Shrike
5hr ago
There's this "historical evidence on Sparta was largely written down by Sparta's political opponents" factoid that I recall of note.
Sure, I think careful scholars are cognizant of that sort of thing.
Early writings on Christ are interesting because we both have early writings from Christians (who mostly didn't profit much by believing in Christ as per their own writings) and writings from neutral or hostile third parties.
I haven't read as much of the early writings from and on Christians as I would like, but from what I can tell the pro- and anti- Christian writings often read exactly as you would expect, e.g. the Christians are writing about church discipline, doctrine, and defending their beliefs as intellectually legitimate and their opponents are calling them gullible retards from first principles.
I get the impression that the main difference between second century theological debates about Christianity and Reddit today is that a lot of Christian arguments have remained the same (sans the ones aimed at the pagan gods), whereas "Christ was not the Son of God, merely a magician" or "Christ was not the Son of God since God would never come to Earth as a peasant" have fallen out of favor. "Christianity will destroy our way of life because they are opposed to infanticide and licentiousness" still has some traction though.
Shrike
5hr ago
The debate at that link is mostly about what may have happened around 100kya, way too early for the Cain/Abel story to work without being full of anachronisms.
Setting aside the question of whether the archeological timeline is correct, isn't it true that in Genesis you only get to the more recent dates if you interpret ben as "son" and never "descendant"?
Cain vs Abel is a pretty good parable for the conflicts of around 10kya, though, between early agriculturalists and pastoralists.
A conflict that might be relevant to the Jews at the time Genesis was written.
Telling a story whose details aren't literally true in order to aid understanding of a deeper truth was like God's entire M.O.! What else would we expect? "Okay, before primordial nucleosyntheis, when the cosmic microwave background hadn't even red-shifted yet, the photons were ... are you following any of this? ... okay, forget it, just write down: 'Let there be light'."
Yes, I 100% agree with this.
I just think God is sneaky and capable of pulling off multiple levels of truth. In the afterlife we might all be like "oh wow that was all true in ways we didn't even think of evaluating."
Shrike
5hr ago
How much other, non-Christian mystery hits the same threshold of evidence?
A decent question - while I am not familiar with any non-Christian mysteries from the premodern period with comparable documentation, I assume there are a lot of non-Christian mysteries with at least similarly persuasive levels of evidence, since I think the supernatural is real and encounters with it are not limited to the Christian tradition.
For instance, I don't consider Michael Shermer's poltergeist-y experience a "Christian mystery" and there's good evidence that it's it really happened (admission against interest, multiple witnesses).
Shrike
5hr ago
I want to register that I think this is wrong. Catholics have as good or (I suspect) better networking in the halls of political power than Protestants, very strong institutions, and they are accepted on both sides of the aisle. If you are a member of a Protestant mainline denomination Protestants will quickly ask "PCA or PCUSA" (or whatever the equivalent is for that denomination) and with Catholics unless you go to Latin Mass or something, just being Catholic isn't necessarily a political tell.
Shrike
5hr ago
Anyone who has been to Texas knows whites are a minority here in any medium sized and larger city.
What are you defining as medium-sized? On a very lazy Wikipedia check, College Station, Abilene, Amarillo, McKinney, are all majority white, although Wikipedia's numbers are a bit old so that may no longer be the case.
And (obviously) most "non-white" Texans are Hispanics, who are hardly an alien culture in the Southwest.
Shrike
7hr ago
I think what you end up finding if you adopt this approach is that all of reality becomes, to varying degrees, less comprehensible. It also makes the cherry-picking problem much worse.
People who generally evaluate historical writings as more-or-less accurate +/- the usual human margin of error and bias and then put their finger on the scale when anything supernatural happens are arguably cherry-picking what they want to read, but at least they have a methodology to it and you can agree on a certain level of ground truth (e.g. most non-Christian historians don't deny that Christ or Paul existed, for instance).
Whereas if you just insist that all historical evidence is downright bad, any pretense of methodological criteria can quickly go out the window and people can just cherry-pick what they like. You might think that the end result here is merely being more reserved about making historical claims, but in real life I think it ends up in weird places like believing in Great Tartaria.
