yunyun333
2d ago
There are people that argue this. For example: https://www.academia.edu/97411885/This_Generation_in_Matthew_24_34
Like this last group of scholars, I would suggest that, in Matthew 24:34, η γενεα αυτη denotes the people of Israel who are unfaithful to God. I will seek to demonstrate that thesis in these lectures by showing that (1) qualitative uses of γενεά were common in ancient Greek literature, that (2) this specific qualitative use of γενεά was used in Deuteronomy 32, which is the source of Jesus’ “this generation” sayings in Matthew, that (3) this allusion to Deuteronomy 32 is part of a larger pattern in Matthew of portraying Jesus as the new Moses who will lead His people of Israel out of exile and into their promised land under His theocratic rule, and that (4) this specific qualitative sense best fits the immediate contact of Matthew 24:34.
But again it all strikes me as special pleading, even though I'm sure this scholar put a lot of high quality research into it. Apocalypticism is a dominant theme from early Christian documents. They expected Jesus to return soon, because Jesus said he was returning soon. The prima facie reading would be what people back then understood.
yunyun333
3d ago
Again, I've looked through many commentaries, they are pretty unambiguous about this line. I feel confident enough not to bother pirating a more modern one.
Still not really seeing engagement with my point about Matthew 16:4.
Sure, it could be a group of people - contemporary people. Which is in line with every other place he uses it.
yunyun333
3d ago
You'll be forgiven if I take a Reddit source (which itself sources to scholarly works from between 15 and 20 years ago to represent the modern academic consensus) with a grain of salt. I'm not sure that it's wrong, necessarily, but 2009 was a long time ago.
Biblical scholarship has been a thing for hundreds of years, and the Bible isn't getting many updates. This is not a particularly dynamic field, so I think sources from 2004 are fine in this regard. You can pick up just about any introductory new testament textbook or scholarly commentary and find the same view. It's not controversial like, say, the authorship of the pastoral epistles. Here's what, for example. RT France has to say about it in his commentary:
Jesus’ condemnation of ‘this generation’ is a prominent theme in Matthew; see, apart from this passage, 11:16-19; 16:4; 17:17; 24:34, and especially 23:29-36, which shows that it refers to his contemporaries, not just Jews or men in general, as those in whom Israel's age-long rebellion has culminated, and on whom judgment must therefore fall.
More seriously, why do you think "generation" is the best translation for genea here (which can also be translated "nation" and or refer to a people group – Christ repeatedly, including in the section immediately prior, uses this word when referencing the Jews who opposed his teaching.)
Because that's how it's translated in like every English translation, such as the NRSV, the biblical scholar version. More seriously, here's a comment stolen from academicbiblical:
The "this generation" (γενεὰ) is Jesus' contemporaries. Jesus is prophesying the imminent arrival of the eschaton within the lifetime of those around him. This interpretation is the consensus of scholarship. See W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr, Matthew 19-28: Volume 3 (International Critical Commentary), 2004.
'All these things' refers to the eschatological scenario as outlined in vv. 4-31 and declares that it shall come to pass before Jesus' 'generation' has gone. In favour of this is the imminent eschatological expectation of many early Christians (cf. esp. 10.23 and Mk 9.1) as well as Jn 21.20-3, which reflects the belief that Jesus would come before all his disciples' had died. So most modern commentators.
...
We favour interpretation (ii). γενεὰ plainly refers to Jesus' contemporaries in 11.16; 12.39, 41, 42, 45; 16.4; and 17.17 as well as in the close parallel in 23.36, and the placement of our verse after a prophecy of the parousia is suggestive. If it be objected that this makes for a false prophecy and raises the issue of 2 Pet 3.3-4, we can only reply that some of Jesus' contemporaries were perhaps still alive when Matthew wrote, so he did not have the problem we do. In summary, then, the last judgement will fall upon 'this generation' just as earlier judgements fell upon the generation of the flood and the generation in the wilderness.
