Survivor & Philosophy

Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Psilocybin
from January 1, 1989 to December 31, 2019

Accepted for Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, Data Visualization at City University of New York, September 2020
SEASONS SECTIONS
  • Season 40
    • Episode 14
      Season 40
    • Episode 13
      Season 40
    • Episode 12
      Season 40
    • Episode 11
      Season 40
    • Episode 10
      Season 40
    • Episode 9
      Season 40
    • Episode 8
      Season 40
    • Episode 7
      Season 40
    • Episode 6
      Season 40
    • Episode 5
      Season 40
    • Episode 4
      Season 40
    • Episode 3
      Season 40
    • Episode 2
      Season 40
    • Episode 1
      Season 40
    • Pre-Game
      Season 40
  • Season 39
    • Episode 13
      Season 39
    • Episode 12
      Season 39
    • Episode 11
      Season 39
    • Episode 10
      Season 39
    • Episode 9
      Season 39
    • Episode 8
      Season 39
    • Episode 7
      Season 39
    • Episode 6
      Season 39
    • Episode 5
      Season 39
    • Episode 4
      Season 39
    • Episode 3
      Season 39
    • Episode 2
      Season 39
    • Episode 1
      Season 39
    • Pre-Game
      Season 39
  • Season 38
    • Episode 13
      Season 38
    • Episode 12
      Season 38
    • Episode 11
      Season 38
    • Episode 10
      Season 38
    • Episode 9
      Season 38
    • Episode 8
      Season 38
    • Episode 7
      Season 38
    • Episode 6
      Season 38
    • Episode 5
      Season 38
    • Episode 4
      Season 38
    • Episode 3
      Season 38
    • Episode 2
      Season 38
    • Episode 1
      Season 38
    • Pre-Game
      Season 38
  • Season 37
    • Episode 13
      Season 37
    • Episode 12
      Season 37
    • Episode 11
      Season 37
    • Episode 10
      Season 37
    • Episode 9
      Season 37
    • Episode 8
      Season 37
    • Episode 7
      Season 37
    • Episode 6
      Season 37
    • Episode 5
      Season 37
    • Episode 4
      Season 37
    • Episode 3
      Season 37
    • Episode 2
      Season 37
    • Episode 1
      Season 37
    • Pre-Game
      Season 37
  • Other Things
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Methodology
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
SEASONS SECTIONS

Episode 2
Season 40

Posted on April 6, 2020January 22, 2021 by survivor_philosophy

In an interview, Ben says he’s teaching people how to find immunity idols. You do realize, Ben, that when you talk to the interviewers, you’re talking to the people who hide the immunity idols? Does Ben think immunity idols are like fruit or gold? That they’re just sitting out in the Fijian wilderness whether Survivor is going on or not? Then in another interview, Kim tells the interviewers that finding immunity idols is connected to prayer and intuition.

On the surface, this seems like strange behavior, especially for Ben. Not only does Ben seem to be confused about what immunity idols are, but by revealing his knowledge to the hiders, he’s teaching them to hide idols better in the future.

What is going on here? I think the most likely possibility is that the cameras have become so commonplace for Ben that he’s lost some of his awareness of what they really are. Animals, including humans, need to filter the enormous flood of sensory data coming into their brains, because it would otherwise be overwhelming. There’s a fascinating experiment that asked people to count the number of times that a basketball was passed in a video. During the video, a man in a gorilla suit walks right in front of the camera. After the video, the watchers are asked if anything unusual occurred in the video while they were watching it, and a high percentage said that nothing unusual had happened. Their brains had filtered out the gorilla because it had nothing to do with basketball passes.

This filtering is one of the reasons for philosophical inquiry. Philosophy often deals with the foundations of ideas and issues. People sometimes ask why we need to study this. Don’t the people working with those ideas and issues already have a good grasp of their foundations? But filtering can often prevent awareness of our foundations. This is why studying foundations in themselves can be crucial, because hopefully filtering will be less likely (though still probably unavoidable).

Filtering could also explain why the hell Wendell was still chewing on a straw during a physically demanding immunity challenge. He’d been chewing it for so long that his brain was filtering out the risk of getting stabbed in the throat.

New Episode

  • Episode 14
    Season 40
  • Introduction
  • Methodology
  • Results
  • Stroke Therapies
  • Test

Older Episodes

  • Episode 13
    Season 40
  • Episode 12
    Season 40
  • Episode 11
    Season 40
  • Episode 10
    Season 40
  • Episode 9
    Season 40

Seasons

  • Season 37
  • Season 38
  • Season 39
  • Season 40
©2023 Dax Oliver ©2020 Dax Oliver | Built using WordPress and a self-modified version of the Responsive Blogily theme by Superb