There's a problem though: it's nice to be paid to consume, but it's not so nice to pay to produce. The return on investment calculus for power generation, especially solar and wind becomes trickier, which means the project financing becomes more expensive. Then fewer projects get greenlighted, despite solar panels being cheaper and cheaper.
Pretty much. The Greek pantheists weren't that different to Marvel or Star Wars fans. The point of the mythology was to have a common identity. If you asked the priest at the template of Demeter "Next spring, I'd like to go and meet Persephone on her journey to home to Demeter, which road does she normally take?" -- they would think you were some kind of fool getting reality and myth confused, while thinking up some mythology about your journey that would turn into a nice play next year.
The modern-day equivalent would be meeting a travel agent at a DC Comics convention and asking them to book flights for you to Gotham City. The best-case outcome is that they write some fan-fiction about you.
This was one of the reasons that Christianity was very disruptive, and exploded across the Graeco-Roman world over the following centuries. It provided a common identity with historical grounding -- if you wanted to go to the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus had kicked the merchants out, you could, and there was no ambiguity or vagueness about which one this happened in even after it was destroyed.
Graeco roman beliefs had historical grounding too. Mt. Olympus is a real place. The pillars of Hades were real. Cities were founded by gods and they existed right in front of people. Offerings would be made and outcomes would happen.
What was really so disruptive about christianity was the aspect of proselytization. That was new with christianity that wasn't really an aspect of judaism. And with proselytization came a need for formal organization of the faith, which served as a useful tool for government to maintain a mandate of power and quell divergent beliefs as heathen or even worthy of crusade, in contrast to synecratic greco-roman paganism.
I think this is not really true. They did all sorts of things… like, these fairly poor (by modern standards) people sacrificed valuable resources to their gods. There is no particular reason to think they believed in their gods any less than current religious people.
I know people with tens of thousands of dollars of Marvel paraphernalia. They spend thousands a year on tickets, events, comics. These people are not well off, it's money they otherwise would do well to have in retirement savings. Humans are not always rational.
They had big rituals that cost them a lot. I could see these as being performative. But then, for something to be performative, the people it is being performed to need to believe in it, right? Like modern generals don’t perform a sacrifice to Iron Man because modern soldiers don’t believe it is necessary.
They also had boring little rituals that weren’t really very effective performative signals.
What reason is there to think they didn’t believe in their gods? It is hard to query what’s going on in the heads even of living people, let alone long-dead ones. But I think the null hypothesis should be that people in the past at least believe their religion as much as modern ones do.
The comparison I would make is Santa Claus. He is not all powerful, but he has a lot of supernatural powers. He makes demands of your behavior (but you don't have to align your whole life around him) that comes with a tangible reward (presents). There are big, expensive and complicated rituals relating to him.
The Christian Scriptures actually include something of a counter-example to this, in Acts 19:35 and following, where an angry crowd is settled by being reminded that the statue in their temple _fell from the sky_:
"When the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: 'Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from (Zeus/Jupiter)? Therefore, since these things cannot be denied, you ought to be quiet and do nothing rashly. For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of (y)our goddess. Therefore, if Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a case against anyone, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another. But if you have any other inquiry to make, it shall be determined in the lawful assembly. For we are in danger of being called in question for today’s uproar, there being no reason which we may give to account for this disorderly gathering.' And when he had said these things, he dismissed the assembly."
Sure, but for some reason we are assuming that people don’t believe their religions… if we apply that logic to Christians as well, I guess an excerpt from their book won’t be very compelling.
> The Greek pantheists weren't that different to Marvel or Star Wars fans.
What are you basing this on? (And note, I think you mean "polytheists", as pantheists are people who don't typically believe in gods, but in the idea that everything in the universe is divine).
Polytheistic people pray to the gods just like monotheistic people do. Some believe in more concrete notions of their gods, some in more poetic ones, and both co-exist in the same societies. Just like many Christians believe Jesus existed, lived, died, and became physically resurrected, so do many modern-day polytheists, and many ancient ones as well.
And beyond the specifics of the stories, people most of all believed and believe that performing or not performing certain rituals will attract the benevolence or ire of their gods. They perform rituals to attract the rain, or to bring good luck in battle, or to bless their crops. They try to put curses on their enemies or competitors. These are all real beliefs that exist today, in both polytheistic and monotheistic religions, and that have existed since the dawn of humanity based on everything we know.
And one clear proof that people truly believed and still believe in the importance of these things is the significant resources they are willing to invest in them. Sometimes they directly perform sacrifices, sometimes they give money for the building of altars, sometimes they sacrifice their time or enjoyment towards these goals.
> i think plausibly being able to use youtube video as training data was the major reason for google to buy youtube in the first place
When I asked Eric Schmidt the "why did we spend so much money on buying youtube?" question his answer was "if it's the future of television, it was a bargain; if not, we overpaid."
There didn't seem to be any expectation among senior management at the time that it was anything other than "televisions carry advertisements, we want in on that market."
What's your sales experience? If the answer is "none", then you'll discover that bootstrapping is not nice at all.