Shrike
8hr ago
I wish I had a better handle on the current state of archeology (and Biblical studies!) but one of the things that I have found interesting from my understanding of the current state of things is that scientists have found evidence of a somewhat puzzling "intelligence explosion" in primitive man.
Genesis 4 can easily be interpreted as describing the same series of events (and also explains what happened to kick the intelligence explosion off).
My belief is that Genesis was written for its audience in a way that they would understand it, with the main goal being to establish an accurate anthropology and theology - a conception of man's place in the world and their relationship to God - but that this does not mean that it is "mythical" in the sense of being fictitious or made up. I don't think God describing something that happened to premodern tribesmen in a way that they can understand makes it "inaccurate" or "not literal."
Shrike
19hr ago
AI really is going to be a big part of the future economy, it's not a bubble
Isn't both possible? I definitely think that AI is going to be a part of the future economy, but...houses were also going to be a part of the future economy in 2005. Specifically it seems plausible to me that OpenAI and/or Anthropic are over-invested and they can't figure out how to make a profit before their investor money runway runs out.
Shrike
19hr ago
I have no idea if this is "all part of the plan" for Elon or anything, but I like the idea that his win condition is in NIMBYs making orbital datacenter construction profitable.
Feels like the faction goal of a competitive board game or something.
Shrike
19hr ago
I've done airsoft and greatly enjoyed it. Wish I could find a paintball or airsoft place close by.
Shrike
19hr ago
Yes. "Christ rose from the dead" is a very believable claim, just on the historical evidence - the rest of the core claims of Christianity are not particularly hard to believe if you believe that (e.g. if Christ rose from the dead then He certainly was not an ordinary human; thus believing that He is the Son of God, was born of a virgin, and are coming back again as He claimed aren't very difficult to swallow).
The one exception would be that while I tend to believe in a ~literal Garden of Eden, it's not really skin off of my nose if the Genesis account(s), not being written for 21st century scientists, was not intended to be interpreted as 21st century scientists would prefer to interpret them. (Notwithstanding this I toy with ideas that harmonize the Eden account with what 21st century scientists have deduced about the nature of early man, but that's more because I find it interesting than that I need to understand everything written in Scripture to believe in it.)
Shrike
1d ago
But if your “training” for a finger snap is never actually done full speed against an actual resisting opponent, you will not snap the fingers.
I don't think you're wrong about the general principle, but I'm not sure about the specific example: I kinda refuse to believe that it's hard to actually break a finger. However it's not necessarily a move that you will have much chance to employ unless someone puts their hands on you in a convenient way.
To extend the idea of what I am talking about a bit further - you cannot train in full speed against an actual resisting opponent to shoot them. But given the option, you generally you should shoot them instead of punching them, even if you have more realistic training experience punching people.
To your point here:
You are very likely to be able to right hook someone in an unorthodox place on their body, but that’s not a different technique, it’s a different application of a technique you’ve trained for hours a week.
I very much agree (and that's how training to shoot works, too).
Shrike
2d ago
Yeah even onto concrete it seems like a "correct" landing would preserve your spine.
Shrike
2d ago
If it was not politically feasible, then do you agree that not invading was also not politically feasible?
...and what exactly do you think would have happened if the US hadn't occupied Afghanistan? Do you think Congress was going to impeach Bush? Reagan managed to respond to the killing of 220 Marines and the near-sinking of a warship by Iranians without invading Iran or being impeached. I agree that after 9/11 Americans wanted revenge but I don't follow your idea that the Americans somehow lost the social technology to "blow stuff up and leave" during the Clinton era.
Shrike
2d ago
I don't think you can divorce the invasion from the occupation. Once the invasion happened, the occupation was inevitable and unavoidable.
Why should anyone believe this? History (including American history) is filled with examples of successful punitive expeditions.
Shrike
2d ago
Also people sort of forget that all the money you spend on weapons is eventually fired off anyway - in this sense the cost is already sunk.
Now, particularly in this case, I do expect the cost to be more "real" in the sense that the munitions burn was so deep and prolonged that it will likely require fresh purchases to cover the balance.
