Jediism (Christianity) is not a collection of propositions, that is where the fallacy is. It is a collection of propositions, stories, commandments, and historical accounts. Within that collection there is a proposition X, we find evidence for X. It is evidence for X, not for the whole collection (the concept of evidence doesn't even apply to things such as stories and commandments anyway). The Bible says the Sun sets on the West. We see the sun sets on the West. Is that evidence of Christianity? Of course not.

I have spent two decades on this. — PL Olcott

That's rad.

It <is> a truth predicate that would work because Truthbearer(L,x) ≡ (True(L,x) ∨ True(L,~x)) screens out epistemological antinomies that Tarski get stuck on. — PL Olcott

@jgill@fishfry

I don't say: "This sentence is a lie",
I refer to the strengthened Liar Paradox: "This sentence is not true." — PL Olcott

Those two mean the same.

?- LP = not(true(LP)).
LP = not(true(LP)). — PL Olcott

No clue what that means.

The means LP is rejected as not a truth bearer in Prolog because
it has an infinite cycle in its evaluation graph.

This sentence is not true.
What it is not true about?
It is not true about being not true.
What is it not true about being not true about? — PL Olcott

It is the criticism of the liar paradox refering to nothing. It was discussed in the thread I linked.

Regardless, let's have our way with our fantasies. Romans and Greeks were gay. Yeah. They are still not part of your culture. Are you Greek or Italian, or, at the very least, Mexican? No? So they have nothing to do with you. Make some history of your own so you don't have to take it from others.

Ciceronianus is your source on all things Roman — BitconnectCarlos

You people are trolling me :rofl:

pedestry was an institution custom within ancient greece where younger men would be tutored/groomed by their older mentors — BitconnectCarlos

That is a claim with some truth to it that English speakers like to blow out of proportions so they, who are actual lovers of sodomy and pederasty (Epstein island!), see themselves reflected in ancient history.

When Philoxenus, the leader of the seashore, wrote to Alexander that there was a youth in Ionia whose beauty has yet to be seen and asked him in a letter if he (Alexander) would like him (the boy) to be sent over, he (Alexander) responded in a strict and disgusted manner: "You are the most hideous and malign of all men, have you ever seen me involved in such dirty work that you found the urge to flatter me with such hedonistic business?"

Moreover, when Philoxenus, the commander of his forces on the sea-board, wrote that there was with him a certain Theodorus, of Tarentum, who had two boys of surpassing beauty to sell, and enquired whether Alexander would buy them, Alexander was incensed, and cried out many times to his friends, asking them what shameful thing Philoxenus had ever seen in him that he should spend his time in making such disgraceful proposals. — Plutarch

He severely rebuked Hagnon also for writing to him that he wanted to buy Crobylus, whose beauty was famous in Corinth, as a present for him. Furthermore, on learning that Damon and Timotheus, two Macedonian soldiers under Parmenio's command, had ruined the wives of certain mercenaries, he wrote to Parmenio ordering him, in case the men were convicted, to punish them and put them to death as wild beasts born for the destruction of mankind. — Plutarch

The customs instituted by Lycurgus were opposed to all of these. If someone, being himself an honest man, admired a boy's soul and tried to make of him an ideal friend without reproach and to associate with him, he approved, and believed in the excellence of this kind of training. But if it was clear that the attraction lay in the boy's outward beauty, he banned the connexion as an abomination; and thus he caused lovers to abstain from boys no less than parents abstain from sexual intercourse with their children and brothers and sisters with each other. — Xenophon's Constitution of the Lacedaimonians Chapter 2

contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female — Plato's Laws

I can keep going, but for what?

A bit strange however that he can call others "imbecile" and "moron" while the word 'r*t*rd' is forbidden even in URLs. All three are/were medical terms; it is also "ableism". Why is one not acceptable but the others so ok?

Does that mean the Japanese person will get Mishima in ways that others cannot? — tim wood

For one, they speak the same language as Mishima so they can read what he said, not a translator's rendition of what he thinks Mishima said.

from Ainu in the North to Okinawans in the South — tim wood

Ainu are not Japanese, Okinawans are. And before you complicate what is so simple: Ainu are not Japanese just like Kurds are not Iraqi, Okinawans are Japanese just like Bavarians are German.