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1. Services business, had a few clients that I knew would say yes.
2. None. But trying to pivot away from services to products -- dozens, none successful.
3. When you have a good pipeline of clients, it's great. Then it can all come crashing down to zero in a matter of weeks.
4. I want to, but now I'm essentially unemployable.
5. Solo.
6. Found myself back in academia of all places, and simultaneously advising large corporates on how to make use of language models.
I've got a list of 200+ things that I've accumulated since 2019 that the world seems to need, or that someone has said that they needed. It's a very raw list with ideas that range from the trivial and unresearched "why doesn't (thing) exist?" through to ideas that I've worked on for some period of time before I've realised that I need to hand it over to someone else and haven't yet met that someone. (My email is in my profile if anyone wants a copy.)
One of the things that has frustrated me is that there are many ideas that are worth pursuing that could make a big difference to the world, but can't be done in a way that is likely to be commercial viable -- and so can't be solved by starting a business.
If I had to provide guidance, I'd say "pursue a niche". Find something small that's obviously wrong and do something about that. You're more likely to have an impact than if you try to tackle some big headline problem. There will always be someone else more qualified and capable of handling that big problem: but there will always be too few people looking at all the small problems of the world -- and in aggregate, the small problems add up to more than any big problem.
It shouldn't matter, should it? Mosh keeps the state and only sends the differences. You would miss most of the animations, and there would be the overhead of sending the colouring escape codes (a few percent extra), but other than that, it wouldn't be any slower than an unanimated version that I can see.
It's pretty rare for a child growing up in an anti-science household to be convinced to change their worldview by abstract philosophy, not least because they won't have access to those sorts of books.
It's quite common for a child growing up in an anti-science household to be convinced to change their views on science by devout Christians writing about evolution, dinosaurs, astronomy and so on. Fundamentalist parents are often quite surprisingly happy for their children to read those kinds of books because they are written from the perspective of the in-group. There's a reason that Life of Fred is popular.
If you want to write a book about the theory of science and what truth is, go ahead, but you aren't going to make much of an impact on that particular target audience.
I was just such a person. I was taught that being a YEC meant that we were the only ones who earnestly sought after the truth. The world was blind, and by rejecting a corrupted authority and assessing the world on their own we were more likely to arrive at the truth.
In college, I successfully took apart the arguments of the peers who tried to dissuade me from my beliefs. They weren't good arguments; they had no idea why what they believed was true, but I did. This reinforced my views more than anything.
But, this earnest searching for the truth also led me to take philosophy of science and religion courses at my university, and that was the first time that I actually learned the mechanics of what went into the scientific method, and particularly why that method tends to achieve its goal of arriving at the truth. My entire primary and secondary education had never contained an discussion of this, nor had anyone I'd ever spoken to known it.
I also came across the talk.origins pages (https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-welcome.html), which contained the first full exposition I'd seen of not just the theory of evolution, but also the tremendous host of failed falsification opportunities that support it. I was pulled into a more correct view of the world kicking and screaming, by the same forces that had kept me away from it for my entire life.
I can't speak to how common my experiences are, but I'm endlessly grateful to those who didn't presume that there wasn't anyone like me out there. Admittedly I do have a stick up my butt about this, since it's a refrain I hear often. But I suspect that many of the flat-earthers out there are budding scientists in disguise, poorly served by their environment, and waiting to be freed.
This is a bit tough I'm afraid; while I'm very appreciative of the effort, I don't actually like the parts of the series that I've read very much.
The overall complaint is one of structure; prose flows from one point to another without my being able to build a model of where the argument is going, where it came from, what's an essential detail, what's an interesting aside, etc.
It's a common fault in technical writing, maybe the most common in my experience. IMO, well-organized writing is a "parasocial" endeavor: there's a bit of mind-reading involved. One needs to get inside the head of their audience and try to predict their mental states. Why did they click on this? What questions do they have? What preconceptions would cause them to immediately close out? How can you answer those concerns as quickly as possible, and lead gradually into a more nuanced discussion (if they so desire). If they're not likely to desire it, can you convince them to?
The answers to these kinds of questions about a brand new reader should suggest a thesis. Similar reasoning about a reader who has read the thesis should suggest the content of an abstract. And so forth, for an introduction, a guide to contents, etc. After that, presuming some skimming helps too.
I don't disagree, but FWIW, I've spent quite a bit of time studying theology, and Christian apologetics and YEC in particular. I actually ran a Bible study in conjunction with a local church for about four years. So I may have a little bit more leverage than you think.
Could you share what your leverage is in this case and how such leverage is reflected in the material? The preceding comment was a critique on your written material, not your personal leverage in the community.
The strategic purpose of this particular installment was to preemptively inoculate against ontological arguments for God, i.e. the argument that God is the source of logical and mathematical truth. But I didn't want to actually come out and say that explicitly at this early stage. I'm intentionally avoiding any overt mention of religion at this point. Does that answer your question?
There are signs of pre-frontal cortex damage or early stage dementia.
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