The earliest Christians believed that Jesus was returning soon, real soon. That's why Paul has to reassure the Thessalonians that the dead will rise and join Christ before them, the living. You can see the evolution of this belief in John, the last gospel to be written (multiple generations after Jesus's death), where the imminent apocalyptism of the Synoptics has completely vanished, because obviously Jesus hadn't returned yet. There's also the little passage at the end of John, where Jesus remarks, "If I want him [the beloved disciple] to remain until I return, what is that to you?". Now whether or not Jesus actually said this, clearly people thought he did, and so they thought the beloved disciple would be alive when Jesus returned. But because the beloved disciple died in the meantime, the gospel of John has to make clear that Jesus was making a hypothetical statement.
yunyun333
11d ago
The best way to close Malacca is with anti-ship mines – they are small and terribly cheap (it would probably be affordable for Malaysia or Indonesia to buy tens or even hundreds of thousands of mines) and it could require hours to clear each one.
These countries also need the strait, don't they? Why would they want to blockade it for everyone?
yunyun333
23d ago
Deporting him is one thing, but sending him straight to the gangster's prison for the worst people imaginable because he wore a chicago bulls hat is a bit much. They should at least ask Bukele to let him out.
yunyun333
28d ago
Trump exempts smartphones and computers from new tariffs
US President Donald Trump's administration has exempted smartphones and computers from reciprocal tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports. The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China. The exemptions also include other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells and memory cards.
Some estimates suggested iPhone prices and other electronic goods in the US would have gone up three times if the costs of the tariffs had been passed on to consumers. Trump's move takes off "a huge black cloud overhang for now over the tech sector and the pressure facing U.S. Big Tech", said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a research note, according to the Associated Press.
The US is a major market for iPhones, while Apple accounted for more than half of its smartphones sales last year, according to Counterpoint Research. It says as much as 80% of Apple's iPhones intended for US sale are made in China, with the remaining 20% made in India. Along with fellow smartphone giants such as Samsung, Apple has been trying to diversify its supply chains to avoid over-reliance on China in recent years. India and Vietnam emerged as frontrunners for additional manufacturing hubs. As tariffs took effect, Apple reportedly looked to speed up and increase its production of India-produced devices in recent days.
Lot of sound and fury, but it seems at the end of the day nothing will happen. Over/under on how many more 'exemptions' we'll end up with?
yunyun333
30d ago
Both those things were motivated by angry Palestinian refugees wanting to fight Israel while their host countries weren't so keen. One reason this whole situation is such a mess is that King Abdullah annexed the West Bank which was supposed to be the core of the new Palestinian state, which also happened to make Palestinians a majority of the Jordanian population. Obviously the Palestinians were more keen on attacking Israel than Jordan, especially post-67.
As for Lebanon, Israel set up a false flag terror group attempting to provoke the PLO into war during a ceasefire. They also attempted to assassinate the American ambassador to Lebanon.
yunyun333
1mo ago
Isn't that only supposed to work if your home country refuses to accept you or you refuse to say where you come from?
yunyun333
1mo ago
That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy
Democracy is a system of government, not a scientific method.
yunyun333
1mo ago
I kinda respect it doubling down, but it's scrambling to cover its ass. Also, I noticed it forgot the "mod 2n" part of c_i, which also throws a wrench into things.
yunyun333
1mo ago
For the first calculation dump at least, it comes up with a value 6.63 × 10⁸ s^-1, then compares it to the expected value from the NIST Atomic Spectra Database 1.6725 × 10⁸ s⁻¹, then spends half the page trying to reconcile the difference, before giving up and proceeding with the ASD value.
yunyun333
1mo ago
Hmm, it's maybe coming close to something that works, but seems to fuck up at the important junctures. After a couple of paragraphs where it doesn't find anything useful, in paragraph 7 it concludes that we can break down n^(k - i - 1) into q*2^(i+1) + r_i, where r_i = n^(k - i - 1) mod 2^(i+1). But then later it declares that r_i = n^(k - i - 1) and the proof follows from there. Unfortunately I don't think this would get any points, although maybe it could figure something out if you keep telling it where it fucks up.
