If you are told before reading a story what's going to happen, that's a spoiler. Many (but not all) people find that this detracts from their experience. If the story tells you in advance what's going to happen, that's not a spoiler. It's foreshadowing, a flash forward, a frame story, or some other common device. These devices may or may not improve the story. The study tested reactions to the latter, and the researchers called it the former, and then drew totally ungrounded aesthetic conclusions about the quality of the stories.
Roger Corman mostly directed (and later in his career, produced) films that, for all their faults, weren't knockoffs. He directed about a dozen a year at his peak, some over a mere weekend. His job was to produce movies quickly and cheaply, and not only was he one of the best at that, he also made them good enough that many became fondly remembered cult films. As a producer, he was mostly known for giving opportunities to upcoming talent, including Coppola, Scorsese, and Cameron. He's no hack, and no poor-man's substitute. He's the real deal. A better movie producer analogy would be David Rimawi, responsible for dozens of knockoffs in the last decade, including "Transmorphers" and "The Day the Earth Stopped".
Here's the argument, as far as I can tell.
1. Plato's dialogues contain certain patterns.
2. These patterns could only have been put there intentionally.
3. These patterns show Plato was a Pythagorean.
4. Therefore Plato was many centuries ahead of his time.
Regarding the premise (1), sure, everything sufficiently complex will contain lots of patterns. The late Martin Gardner has written some articles about common statistical fallacies that may be relevant here (some are in Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus IIRC). The more data there is to sift through, the more likely one can find a certain complex pattern. He's mostly looking at the lengths and locations of certain sections, within sizeable bodies of text, so it's no surprise he came across certain patterns, especially lengths in fractions of 12, and appearances of "positive" or "negative" issues (e.g., beauty or disease). The existence of the patterns does not support (2), even though some examples have been found that fit the author's specifications fairly precisely. It would take deliberate work to avoid producing any such patterns in long written works (like the Symposium, one of Plato's longest dialogues, which is one of the author's targets), so the patterns hardly show intention. (I'm simply granting the author's premises about the correct way to represent the dialogues, whose exact contents are not entirely known, due to transcription errors, small gaps, etc.)
Nor does (2) support (3). Pythagoreanism was a cult combining mysticism, mathematics, and music, and Pythagoreans worked out the "circle of fifths" from which we get the common 12-note musical scale, and some other very basic Western music theory. We know independently that Plato was influenced by Pythagoreans. But Plato's writing something that happens to contain a few 12-based patterns hardly constitutes an allusion to, let alone an endorsement of, Pythagoreanism or any principle of it. And the author's calling the collections of issues that come up at these intervals "harmonic" or "disharmonic" (rather than, e.g. "relevant", "contrary", or any other way we might connect the given pairs or triples of issues the author mentions in the paper) hardly shows any musical allusion on Plato's part.
Finally, (3) does not support (4), the sexiest claim mentioned in the summary and press release (and on the author's website). If it did, we could just as well say the Pythagoreans anticipated the scientific revolution, etc. Well, in a nearly empty sense they did, just like Democritus anticipated early 20th-century atomic physics (although the former "anticipation" is more vague and tenuous). Some people thousands of years ago said a few things that turned out to be more or less right. This does not show they knew things not widely known until much later, because they lacked sufficient justification for their beliefs. If you speculate enough, as early scientist/philosophers tended to do, you will occasionally get something right. Big whoop.
So as far as I can tell, this paper (and the other writings available on his website) contains a terrible argument for an obviously false conclusion. (Disclaimer: although I'm a philosopher, I'm not an expert on Plato or any other ancients.)
since about 1990 the M has stood for Ratings. they thought of changing it to "RTV" but it just didn't have the name recognition and "sexiness" in the 12-30 demographic.;)
In addition people don't necesserily want pliant children, they want children who are like they were (live vicarously through your children) cloning is a far more likely danger here then the pliant children issue.
Exactly. I don't think Katz put much thought into that bit. Most people will want their children to be what they think they could have been ideally. For instance, I would chose to have smarter and more sociable kids.
I don't think it's a huge problem that the vast majority of US citizens (I don't know enough to speak for other countries) think they should have been beautiful and popular, that brain power isn't a priority. What will happen is we'll have the same proportion of dumb kids as we do now, but the smart ones will invariably be raised by parents adamant that their children will grow up as smart as possible.
Anyway I think the whole thing will work itself out pretty well as long as our government doesn't become completely fascist. The world isn't like it used to be... every increase in communication technology is an increase in power for the little guys, so unless that changes, I really can't subscribe to all these crazy doom and gloom hypotheses.
