No, Plato said it came from Solon. Plato could've made that up so the story would have an air of authority; or if Solon did tell it, he could've made the Egyptian Priest up for the same reason. It still comes down to a friend-of-a-friend story, only the friend-of-a-friend is someone famous. Big whoop.
The only "Puff Daddy" remixing Plato did to the "story" was that he added the part about the Atlanteans being defeated by the ancient Athenians when Atlantis tried conquering the city and Zeus punished them for it by destroying their continent.
And we know this how...?
You ever wonder why the ancient peoples of the Middle East all share a common "flood" myth?
Same reason most of Eurasia shares a common Cinderella myth -- that's the way folklore works.
I'll refuse to raise the von Daniken card about how the Egyptians and Mayans both had pyramids and advanced astronomy skills, but the Atlantis "myth" ties up the loose ends rather easily.
Normally when people say, "I'm not going to bring up X" they don't follow it up by immediately bringing up X.
But since you did bring it up... so what? The Chinese had "advanced astronomy" too. So did whoever built Stonehenge. It just shows that the stars have fascinated humanity from time immemorial.
As for pyramids, apart from the basic shape they're nothing alike. Egyptian pyramids were cairns writ large whereas Mesoamerican pyramids were more akin to Ziggurats.
Why not mention that North American Indians raised burial mounds just like the Celts -- proof that they're both descended from the same civilization!
I'd argue that it has the most probable (and certainly best-supported from actual evidence) explanation of the Piri Reis map - Chinese navigators circumnavigated the globe from 1421-1425, and drew up maps along the way.
One slight problem -- if the Piri Reis map does indeed show Antarctica, then it shows it as part of the South American landmass, making circumnavigation impossible. If Reis based it on this purported Chinese expedition, then where are the Straits of Magellan?
You and I might now what spyware is, but that doesn't mean the government does. It could be that the regulation these guys are objecting to is too broad and would cover legitimate applications. I'd rather have no rules than for some idiot bureaucrat to define filesharing or Folding@Home as spyware.
Heres an excerpt from a reasonable article in Pravda
I hate to say it, but Pravda was more reliable when it was the mouthpiece of the Soviet government. The modern Pravda is on the same level with the National Enquirer and Weekly World News and any article in it should be treated as such.
Yes but has anyone here heard of the Piraeus map? It apparently comes from the middle ages, and is a depiction of an unknown landmass...
Its only in the last century that we can discern that the map is, in fact, very similar to Antarctica, only without the ice!
The supposed Antarctica on the Piri Reis map is located around southern Brazil and conjoins South America. The more likely explanation is that either Reis ran out of room and warped the coast, or misinterpretted the maps he was using in his work. The map (and others like it) is thorougly debunked here.
The earth rolling may be a bit of a stretch, but sure the entire monstrous mass rotates completely every 24 hours... is it really that far fetched?
Yes, actually. The Earth's spin is a product of its formation and continues by way of inertia. The energy required to change a planet's inertia is enormous -- we're talking the sun's entire energy output for several seconds. Even tidal forces are only able to slow the Earth's rotation over geological -- if not astronomical -- time. Sorry, but beyond its natural precesion, the axis isn't going to budge.
Atlantis was a didactic figure composed by Plato in order to contrast the civic values of Athens.
Keep in mind also that Plato talked about Atlantis in The Republic, the same book where he discusses a magic ring that makes people invisible. But no one goes searching for the Ring of Gyges.
Actually atomic bomb projects were under way before the beginning of the second world war in at least 3 countries, (Britain, America, and Germany). Churchill refers to the project in his history of the second world war in 1940.
So WWII didn't begin in September 1939 in your world?
His thesis is that the brain is *not* the equivalent of a Turing machine
And for that to be true, the brain has to work on some non-mechanical principle. Which is what I said.
and spends 400+ pages making a compelling argument why that is the case.
You may find it compelling but that doesn't make it scientific. He makes a few feeble attempts to tie the supposed non-mechanistic aspect of the human mind to quantum physics, but he doesn't have any evidence for it and he fails to explain why quantum effects only produce sentience in grey mush and not silicon.
The crux of his argument isn't anything reasonable -- it's just his personal revulsion at the idea that he's a biological computer. As such his argument is essentially philosophical not scientific.
What "they" did? "They" includes babies and toddlers who are incapable of doing anything. The only reason for God to order their death is to punish them for the sins of their parents. Any deity whose judgement says that's okay isn't a deity I'll defer to on anything.