yunyun333
1mo ago
The correct answer is about 5.98 ns when applying the spontaneous emission formula, so Gemini pro 2.5 got it correct, although it had to reference NIST when its original formula didn't work. It looks like it copies the correct formula so I'm not sure where the erroneous factor of 4 comes from.
yunyun333
1mo ago
I just used the free public facing ones (Gemini 2.0 flash, GPT 4-o). You can try asking it for the decay time for the 3p-1s transition in hydrogen. It can do the 2p-1s transition since this question is answered in lots of places but struggles to extrapolate.
yunyun333
1mo ago
Proof or Bluff? Evaluating LLMs on 2025 USA Math Olympiad
Abstract: Recent math benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) such as MathArena indicate that state-of-the-art reasoning models achieve impressive performance on mathematical competitions like AIME, with the leading model, o3-mini, achieving scores comparable to top human competitors. However, these benchmarks evaluate models solely based on final numerical answers, neglecting rigorous reasoning and proof generation which are essential for real-world mathematical tasks. To address this, we introduce the first comprehensive evaluation of full-solution reasoning for challenging mathematical problems. Using expert human annotators, we evaluated several state-of-the-art reasoning models on the six problems from the 2025 USAMO within hours of their release. Our results reveal that all tested models struggled significantly, achieving less than 5% on average. Through detailed analysis of reasoning traces, we identify the most common failure modes and find several unwanted artifacts arising from the optimization strategies employed during model training. Overall, our results suggest that current LLMs are inadequate for rigorous mathematical reasoning tasks, highlighting the need for substantial improvements in reasoning and proof generation capabilities.
Background: The 'official' American competitive high school math circuit has several levels, progressing from AMC 10/12 (25 question, multiple choice, 75 minutes total) to AIME (15 questions, 3 hours, answers are in the form of positive 3 digit integers) to USAMO (2 days, 6 proof-based questions total, 3 questions with 4.5 hours per day), with difficulty increasing commensurate with the decrease in # of questions. While most AIME questions can be ground out using a standard set of high school/introductory college level math knowledge and tricks, the USAMO requires more depth of understanding and specialized techniques. For example, problem 1 (theoretically, the easiest) is as follows:
Let k and d be positive integers. Prove that there exists a positive integer N such that for every odd integer n > N , the digits in the base-2n representation of n^k are all greater than d.
This problem can be solved fairly simply using induction on k.
I've also noticed this when plugging grad-level QM questions into Gemini/ChatGPT. No matter how many times I tell it that it's wrong, it will repeatedly apologize and make the same mistake, usually copied from some online textbook or solution set without being able to adapt the previous solution to the new context.
yunyun333
2mo ago
He was never a paragon though. He's a whiny arrogant prick in AotC who basically abandons his Jedi training as soon as he's alone with Padme and then commits mass murder. He isn't even really seduced by the dark side, he's tricked because Palpatine just lies about how he can save his wife from death by pregnancy, and then immediately goes into kill-children mode.
The OT is definitely kind of a mess because of how many massive changes they made on the fly. The first movie was intended to be a standalone of course, so it's a very generic hero's journey tale, and Vader and Anakin were two different people. Even in Empire Leia wasn't supposed to be Luke's sister (hence the kiss at the beginning) and Yoda saying "There is another" was referring to his real twin sister secretly being trained somewhere else, but Lucas realized it was going to be an even more complicated mess. RotJ is a pretty wacky movie overall but the throne room scene is peak.
yunyun333
2mo ago
This metaphor doesn't really work in the context of the Taliban having emerged from an extremely bloody civil war that was still ongoing when the US intervened. And if aiding a foreign power makes you a traitor, the Taliban hardly lacked foreign assistance.
yunyun333
2mo ago
The kolomoisky thing is interesting. Guy basically bankrolled his run to president and then Z-man turns on him and jails him. Wonder what happened there.
yunyun333
2mo ago
Why would foreign adversaries concern themselves with small fry, when they can go for the big fish?