To say they're all alike in ways different from other people, that allows them a special appreciation of their own literature withheld from others, while containing a grain of truth, is mainly nonsense — tim wood

"It is true but it is nonsense".
Recognising the truth in what I say while at the same time stating your malformed beliefs are immune to their refutation found therein, aka weaseling out.

books more than a hundred years old are about people who are dead, and about places and things that either no longer exist or no longer exist as they did — tim wood

This doesn't help you the way it does. There are groups A, B, and C. A is dead for centuries now. B's language, blood, government, territory, archictecture, dances, food comes from A. C's does not. To whose culture does A belong to? Not to C, that's for sure, no matter how many books C reads.

But at the same time the literature is a door I can go through, and experience and learn from. — tim wood

This isn't just about literature.

hay rabdos sou kai hay baktaria sou. autai me parakelesan — tim wood

What is this transliteration? Why does η become "hay" and then becomes "a"?

Afterwards advances in technology were mostly made in the US and Japan. — Tobias

:cry:

"Afterwards" as in the last 60 years, where Europe is still competitive nevertheless. Let us not forget that the reason the US got Nobels at all is because of all those juicy German and (European) Jewish scientists who moved there after WW2. I recall some statistic that 30% of US Nobels were in fact not native (God knows how many are sons of immigrants). I visited their grad departments a few times, the staff there were mostly foreigners — those were public universities in fly-over states mind you.

is that it is somehow threatening to your self perception to acknowledge the contributions of other peoples than Europeans — Tobias

I don't know what threatening to oneself means. Someone said the East was more advanced than Europe until recently. That is nonsense. Let's read up some history.
What's next, someone is gonna bring the Islamic Golden Age? Totally don't look up where that Islamic golden knowledge came from, stop before that part so you can prove yourself right.

there is no Greek person that can trace his heritage back to the ancient Athenians and Spartans is apparently of no concern — Tobias

Jesus Christ, you have no clue what you are talking about. You don't even need genetic studies, which I have to refute your claim, to prove that wrong. Think: did the Spartans not leave any children behind?

How do you know there is no evidence for something outside space and time? — Manuel

The word evidence already invokes a "how to know". Next you will ask me how do I know that I know there is no evidence.

Ha, now I think this is semantic. — Manuel

Because it is, the issue is that you are not being consistent. You want to be sure about some things and but then claim you can only be unsure about a specific matter — for no reason.

The Christian tradition posits a person who raised from the dead and said there was a heaven. In this world, I do not know of any cases in which a dead person has come back to life after several days. — Manuel

Again lack of evidence. It doesn't prove there is no heaven.

I don't reach certainty, but if you like, I'd say I think there is a 99.9% chance that heaven does not exist. — Manuel

Degrees of certainty. See:

Now you are working with degrees of certainty and, by that standard, agnosticism, in practice, doesn't really exist — a claim that I set to prove in this post — Lionino

But if forced between certainty and agnosticism, I think agnosticism is a safer bet. — Manuel

Ok, so we don't know anything for sure, not just the matter of whether there is a God. handshake

be good enough to make clear exactly what does happen when I - or anyone - reads a book. — tim wood

"I read a book therefore that book is part of my culture".
Just... what?
I don't see how you could be confused on the meaning of these words so far into the game, but "culture" here is not being used in the sense of "You are so cultured for reading Foucault, Jimmy", the "culture" here is of national character. Harry Potter — a book widely read in Hungary — is not part of Hungarian culture.

And he graciously explained that he could not, because he couldn't read it, making clear that he could not read any of it. — tim wood

People often can't understand texts in their own language, it is still the same language. I made the point already, in the post that you are replying to, that Modern Greeks need training to understand Homeric Greek. You, however, don't need just training, you are learning a whole new language from scratch.

And the attempt to reconcile Pagan and Christian beliefs/dogma/thought was already underway with Constantine, c., 330 AD. — tim wood

I am obviously referring to the setting after the fall of the WRE. Again, arguing for the sake of arguing.

You referred to the Great Wall, and then, it seemed, suggested that either the Great Wall had nothing to do with thieving hordes — tim wood

The Great Wall was a randomly picked example of "a piece of one's history". I said nothing else about it. Where did "thieving hordes" come from? It is impressive sometimes how people here complicate things that are so simple by quite literally seeing things that were literally not there.

But maybe simpler if you just state your point(s) in simple language, then we might see if we agree or disagree on some matter of substance. — tim wood

My message is stated the way it needs to be stated, you can either try to understand it or hear what you want to hear. You are looking for statements that you can pick apart analytically; the message comes in a whole, not in atomic pieces logically connected to each other subsequently.

