232600+ entries in 0.869s
mircea_popescu: (is
the shape of
the smoking crater polygonal or circular ftr ?)
mircea_popescu: so
then
the greeks are
the british and
the work with hands
the zulu ?
mircea_popescu: all philosophies are dead in
this sense ; next you'll be asking "what is
the sun's utility
to us"
mircea_popescu: well wtf argument is
this, "they died". sure, constantinople fell
to
the
turks, and rome fell
to odoacer. hurr ?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i met
two kinds of women in
this life ;
the kind
that'd hang out with anyone just as long as
they didn't go
to jail/starve/whatever ; and
the kind
that'd hang out with me if it meant underground.
mircea_popescu: traditionally, as well as here,
the value of
trying aristotle is
that it allows one
to expose his own cluelessnes, which is generally beneficial.
mircea_popescu: the problem being
that no - circular motion is NOT linear ; much like a
taylor sum is not an integral. yes
they can be made arbitrarily close, sure, whatever.
mircea_popescu: ahahaha! ok
this is sweet : "Now he's waist deep. Yes, you can describe all motion as a compound of linear and circular motion. For
that matter, vectors
treat all motion as combinations of linear motion."
mircea_popescu: and after aristotle was invented,
the greek world had what, -20 years of life left ?
mircea_popescu: moreover
the "physiologists" (term of art) went
through anaximander's ionians AND pythagora's italics before socrates was even invented.
mircea_popescu: s a macedonian not a greek and spoke greek like you speak french ; whereas MOST greek life happened in constantinople, a good
third
to a half of it ~under
turkish rule~. so... whatevers, not quite so simple.)
mircea_popescu: (also it should prolly be pointed out
that aristotle was not
that much of a star of
the greek world, if for no other reason
then because he was born realtively late. he was a major star of ~scholastics~, and discussions of aristotle esp in
translation are more a discussion of early christian europe
than of "the greeks" - which incidentally are also a complex
thing, alexander for instance, who caused hellenism, was nevertheles
a111: Logged on 2016-12-02 20:44 asciilifeform: during dinner with hitler et al, speer (among other
things, reichsminister of architecture) made a comment about 'one problem, our concrete houses will leave very poor ruins'
mircea_popescu: the first gives youy ballista AND REDDIT ; and
the other gives you praxitelles and alf-s-gentoo
mircea_popescu: no,
the other gives you eg statues worth keeping around.
mircea_popescu: and sure,
the greek style of deductive logic, from
the all downwards lost in
the field
to
the latin method of inductive "from
the parts is made
the ballista". i have no objections, but also can't pretend
the alternative never existed.
mircea_popescu: when you go
to school in 3rd grade or w/e
the
teacher
tells you a line is "blablabla EXTENDS
TO INFINITY"
mircea_popescu: should be pretty evident
that a dimension defined in
terms of divisibility is very fundamentally not
the same
thing as
the latin notion of dimension-as-extensibility.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: there's many problems ; it's not even
the case
that
the greek notion of "dimension" at all maps
to anything here extant.
the discussion is carried on
trilema on easier
things such as "power" etc ; but in any case, it's rather like having lisp
types arbitrarily sloshed around. you don't just add 5+5 like
that, if
they're different
types.
trinque: just sounded like he was establishing an axiom, and would've said bring forth
the man who has seen
the 4th dimension if challenged.
mircea_popescu: (there is no such
thing as an inaccessible physical system by
the definition of
the
terms.)
mircea_popescu: note also
that all sorts of insanities are "the most parsimonious know model" for various otherwise-inaccesible psycho-systems.
mircea_popescu: yes ; but its rejection does not actually constitute "circular logic". it's more like defensive skepticism
than anything.
mircea_popescu: yes, but
the proposal
to discuss a space one may never walk into may be seen with
the same eyes
mircea_popescu: there you go - i haven't
translated, but at least discussion allowed us
to build a sufficient basis so at least a meaningful summary could be devised.
mircea_popescu: here's
the
thing : structure of knowledge and content of knowledge are different concerns. dutch erroneously represents a problem with
the content in
terms of problem with structure.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i;m not sure you grasp
the point here. read it again!