In late 2024 U.S. officials announced that hackers affiliated with Salt Typhoon had accessed the computer systems of nine U.S. telecommunications companies, later acknowledged to include Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Spectrum, Lumen, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream.[8][9][10] The attack targeted U.S. broadband networks, particularly core network components, including routers manufactured by Cisco, which route large portions of the Internet.[3][4] In October 2024, U.S. officials revealed that the group had compromised internet service provider (ISP) systems used to fulfill CALEA requests used by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct court-authorized wiretapping.[9]
The hackers were able to access metadata of users calls and text messages, including date and time stamps, source and destination IP addresses, and phone numbers from over a million users; most of which were located in the Washington D.C. metro area. In some cases, the hackers were able to obtain audio recordings of telephone calls made by high profile individuals.[11] Such individuals reportedly included staff of the Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign, as well as phones belonging to Donald Trump and JD Vance.[12] According to deputy national security advisor Anne Neuberger, a "large number" of the individuals whose data was directly accessed were "government targets of interest."[11]
yunyun333
2mo ago
Yup, one proposal was for a telescope in Chile, and it had a throwaway sentence about how it could help get more Hispanic students interested. As if telescopes are built in Chile for outreach and not because it has a crazy dry high desert.
yunyun333
2mo ago
Today I see news that the NSF research experiences for undergraduates, which trains undergraduates to conduct real research and which I personally credit with making me into a scientist, is being shuttered across much of the country.
Someone did a look into science grants being cancelled on the ssc sub and their conclusion was that DOGE or whoever basically just ctrl+f'd "diverse", "underrepresented", and "minority" and axed all matches. This would correspond with why REUs are being shuttered.
yunyun333
2mo ago
Ukraine doesn't even have meaningful amounts of minerals. This whole talking point is completely empty.
Ukraine has no significant rare-earth deposits other than small scandium mines. The US Geological Survey, an authority on the matter, doesn’t list the country as holding any reserves. Neither does any other database commonly used in the mining business. At best, the value of all the world’s rare-earth production rounds to $15 billion a year — emphasis on “a year.” That’s equal to the value of just two days of global oil output. Even if Ukraine had gigantic deposits, they wouldn’t be that valuable in geo-economic terms.
Say that Ukraine was able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of the world’s rare earths. That would equal to about $3 billion annually. To reach the $500 billion mooted by Trump, the US would need to secure 150-plus years of Ukrainian output.
Take, for instance, titanium. In 2023 the entire world market for the hard, super-light metal was $31 billion. Last year, Ukraine exported just $11.6 million – not billion – of titanium-bearing minerals. Though in theory some 7 per cent of the world’s reserves of titanium are under Kyiv’s control, it will take an investment of billions to create refining capacity to make more valuable and exportable titanium sponge. Even then, seven per cent of the world market would amount to gross sales of just over $2 billion a year.
It’s the same story with lithium. In Lindsey Graham’s imaginary world, Ukraine’s estimated 500,000 tonnes of reserves could be worth between $10 billion and $12.5 billion at current prices. But world lithium sales in 2024 were just $37 billion... according to a recent report by BNE Intellinews, “Kyiv has yet to even begin exploiting its deposits [and] produces no lithium.” Some of the most promising deposits at Kruta Balka deposits in the Zaporizhzhia region are partially under Russian control
It's too expensive to send Ukraine weapons, but also we must put boots on the ground and invest tens of billions into Gaza to make it an Israeli Monaco, or something. None of this is coherent.
I skimmed it but I'm a dilettante. It really is quite a fascinating field.
I agree that if you're willing to approach it with faith, then a lot of it is unclear enough for faith to hold up.
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