Hollywood has been buying legislators off to get things like the Digital Millinium Copyright Act passed to pull an end-run around the Court. The act makes hacking out so-called "copy protection" a felony.
I suppose it's not enough that violating a copyright is illegal. That's the problem I have with these ideas... don't stop the method if it doesn't always = crime; stop the crime. They seem to be trying to make the laws idiot-proof... the idiots being the RIAA etc., who are too stupid to be able to protect the copyrights via due process etc.
Here's how I think Microsoft will develop its nukes:
v1.0: doesn't really exist, based on old sketches by Oppenheimer. Used only in idle threats and known as the "electron clouds and mirrors" demo.
v2.0: uses Itanium. immediately dropped on a target, no underground testing. Microsoft claims no responsibility for the (minor) damage caused.
v3.0: a dud.
v3.1: still no testing has been performed, causes significant damage to target. The UN promises to look into it but does nothing.
v4.0: rumored to be revolutionary, it merely detonates in the lab, destroying Microsoft. Probably cause: lack of testing.
Around the same time hackers around the world discover how to make a more powerful bomb in their spare time. Its relies on a new scientific principle known as "The Slashdot Effect" wherein an implosion causes all the energy and matter from the surroundings to bombard the target.
The UN investigates ties between the weapon and Slashdot. Mysteriously, all fingers point to Katz.;)
Telescope or no, you can't easily prove that the earth revolved around the sun when all you saw was stuff whizzing across the sky.
I think with the telescope he proved that Jupiter had its own moons, and thus that there were things that didn't directly orbit the Earth. It's enough to disprove a terracentric view.
you made an interesting point: But certainly there's no way in the world Stormfront or kkk.com is going to accurately rate itself for hate speech. They will say that hate speech is a subjective classification, and I daresay they'll be right.
As much as i dislike militant racist groups, I think they could be valuable allies in this case. Since they obviously have a right to distribute such information in the US, they will fight censorship to their collective dying breath if necessary. I think if we're looking for a course of action, one important part would be to notify the most extreme and tenacious groups of this threat.
wtf does that mean? do you know what a bottleneck is? it's something that keeps stuff from getting through as well... why would we want "the bottle" (whatever that represents) to "break"?
Look, the only reason everyone thinks (as I certainly do) that killing the Jews was wrong is because the Nazis lost. Right on. Honestly, just think about it. I'm not an expert on these things, but among the many Orthodox Jewish rules, there are many biased against non-jews. One that i can remember is that it is against the rules to charge interest to fellow Jews, but not for gentiles. (not to single out Judaism, I know most if not all cultures contain similar ideas) My point is that if you live in that culture, that's most likely how you'll feel about the issue. IMO, the reason most of us think murder is wrong is for the preservation of the species. But being a species that also dwells in the realm of thought, we also care about the survival of our ideas, and that's why most of us permit killing of humans under certain circumstances. If our ideas and values survive, we survive by proxy. um, i forgot my point somewhere.
Personally I think this is why a lot of people didn't find the movie frightening. If you've never wandered around alone in the woods, or gotten lost in them, you really have nothing to relate to (unless you're just an empathic person). I, having grown up playing in New England woods, instantly identified with their plight.
I think at least half of the people who saw this movie went in expecting to be dazzled... Well, that's not what this movie's about. It's about minimalistic expression and improv acting. Of course, i can't get enough of those things either, so it's obvious that i loved the movie... but if you're not into that stuff, you've got to at least respect the filmmakers for their *honest* attempt. They just did their own thing, and i have no idea how any of you freaks can lack respect for that...
I agree with you, but I can't stand to see anyone use the old fallacy we all learned in school, that "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Instead, I suggest we use Frank Herbert's version, "Power attracts the corruptible." There have been examples in the past of entirely reasonable and not-at-all-corrupt people in power. It's just extremely uncommon. Anyway, this is just a pet peeve, so don't take it personally.:)
Yeah... This is the kind of flamebait that says more about the author than the topic. I just hope his house doesn't get torched by some well-intentioned geek.
I have to tell all of you to take anything you read witha grain of salt. If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that the more adamant someone is about a point, the more wrong they are. That's just how it works.
Thus I don't trust Katz, or anyone else who's convinced of anything, to form my opinions for me. Personally I refuse to form an opinion on the hype surrounding TPM, other than to say Lucas' motivations in that area are a bit "iffy". But I really don't care about that as long as the movie is good.