mircea_popescu: (contrary
to common belief, supernumeray probabilities are a major problem in
theoretical physics ; much of
the nature of
the problems aristotle was struggling with in his discussion of heavens)
mircea_popescu has better greek fu
than dutch, which allows him a better emulated aristotle
than dutch's, which is neither here nor
there.
mircea_popescu: it's likely what he'd have said, especially if older and
thus mellowed.
mircea_popescu: and aristotle could read
this log, smile broadly at alf, and say "hey, suppose someone comes up with a superunitary probability ; and you disqualify it for you know, being out of
the defined bounds. my my aren't you a circular logician just like me!"
jurov: you can write elaborate essays in any languages, dead or alive
that pi ====
three. but you can't clearly draw it.
mircea_popescu: the question before you is, were you
trying
to understand
the greeks, or were you
trying
to explain
to yourself why you aren't
trying
to ?
mircea_popescu: now we understand each other. dutch can't be "wrong" about aristotle per se. it is a fact he didn't much understand what
the other said ; and it is a fact
that in
the dutch system, dutch's observations stand, however vaguely greek flavoured
they may be.
☟︎ mircea_popescu: is she going
to be disqualified from queenhood if she fails
this multiple choice
test ?
mircea_popescu: suppose you excavate
tomb in valley of queens ; suppose you find ~live~,
talking, cogent queen in
there. suppose you
take her
to
the shelf of items, and give her a questionnaire. she is
to select "dildo spatula or hat" for each present item.
mircea_popescu: as generally happens, mongols will comprehend
the bums better
than
the middle class.
mircea_popescu: i didn't say
that. i said -
that dutch's writing is interesting as of dutch ; not much as of aristotle.
mircea_popescu: and no, it's not at all harder
to
talk nonsense via diagram. more generally :
there's no methodological salvation ; you won't go
to heaven
through not swearing ; you won't produce science by following "the science method" and so following.
mircea_popescu: which he did sound like ; and which is why he doesn't figure as proeminently among
the greeks of his
time as he does among moderns.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform euclid was considerably more portable, ironically, because he was considerably more alphabetic. he eschewed ~most~ of
the power of greek at his
time, and ate
the downside of sounding like a literal retard.
mircea_popescu: so
then : in order
to go from a string in greek
to a string in english, one has
to reconstruct
the conceptual underpinnings,
the "source code". and
this is not
trivial.
mircea_popescu: because no, words don't "have meanings". your meanings for ANY WORD are a function of ALL
THE OTHER WORDS YOU KNOW. which is why my definitions regularily blow out english dictionaries, wikipedia and other sources of "wisdom" out of
the water - i know more words, and in
this knowledge i know all
the words i know ~better~. infinitely and irreproducibly so.
☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎ mircea_popescu: now -
translation operates not on
the object code (ie,
the string quoted, or a string quoted) but on
the whole program : any string plus ~the
totality~ of conceptual content of
the brain
that produced it.
mircea_popescu: and as
to
the problem of
translation : source code and object code make
together a
thing. an item can not be said
to be a program without either.
their relationship is particular, you can go from one
to
the other, and ~to a very limited degree~ from
the other
to
the one.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform as per usual, it depends on what is is. so - yes, pissed. you piss idem, when you say
things
to
the
tendency of "work - for
tractors ; not humans". your dislike of perl and his dislike of "observation" in
the sense of "handiwork" are very close ; and closer
to my eye
than alternatives.
mircea_popescu: jurov
this is not actually
true. but
the falsity of
the equivalency would be harder
to pinpoint.
jurov: heh, nice example how alphabet is inferior
to diagrams. if aristotle had drawn a diagrams
that would survive
to
this day, no
translation needed
☟︎ mircea_popescu: i hasn't
the patience
to go into detail as
to echonton eisin & friends. not aristotle's fault.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform
to be precise : i can't
turn
the greek string into an english string for you for
the same reason you can't
turn
trb into lisp code for me. "but alf, it compiles! a lisp version must exist!" hurr. i don't propose "because you can't
take object code and make me lisp source it follows no c sources existed" do i ?
mircea_popescu: this is not exactly correct.
they despised what you despise, which is
to say sitting
there and deleting 30-40 spam accounts/day
mircea_popescu: let's approach
this from a more hospitable angle. dutch makes
the charge (unsourced, but it's sheer anglicanism)
that
the reason
the greeks didn't build ironclads is
that
they (like
the chinese, natch) despised manual labour.