It gets better. From Proxomitron's HTTP header log:
Match 509: Hide Browser's Identity from JS
What that means is that the site tried to use an invasive javascript to identify my browser. So even if an Opera user spoofs his user-agent string, the site can still detect it; and if he blocks the javascript, it won't grant him access.
If you've not heard of Vinge before that isn't a big surprise, but he did write True Names as well - the very foundation of the cyberpunk/hacker genre. This is also a good read if you can actually locate it.
Why wouldn't people be able to find it? Tor just put out a new edition two years ago that's still readily available in most chain bookstores, not to mention Amazon.
What he's saying (if the poster correctly represents Turing's thesis) is that a simulation of consiousness is the same as the real thing.
Or he's saying that there's no real thing -- we're just as much a simulation of consciousness as a computer AI.
Plus, in addition to your 8 step proof, you can add that if a person can be fully consious with either the left half or right half of the brain, then conciousness resides in neither side.
Not necessarily. A person with brain-damage might still be fully conscious, but not in the same way as if they had properly functioning wet-ware. The fact that your consciousness can be altered by changes to your grey matter is a strong indicator that consciousness is a property of the brain's functioning.
If a computer can be built that is self-concious (and not just a good simulator), then at which point does it cross the line from just a pile of electronics into being alive? How many transistors or lines of code does it take?
We can ask similar questions of organisms -- at what point does a conglomeration of cells become conscious? How many neurons does it take? Of course, such questions assume that it's a binary issue -- humans are conscious but chimps aren't; or perhaps chimps are and dogs aren't. It couldn't possibly be a continuum, could it.
My problem with Penrose is this -- there's no reason to believe that human consciousness is anything more than the result of purely mechanical processes in the brain. If so, then we should theoretically be able to reproduce a human mind on a sufficiently fast computer. Whether that's practically possible is another matter.
Penrose, however, simply denies that consciousness can be electronically replicated even in theory. When asked why, he waves his hands and shouts "Quantum physics!" Now while it's certainly possible that quantum phenomenon play some role in consciousness that can't be replicated by a computer, there's no real evidence for the position and Penrose is just arguing it a priori. It's sort of the metaphysical equivalent of Creationism.
Do you know what the citizens of that city did? I sure don't, as it is not said anywhere in the Bible. I do know, however, that G-d knew what they did wrong.
So you're saying that there is some sin this world so heinous that it justifies killing children, babies? Seriously?
And nice attempt at a flame with the "Genocidal Maniac" idea. Again, if you want to go that route and assume that any killings are evil (yes I have read Chronicles and Kings many times), then again...
When I say "genocide" I don't mean just any killings, but the bits where God orders people to massacere everyone in a city -- women and children alike. If you don't consider that wrong, you are seriously fucked up.
I am in earnest. The story is related in the second chapter of a Gnostic Gospel known as First Infancy.
And when the time of his circumcision was come, namely, the eighth day, on which the law commanded the child to be circumcised, they circumcised him in the cave.
And the old Hebrew woman took the foreskin and preserved it in an alabaster-box of old oil of spikenard.
And she had a son who was a druggist, to whom she said, Take heed you sell not this alabaster box of spikenard-ointment, even if you are offered three hundred pence for it.
Now this is that alabaster-box which Mary the sinner procured, and poured forth the ointment out of it upon the head and the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, and wiped it off with the hairs of her head.
Bullshit. Throwing money at a problem when money isn't the problem doesn't help, but when progress is slow because the endeavor has been underfunded, then throwing money at it does help.
Not necessarily. If some projects with adequate funding don't yield results, then there's no reason to believe that an underfunded project will necessarily yield results if its budget were increased. Asserting a priori, as the poster who started this subthread did, that we'd acheive cold fusion in short order if the US diverted 10% of the military budget to research, is absurd.
Here's where we go back to the most basic of all rebuttals: RTFA. "A positive Department of Energy review would open the door to badly needed research support."
That quote should end with an ellipse not a full stop; you left off the second part of the sentence: "but big questions remain even if the reality of the physics can be established." That rather contradicts the original poster's claim that we would -- no maybes -- have cold fusion if the government threw enough money at it. For such an assertion to have even the slightest credence, it needs to be accompanied by examples of what the money would be used for, not simply a blanket, "spend money on it."
Dig the hole deeper Spock - i dare ya. (See? I'm taunting you!
Yes, you're the wit of the fifth grade lunchroom. Now would you care to stick to the argument.
Slashdot Mirror
Pah. Use something with real power. Like Mozthulhu Starsquid or Moz-sothoth Moongoat.