I think everybody who is content to be either "for or against" something should look deep within themselves. You'll find that none of it matters. That's what (the amazing) Joseph Campbell was all about, that realization. And viewed in that perspective, if you like this movie, you like it. If you don't, what the F*CK DOES IT MATTER?! Just think. Everybody. Think. You'll feel like a dumbass for not having done it before.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are told before reading a story what's going to happen, that's a spoiler. Many (but not all) people find that this detracts from their experience. If the story tells you in advance what's going to happen, that's not a spoiler. It's foreshadowing, a flash forward, a frame story, or some other common device. These devices may or may not improve the story. The study tested reactions to the latter, and the researchers called it the former, and then drew totally ungrounded aesthetic conclusions about the quality of the stories.
Roger Corman mostly directed (and later in his career, produced) films that, for all their faults, weren't knockoffs. He directed about a dozen a year at his peak, some over a mere weekend. His job was to produce movies quickly and cheaply, and not only was he one of the best at that, he also made them good enough that many became fondly remembered cult films. As a producer, he was mostly known for giving opportunities to upcoming talent, including Coppola, Scorsese, and Cameron. He's no hack, and no poor-man's substitute. He's the real deal. A better movie producer analogy would be David Rimawi, responsible for dozens of knockoffs in the last decade, including "Transmorphers" and "The Day the Earth Stopped".
His website: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy
Here's the argument, as far as I can tell.
1. Plato's dialogues contain certain patterns.
2. These patterns could only have been put there intentionally.
3. These patterns show Plato was a Pythagorean.
4. Therefore Plato was many centuries ahead of his time.
Regarding the premise (1), sure, everything sufficiently complex will contain lots of patterns. The late Martin Gardner has written some articles about common statistical fallacies that may be relevant here (some are in Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus IIRC). The more data there is to sift through, the more likely one can find a certain complex pattern. He's mostly looking at the lengths and locations of certain sections, within sizeable bodies of text, so it's no surprise he came across certain patterns, especially lengths in fractions of 12, and appearances of "positive" or "negative" issues (e.g., beauty or disease). The existence of the patterns does not support (2), even though some examples have been found that fit the author's specifications fairly precisely. It would take deliberate work to avoid producing any such patterns in long written works (like the Symposium, one of Plato's longest dialogues, which is one of the author's targets), so the patterns hardly show intention. (I'm simply granting the author's premises about the correct way to represent the dialogues, whose exact contents are not entirely known, due to transcription errors, small gaps, etc.)
Nor does (2) support (3). Pythagoreanism was a cult combining mysticism, mathematics, and music, and Pythagoreans worked out the "circle of fifths" from which we get the common 12-note musical scale, and some other very basic Western music theory. We know independently that Plato was influenced by Pythagoreans. But Plato's writing something that happens to contain a few 12-based patterns hardly constitutes an allusion to, let alone an endorsement of, Pythagoreanism or any principle of it. And the author's calling the collections of issues that come up at these intervals "harmonic" or "disharmonic" (rather than, e.g. "relevant", "contrary", or any other way we might connect the given pairs or triples of issues the author mentions in the paper) hardly shows any musical allusion on Plato's part.
Finally, (3) does not support (4), the sexiest claim mentioned in the summary and press release (and on the author's website). If it did, we could just as well say the Pythagoreans anticipated the scientific revolution, etc. Well, in a nearly empty sense they did, just like Democritus anticipated early 20th-century atomic physics (although the former "anticipation" is more vague and tenuous). Some people thousands of years ago said a few things that turned out to be more or less right. This does not show they knew things not widely known until much later, because they lacked sufficient justification for their beliefs. If you speculate enough, as early scientist/philosophers tended to do, you will occasionally get something right. Big whoop.
So as far as I can tell, this paper (and the other writings available on his website) contains a terrible argument for an obviously false conclusion. (Disclaimer: although I'm a philosopher, I'm not an expert on Plato or any other ancients.)
Sure, it's offtopic, but so is the parent...
since about 1990 the M has stood for Ratings. they thought of changing it to "RTV" but it just didn't have the name recognition and "sexiness" in the 12-30 demographic. ;)
--FLuke
Exactly. I don't think Katz put much thought into that bit. Most people will want their children to be what they think they could have been ideally. For instance, I would chose to have smarter and more sociable kids.
I don't think it's a huge problem that the vast majority of US citizens (I don't know enough to speak for other countries) think they should have been beautiful and popular, that brain power isn't a priority. What will happen is we'll have the same proportion of dumb kids as we do now, but the smart ones will invariably be raised by parents adamant that their children will grow up as smart as possible.
Anyway I think the whole thing will work itself out pretty well as long as our government doesn't become completely fascist. The world isn't like it used to be... every increase in communication technology is an increase in power for the little guys, so unless that changes, I really can't subscribe to all these crazy doom and gloom hypotheses.
