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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   3001 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 8, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Literally the single actual point anywhere in this article is that the very vague and informal metric that is Moore's law is slowing down. It doesn't even attempt arguing for the past's importance, letting alone doing a great job at it. It just lists off a series of applause lights and hopes you don't notice it never puts forth any actual arguments.

Argues that there are things the ancients can do we still can’t reproduce today? Asks if any modern writers are as good as former ones? Etc

It doesn't actually argue this since it doesn't specify any of these things, except Da Vinci's understanding of figure and form. Which I think is matched by millions of art students worldwide who've practiced figure drawing. The internet is flooded with artists of absolutely astounding technical skill by historical standards and no one cares.

He doesn't give any criteria to judge the various categories of writers by. Or even give a category for Turing and Von Nuemann. As computer scientists, they knew far less than any halfway competent CS student these days. And these students do not learn from their original writings because other people have since found better ways to formulate their results. As pioneers in a nascent field of science, who or what field are you comparing them to and finding the modern analogues wanting?

To expand on the second paragraph point because it's relevant to the original discussion, there's no reason to believe that the first person to come up with an idea would also come up with the best way to structure and explain it.

And indeed, students in any hard science don't learn from the original writings of the pioneers in their field, because that would be a very inefficient way to learn. The original writings serve mostly as a historical curiosity. And as the contrapositive, I feel that any field where people overly focus on the original texts immediately shows itself to be more about status signaling games than any actual content.

Asks if any modern writers are as good as former ones?

What if I said yes and pointed at a random author I liked better than Tolstoy? It's a matter of opinion.

Tolstoy had his share of more refined critics as well.

there are things the ancients can do we still can’t reproduce today

Are there? I can't remember off the top of my head anything we genuinely "can't reproduce", as opposed to "can't be assed to".

Roman concrete? Although I think we recently cracked that one.

Greek fire?

I count "we have better alternatives" as "can't be assed". Does it really matter that we don't know the precise formula they used because they haven't written it down? We have concrete. We have napalm. We probably have ways to make them in a low-tech environment - would have to check one of those "uplifter isekai protagonist's cheat sheets" for that.

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