When did the Genesis version of creation get written down — Sir2u

I don't see how that is relevant, as the time frame is intermediary between the two events of interest.

and when christian missionaries go there — Sir2u

Long before we started making anthropological investigations of those people. Thus, the results of those investigations may have been caused by contact with outsiders. Not to speak of the Arab slave trade in Africa:

Arabs were Abrahamic at that time.

The fact that their DNA remains without external influence — Sir2u

I doubt it.

Moreover, most Pygmies now speak Niger-Kordofanian (e.g., Bantu) or Nilo-Saharan languages, possibly acquired from neighboring farmers, especially since the expansion of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists beginning ∼5 kya (Blench 2006).

And ideas get spread by ways other than demic diffusion. An unmixed DNA doesn't say much about one's culture.

both ancient Greece and ancient Rome were largely indifferent to same sex relations at least where men were concerned — Ciceronianus

You are generalising and they weren't indifferent. Do you want a collection of citations by Ancient Greeks condemning sodomy?

Julius Caesar was mocked by his detractors for being "Every woman's man and every man's woman." — Ciceronianus

You see how this very statement of yours is a refutation of the previous quote? It is more apparent than the Sun in a sky without clouds. How can a society possibly be indifferent to sodomy when accusations of sodomy were frequently used as attempts at difamation? Come on.

which is why I do not think they should be dismissed that easily. — Manuel

Yet we dismiss a guy sitting on clouds causing thunder. In any case, primitive societies are animists. I remember reading good psychological investigation into animism — like how we see faces on rocks and clouds even though there are no faces —, without any appeal to the actuality of those beliefs.

This creator is personal, meaning applies to one person, the one who believes? — Manuel

It means it is a person, it has a mind, it thinks.

Or does this refer to people who claim a creator creates everything? — Manuel

I don't think that is what I am referring to, as "a creator creates something" is a nonsensical phrase.

I am using the most basic concept of God we can deal with before it stops classifying as God. It is straightforward like that. Every God we may find is a mind, it is not fully physical, it is a creator. If something is not one of these, it is not a God. It is a matter of grammar.

So it's a mental concept — Manuel

No. Every concept is mental. The God concept is a concept that refers to a mind.

If a person believes in Unicorns, but we find no unicorns in the world, then this belief is a fiction, because empirical evidence goes against such a claim.

If you speak of a being outside of space and time, how are we to verify or dismiss it? I don't know how, so I don't know if such a being exists. — Manuel

You are changing your terms. Empirical evidence doesn't go against the unicorn, there is a lack of empirical evidence for the unicorn. Likewise, there is a lack of evidence for a being outside of space and time.

"If you speak of a being outside of space and time, how are we to verify or dismiss it?"

This question is about grammar in the end.

I don't believe in heaven, I don't believe in hell, I do not believe a person rose from the dead, etc. Those are rather specific claims, which are capable of being shown to be wrong. — Manuel

Are you sure there is no heaven? It is outside of space and time as we know, too.

But you are asking for certainty, I cannot give you that. — Manuel

You can't give me certainty. So let's just say we are agnostic about everything and call it a day. Deal?

Really? Those Romans and Greeks weren't deviants? — BitconnectCarlos

Ugh, here we go with the usual "Greeks were gay" nonsense peddled by 21-st century Protestants. Like that British lady who published a book about how Achilles and Patroklos were actually gay for each other. The clown "scholar" (we give away this title too lightly nowadays) never read the Iliad. Patroklos and Achilles only show up in the same setting in two scenes in a book with over 20 long chapters, one of these scenes ends with each of them going to their separate tents, to go sleep with their woman of choice. The plot of the Iliad starts because Achilles got a woman taken away from him. I read the Iliad very recently, my memory is fresh, there is no romantic scene between the two in the whole book, the book in fact implies the two were raised as brothers.
Then the scene where Achilles cries loudly during Patroklos' funeral. Many other women and men cried during it too, does it mean all those several people were romantically involved with Patroklos? Absurd nonsense.

Let us speak then of the laws that Ottaviano Augusto, the first true de facto emperor, set against sexual promiscuity. Let us speak about how Roman historians, forsaking accuracy, accused characters they disliked of sodomy — as Cassius Dio accuses Elagabalus of dressing as a woman, something that every honest historian of today acknowledges as possibly being another manifestation of damnatio memoriae.

Let us speak of these things. Or let us speak instead of the proof (proof, not scant and conditional and specific evidence) that Greeks and Romans were generally sexual degenerates. I don't see proof of that anywhere. Even then, anyone who makes such a claim is making the historical confusion of generalising a period of over 1000 years to appease their personal bias and politics. Guess what, "Ancient Egypt" doesn't exist either. To people from Demotic times, the Middle Kingdom is as "Ancient Egypt" as Cleopatra is to us.