Shrike
2d ago
I don't think it's very hard to evacuate your positions. But given the Saudis record I wouldn't be surprised if the retreat was real, either.
Shrike
2d ago
I'm very open to counter-evidence here but I am not sure how new (and very interesting!) facts about the invasion of Iraq is going to change my opinion about the invasion of Afghanistan.
Shrike
2d ago
One wonders if the Houthis are being "baited out." The sudden collapse of the Saudi offensive and very public alleged decline of US assistance read like the first step in a pretty clever plan.
However such clever plans have to be nigh-indistinguishable from something plausible, and the Saudis have a track record of meh performance.
Shrike
2d ago
My understanding from reviewing the captures of the 5 who are currently on trial is that they were captured by Pakistani security services, with the CIA involved.
Now, it seems quite possible that the Pakistanis were only so "helpful" because they didn't have any other real choice.
Shrike
2d ago
She jumped from a second story window, right? Breaking a spine from a second-story window jump seems unusual to me – although I am not sure if it was a lawn or, say, concrete, and exactly how high it was, and exactly how she jumped. I think most people in their thirties could probably walk away from a 15-foot jump onto soft soil. A 20-foot jump onto concrete is a different story.
Shrike
2d ago
I was not yet 10 years old. I vaguely remember watching television footage of it. I remember my mother asking my father where they would attack next, and he said "here, probably," in that way men do. It wasn't a crazy idea, though, young Shrike lived not far from a sensitive location, and steps were taken to defend the airspace.
I can't talk about some of the more meaningful ways 9/11 impacted me without something close to doxxing. Most prosaically, I seem to recall that we had been traveling before and got rather lucky not being stuck elsewhere after the flight ban came down. Somewhat less prosaically, one of my parent's careers was substantially derailed. I also saw a bit about how poorly the US government treats those with whom they entrust the most and grew up amid a string of what I viewed as bad domestic and foreign policy decisions.
Looking back, it seems likely that 9/11 had a direct or indirect influence on a lot of my life. Maybe I would have considered different careers if it hadn't happened. Certainly it seems likely that my political concerns would be, if not opposed, at least different. One wonders if the Motte would talk about the same things, or even exist.
Shrike
3d ago
correctly calling that the invasions were unlikely to apprehend the people responsible for September 11
What do you mean by this? To the best of my understanding, al-Qaeda was a transnational movement that had coalesced geographically in Afghanistan and had deep and abiding ties to Pakistan prior to September 11. When the US invaded Afghanistan, substantial parts of al-Qaeda fled to Pakistan, where all five of those currently on trial for 9/11 were apprehended with the help of Pakistani security services. Except perhaps for al-Baluchi, who operated in the UAE, it seems plausible that the US invasion facilitated their capture by constraining their operating environment. Presumably, without the invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda would have remained in hiding in Afghanistan given the relative willingness of Pakistani intelligence to cooperate with the Central Intelligence Agency. Similarly, the invasion of Afghanistan facilitated the killing of bin Laden, as US forces staged in Afghanistan to carry out the operation.
I think there's an interesting counterfactual question to be had as to whether the US could have captured KSM and his associates and captured or killed bin Laden without invading Afghanistan, and whether doing so would have been more humane, just, cost-efficient and so on, but from what I can tell in the world we actually got it seems like the invasions did assist in the apprehension and/or killing of those responsible.
Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, I'm never super sure how seriously to take even our best date estimates for [thing], in part because they keep getting shifted around. I have a friend who works in a geology-related field, and he says dating is heavily reliant on assumptions, too. I certainly don't think we have enough geological evidence to rule out "a farm" 100kya, but it does look like you're correct that farming is believed to be much much more recent than, say, stone tools.
But I brought it up more as an example of the sort of thing I find interesting to toy around with, not (obviously) a systematic and well-thought-out theory I have.
Wouldn't the Egyptians also be agriculturalists by the standards of the time? My understanding is that the Creation myth in Genesis is thought by some to be essentially a refutation of the pagan creation myths the Israelites were likely familiar with, and it makes me wonder if the Israelites saw the Egyptians in Cain.
(Although interestingly one could argue that Egypt is portrayed fairly positively in Genesis.)
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