Reminds me quite strongly of the fall of Numenor in the Silmarillion...
That's because Tolkien specifically modeled the Akallabeth on Atlantis, to the point that Atalante was the Elvish name for Numenor.
That "some guy" was Solon the Great.
... so what? The Chinese had "advanced astronomy" too. So did whoever built Stonehenge. It just shows that the stars have fascinated humanity from time immemorial.
No, Plato said it came from Solon. Plato could've made that up so the story would have an air of authority; or if Solon did tell it, he could've made the Egyptian Priest up for the same reason. It still comes down to a friend-of-a-friend story, only the friend-of-a-friend is someone famous. Big whoop.
The only "Puff Daddy" remixing Plato did to the "story" was that he added the part about the Atlanteans being defeated by the ancient Athenians when Atlantis tried conquering the city and Zeus punished them for it by destroying their continent.
And we know this how...?
You ever wonder why the ancient peoples of the Middle East all share a common "flood" myth?
Same reason most of Eurasia shares a common Cinderella myth -- that's the way folklore works.
I'll refuse to raise the von Daniken card about how the Egyptians and Mayans both had pyramids and advanced astronomy skills, but the Atlantis "myth" ties up the loose ends rather easily.
Normally when people say, "I'm not going to bring up X" they don't follow it up by immediately bringing up X.
But since you did bring it up
As for pyramids, apart from the basic shape they're nothing alike. Egyptian pyramids were cairns writ large whereas Mesoamerican pyramids were more akin to Ziggurats.
Why not mention that North American Indians raised burial mounds just like the Celts -- proof that they're both descended from the same civilization!
I'd argue that it has the most probable (and certainly best-supported from actual evidence) explanation of the Piri Reis map - Chinese navigators circumnavigated the globe from 1421-1425, and drew up maps along the way.
One slight problem -- if the Piri Reis map does indeed show Antarctica, then it shows it as part of the South American landmass, making circumnavigation impossible. If Reis based it on this purported Chinese expedition, then where are the Straits of Magellan?
Be sure to destroy your money, credit cards, ID and everything else that can be used t otrack you.
Why would someone destroy money? Cash is anonymous.
My point isn't so much that the game is brainwashing, but the advertising for it is.
Advertisements meant to brainwash people? You don't say.
You and I might now what spyware is, but that doesn't mean the government does. It could be that the regulation these guys are objecting to is too broad and would cover legitimate applications. I'd rather have no rules than for some idiot bureaucrat to define filesharing or Folding@Home as spyware.
The Greeks and Romans knew darn well where it was, because their city "Illium" was there well into the "AD" era.
Ilium, dammit. Remember, "The Iliad will not make me ill, and there is nothing odd about the Odyssey."
Heres an excerpt from a reasonable article in Pravda
I hate to say it, but Pravda was more reliable when it was the mouthpiece of the Soviet government. The modern Pravda is on the same level with the National Enquirer and Weekly World News and any article in it should be treated as such.
Yes but has anyone here heard of the Piraeus map? It apparently comes from the middle ages, and is a depiction of an unknown landmass...
Its only in the last century that we can discern that the map is, in fact, very similar to Antarctica, only without the ice!
The supposed Antarctica on the Piri Reis map is located around southern Brazil and conjoins South America. The more likely explanation is that either Reis ran out of room and warped the coast, or misinterpretted the maps he was using in his work. The map (and others like it) is thorougly debunked here.
The earth rolling may be a bit of a stretch, but sure the entire monstrous mass rotates completely every 24 hours... is it really that far fetched?
Yes, actually. The Earth's spin is a product of its formation and continues by way of inertia. The energy required to change a planet's inertia is enormous -- we're talking the sun's entire energy output for several seconds. Even tidal forces are only able to slow the Earth's rotation over geological -- if not astronomical -- time. Sorry, but beyond its natural precesion, the axis isn't going to budge.
Atlantis was a didactic figure composed by Plato in order to contrast the civic values of Athens.
Keep in mind also that Plato talked about Atlantis in The Republic, the same book where he discusses a magic ring that makes people invisible. But no one goes searching for the Ring of Gyges.
Actually atomic bomb projects were under way before the beginning of the second world war in at least 3 countries, (Britain, America, and Germany). Churchill refers to the project in his history of the second world war in 1940.
So WWII didn't begin in September 1939 in your world?
I loved programming this for the TI-81.
Newbie.
Wow, that guy must have done a LOT of acid.