I suppose it's not enough that violating a copyright is illegal. That's the problem I have with these ideas... don't stop the method if it doesn't always = crime; stop the crime. They seem to be trying to make the laws idiot-proof... the idiots being the RIAA etc., who are too stupid to be able to protect the copyrights via due process etc.
Here's how I think Microsoft will develop its nukes:
;)
v1.0: doesn't really exist, based on old sketches by Oppenheimer. Used only in idle threats and known as the "electron clouds and mirrors" demo.
v2.0: uses Itanium. immediately dropped on a target, no underground testing. Microsoft claims no responsibility for the (minor) damage caused.
v3.0: a dud.
v3.1: still no testing has been performed, causes significant damage to target. The UN promises to look into it but does nothing.
v4.0: rumored to be revolutionary, it merely detonates in the lab, destroying Microsoft. Probably cause: lack of testing.
Around the same time hackers around the world discover how to make a more powerful bomb in their spare time. Its relies on a new scientific principle known as "The Slashdot Effect" wherein an implosion causes all the energy and matter from the surroundings to bombard the target.
The UN investigates ties between the weapon and Slashdot. Mysteriously, all fingers point to Katz.
I think with the telescope he proved that Jupiter had its own moons, and thus that there were things that didn't directly orbit the Earth. It's enough to disprove a terracentric view.
Like what if it's Schrödinger's cat? As far as you know the barfed up gravitons are both there and not there...
But certainly there's no way in the world Stormfront or kkk.com is going to accurately rate itself for hate speech. They will say that hate speech is a subjective classification, and I daresay they'll be right.
As much as i dislike militant racist groups, I think they could be valuable allies in this case. Since they obviously have a right to distribute such information in the US, they will fight censorship to their collective dying breath if necessary. I think if we're looking for a course of action, one important part would be to notify the most extreme and tenacious groups of this threat.
wtf does that mean? do you know what a bottleneck is? it's something that keeps stuff from getting through as well... why would we want "the bottle" (whatever that represents) to "break"?
Look, the only reason everyone thinks (as I certainly do) that killing the Jews was wrong is because the Nazis lost.
Right on. Honestly, just think about it. I'm not an expert on these things, but among the many Orthodox Jewish rules, there are many biased against non-jews. One that i can remember is that it is against the rules to charge interest to fellow Jews, but not for gentiles. (not to single out Judaism, I know most if not all cultures contain similar ideas) My point is that if you live in that culture, that's most likely how you'll feel about the issue.
IMO, the reason most of us think murder is wrong is for the preservation of the species. But being a species that also dwells in the realm of thought, we also care about the survival of our ideas, and that's why most of us permit killing of humans under certain circumstances. If our ideas and values survive, we survive by proxy. um, i forgot my point somewhere.
yeah. i mean, come on. hackers have been doing this forever... I even saw it on tv, so some more of you oughta know about it.
Personally I think this is why a lot of people didn't find the movie frightening. If you've never wandered around alone in the woods, or gotten lost in them, you really have nothing to relate to (unless you're just an empathic person). I, having grown up playing in New England woods, instantly identified with their plight.
I think at least half of the people who saw this movie went in expecting to be dazzled... Well, that's not what this movie's about. It's about minimalistic expression and improv acting. Of course, i can't get enough of those things either, so it's obvious that i loved the movie... but if you're not into that stuff, you've got to at least respect the filmmakers for their *honest* attempt. They just did their own thing, and i have no idea how any of you freaks can lack respect for that...
I agree with you, but I can't stand to see anyone use the old fallacy we all learned in school, that "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Instead, I suggest we use Frank Herbert's version, "Power attracts the corruptible." There have been examples in the past of entirely reasonable and not-at-all-corrupt people in power. It's just extremely uncommon. :)
Anyway, this is just a pet peeve, so don't take it personally.
Well, I wouldn't say it's absolutely un-funny... it's mildly funny at best.
Yeah... This is the kind of flamebait that says more about the author than the topic.
I just hope his house doesn't get torched by some well-intentioned geek.
I have to tell all of you to take anything you read witha grain of salt. If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that the more adamant someone is about a point, the more wrong they are. That's just how it works.
Thus I don't trust Katz, or anyone else who's convinced of anything, to form my opinions for me. Personally I refuse to form an opinion on the hype surrounding TPM, other than to say Lucas' motivations in that area are a bit "iffy". But I really don't care about that as long as the movie is good.
I think everybody who is content to be either "for or against" something should look deep within themselves. You'll find that none of it matters. That's what (the amazing) Joseph Campbell was all about, that realization. And viewed in that perspective, if you like this movie, you like it. If you don't, what the F*CK DOES IT MATTER?! Just think. Everybody. Think. You'll feel like a dumbass for not having done it before.