This is the dual aspect of people with no ancient history: they are so so bitter, that when they are not trying to steal others' heritage and history for themselves, they are trying to smear and denigrate that culture.

Not in every respect medieval Europe lagged, but militarily and administratively it was behind the Ottoman Empire for centuries for instance — Tobias

Was it? Ottomans were well accomplished, but they took 200 years to take over an empire that had been declining for centuries, and that had been betrayed by its supposed allies. Claiming Ottomans were militarily above Europe feels to me a bit like claiming Goths were militarily superior to Romans. War and history aren't made based on who's stronger like a game, it is full of opportunism.

Besides, the Ottoman kingdom was born in the former Byzantine territory that had been took by the Seljuk. The Ottomans are, indirectly, a product of Europe — more and more the further you go into the future —, as anyone with some knowledge of Turkish history would tell you.
If Ottomans were militarily superior to Europe, they would not have been beaten by Austria.

As to the claim of "administratively behind", I won't even bother with that, as it can't be measured in any significant way, and I don't think anyone here has read the slightest bit on Ottoman governance (and governance of every other European kingdom of the same time).

That is why the Turkish and Mongols were capable of penetrating deep — Tobias

Turks and Mongols were not technologically advanced... Mongols catapulted dead corpses infected with leptospirosis into walled cities in the middle of sieges. Give some proof that those people were more tech advanced than Europeans or drop it, basic historical knowledge is against your thesis.

Did you mean with advanced, morally advanced? — Tobias

I didn't mean much. You say the Mongolian Khanate is more advanded than Europe (nonsensical statement), your original post pejoratively says Europe came to be by conquest (nonsensical thesis, but whatever), Mongols were blood-thirsty conqueror who raped, killed, tortured, and terrorised. So I ask you instead, what did you mean by Mongols being more advanced?

(It is either Den Haag, or The Hague or La Haye as it is sometimes referred to, but not De Hague — Tobias

Thanks, I will try to remember it.

You went as a tourist. Everything seems better as a tourist, especially when we come from our small towns. But by chance you were lucky and did not see some resident foreigner fighting the police or harassing locals/tourists. In any case, whatever, replace Hague with Paris or Brussels or whatever undeniably dumpy European capital, the point stands.

for we know that most primitive cultures believe in such a "being" or "beings" — Manuel

Primitive cultures believe thunders are caused by a god's will. We know today it is not the case.

If by God you are speaking about a "personal creator", by this you mean a being that has the power to give life to people? If that's what is being argued, then I do not think it is a strong argument. — Manuel

I don't understand this.

If you mean that there is "personal creator" of some higher being who created the universe. — Manuel

I am not making ontological commitments here, that's what theists do. I, instead of relying on religious conceptions, delineated the most generic God-concept possible, stripping it of all its accidents and sticking to the essence, the necessary meaning of the word "God". In my understanding, this concept is of a mind (so it is personal), it is outside of space and time (and by that of course I am excluding hippie distortions like "the universe is god", not to be confused with Spinoza's pantheism), and it is the cause of the world we see — I think my rendition of the concept is minimal to all theistic religions.

My point is simple, this insistence on agnosticism applies not just to the God question but to most questions. Yet we reply to most questions with "yes" or "no". There are those that reply "I don't know", surely, but we don't say the people that said "no" are being unreasonable, especially when "yes" would be more unreasonable then. That much says that you are applying a special ad hoc epistemic standard to God.

Back to the problem of my father, yes, you are correct, I do not know with 100% accuracy that he is my father. I have plenty of evidence to suggest that he is, but pictures of me being a baby could be faked, maybe the baby in the picture is not me, etc.

Given the options I have, then I opt to believe that my father is my real father with, say, 99% accuracy. Hence, I have no good reason to be agnostic about this issue, because what my father is, is much better defined than God, or a higher being. — Manuel

Now you are working with degrees of certainty and, by that standard, agnosticism, in practice, doesn't really exist — a claim that I set to prove in this post. Graph:

Source.

that derive x from — PL Olcott

From what?

string semantic meanings — PL Olcott

Semantic and meaning mean the same thing. Is the quote above supposed to mean "meaningful strings" as for example "the dog bites the ball" instead of "gorbyr dortug equerxi"?

verbal model of the general knowledge of the actual world — PL Olcott

What's "general knowledge" supposed to mean as opposed to just "knowledge"? Also, if the answer to the question in the previous quote is "Yes", "string semantic meanings" and "verbal model" approximately mean the same thing, if they mean anything at all.

that
form a finite set of finite strings that are stipulated to have the
semantic value of Boolean true — PL Olcott

?
You are writing things from a train of thought but the purpose of writing is communication, you need to include the train of thought, not just its destination.