Since he's the same guy who created Mario, it has to be shrooms.
His thesis is that the brain is *not* the equivalent of a Turing machine
And for that to be true, the brain has to work on some non-mechanical principle. Which is what I said.
and spends 400+ pages making a compelling argument why that is the case.
You may find it compelling but that doesn't make it scientific. He makes a few feeble attempts to tie the supposed non-mechanistic aspect of the human mind to quantum physics, but he doesn't have any evidence for it and he fails to explain why quantum effects only produce sentience in grey mush and not silicon.
The crux of his argument isn't anything reasonable -- it's just his personal revulsion at the idea that he's a biological computer. As such his argument is essentially philosophical not scientific.
What "they" did? "They" includes babies and toddlers who are incapable of doing anything. The only reason for God to order their death is to punish them for the sins of their parents. Any deity whose judgement says that's okay isn't a deity I'll defer to on anything.
It takes about five seconds to copy a URL into Proxomitron and create an exception.
If you've not heard of Vinge before that isn't a big surprise, but he did write True Names as well - the very foundation of the cyberpunk/hacker genre. This is also a good read if you can actually locate it.
Why wouldn't people be able to find it? Tor just put out a new edition two years ago that's still readily available in most chain bookstores, not to mention Amazon.
What he's saying (if the poster correctly represents Turing's thesis) is that a simulation of consiousness is the same as the real thing.
Or he's saying that there's no real thing -- we're just as much a simulation of consciousness as a computer AI.
Plus, in addition to your 8 step proof, you can add that if a person can be fully consious with either the left half or right half of the brain, then conciousness resides in neither side.
Not necessarily. A person with brain-damage might still be fully conscious, but not in the same way as if they had properly functioning wet-ware. The fact that your consciousness can be altered by changes to your grey matter is a strong indicator that consciousness is a property of the brain's functioning.
If a computer can be built that is self-concious (and not just a good simulator), then at which point does it cross the line from just a pile of electronics into being alive? How many transistors or lines of code does it take?
We can ask similar questions of organisms -- at what point does a conglomeration of cells become conscious? How many neurons does it take? Of course, such questions assume that it's a binary issue -- humans are conscious but chimps aren't; or perhaps chimps are and dogs aren't. It couldn't possibly be a continuum, could it.
My problem with Penrose is this -- there's no reason to believe that human consciousness is anything more than the result of purely mechanical processes in the brain. If so, then we should theoretically be able to reproduce a human mind on a sufficiently fast computer. Whether that's practically possible is another matter.
Penrose, however, simply denies that consciousness can be electronically replicated even in theory. When asked why, he waves his hands and shouts "Quantum physics!" Now while it's certainly possible that quantum phenomenon play some role in consciousness that can't be replicated by a computer, there's no real evidence for the position and Penrose is just arguing it a priori. It's sort of the metaphysical equivalent of Creationism.
Do you know what the citizens of that city did? I sure don't, as it is not said anywhere in the Bible. I do know, however, that G-d knew what they did wrong.
So you're saying that there is some sin this world so heinous that it justifies killing children, babies? Seriously?
And nice attempt at a flame with the "Genocidal Maniac" idea. Again, if you want to go that route and assume that any killings are evil (yes I have read Chronicles and Kings many times), then again...
When I say "genocide" I don't mean just any killings, but the bits where God orders people to massacere everyone in a city -- women and children alike. If you don't consider that wrong, you are seriously fucked up.
Bullshit. Throwing money at a problem when money isn't the problem doesn't help, but when progress is slow because the endeavor has been underfunded, then throwing money at it does help.
Not necessarily. If some projects with adequate funding don't yield results, then there's no reason to believe that an underfunded project will necessarily yield results if its budget were increased. Asserting a priori, as the poster who started this subthread did, that we'd acheive cold fusion in short order if the US diverted 10% of the military budget to research, is absurd.
Here's where we go back to the most basic of all rebuttals: RTFA. "A positive Department of Energy review would open the door to badly needed research support."
That quote should end with an ellipse not a full stop; you left off the second part of the sentence: "but big questions remain even if the reality of the physics can be established." That rather contradicts the original poster's claim that we would -- no maybes -- have cold fusion if the government threw enough money at it. For such an assertion to have even the slightest credence, it needs to be accompanied by examples of what the money would be used for, not simply a blanket, "spend money on it."
Dig the hole deeper Spock - i dare ya. (See? I'm taunting you!
Yes, you're the wit of the fifth grade lunchroom. Now would you care to stick to the argument.