom.
![[Full Episode]Nothing Else Compares（English-dubbed）#cdr… — Transcript](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YYJruShKWz8/maxresdefault.jpg)