A set of finite string semantic meanings that form an accurate
verbal model of the general knowledge of the actual world that form a finite set of finite strings that are stipulated to have the semantic value of Boolean true. — PL Olcott

We have an X that forms a Y that forms a Z, but X and Z seem awfully similar, as if they mean the same thing.

False(L,x) is defined as True(L,x) — PL Olcott

Do you mean False(L,x) is defined as True(L,¬x)?

Truthbearer(L,x) ≡ (True(L,x) ∨ True(L,~x)) — PL Olcott

Yes, something is a truth-bearer if it is true or false.

Finite string expressions that are not truth-bearers are rejected
as a type mismatch error for every formal system of bivalent logic.

Truthbearer(English, "This sentence is not true") is false.
Truthbearer(English, "This sentence is true") is false.
Truthbearer(English, "a fish") is false.
Truthbearer(English, "some fish are alive") is true. — PL Olcott

That is the naïve reply to sentences such as "This sentence is a lie". Claiming that it is not a truth-bearer is alike hand-waving, you must give some account as to how it is not a truth bearer.

Another further issue is that by the law of non-contradiction, something is X or it is not-X. Something is true or it is not true. Replying that "a fish" is neither true or false while nevertheless defining "false" as not-true violates the LNC. The "type mismatch" is encompassed in "not true" just like "green" is encompassed in "not salty" when you ask the equally nonsensical question "Is the colour green salty or not salty?" — do we really need to come up with a concept of "salty-bearer" or can't we just say things that taste salty are salty and everything else is not salty?

Maybe we can't reach certainty, in that case we shift to probabilities. — Manuel

On that basis, agnosticism is the only rational response. — Ludwig V

Let's run the argument. "We don't know if god does not exist". The same argument applies just as well (more strongly in fact) to the theist. Ignore Christians or Baha'i, let's take a universalist generic theist: "I believe a personal creator beyond the universe exists". The atheist claims such a being does not exist. The UGT claims such a being exists. Who is more reasonable here?
Let's then say that "we don't know". Here is the problem: you don't whether you will wake up tomorrow, you don't know whether your HS history teacher was really licensed, you don't know whether your dad is really your dad, you don't know whether NASA is really saying the truth, you don't know whether you are dreaming as you read this, and yet you give a good, single-worded, definitive answer when you get asked about all of these matters. But somehow the God question is one of the very few questions where people feel the need to pontificate that we are aren't really sure.

When was the last time one of the thread's hypocrites visited a child orphanate?
College/work field trips don't count!

racist genocide promoters — Mikie

You got me, I am just evil like. rubs hands

Even though they exist already. But no matter. — Mikie

Two dead threads from years ago, one of which has no central topic. Thank you, Twitter, you are such great people, solving the world's problems selectively.

they seem to care so much about — Mikie

"No u" :lol:

I don't think this divide captures common language. Ask someone whether they believe there is a green (copper poisoning, it got shaved too) floating donkey tidally locked behind Jupiter in respect to the Earth. Yes, the animal donkey flying in space, always behind Jupiter from our perspective. Everybody will say "No, I don't believe there is such a donkey" instead of "Erm, I can't say either way", even though there is nothing logically contradictory about a green floating donkey tidally locked behind Jupiter in respect to the Earth.

Interesting post by a Doctor of physics. Good comments too https://qr.ae/psiHoX

It's... still not flipped vertically.

Awfully little talk about the suffering of other countries on a thread about Israel/Palestine — Mikie

Wrong.

Awfully little talk about the suffering of other countries anywhere here*.

Fixed that for you. Let me know you if you need further tutoring in interpretation of texts.

He is a cool guy, hopefully he doesn't suicide by shotgun to the back of the head. His Twitter profile bio says "philosopher king"; he should join TPF.

@180 Proof

To go from

and if those policies are/were widely supported by the peoples of those nations — RogueAI

to

can those societies also be judged? — RogueAI

You jump from "peoples" to "societies". Moral theories don't make judgements about people, they make judgements about actions. From the moral judgement of a person's actions we judge their character. Your argument treats a society as an individual agent and uses that nation's actions to judge the people's character as a monolith. Your fallacy is on the last part.

For example, let's suppose the Trail of Tears is judged to be immoral and was supported by every citizen in the country except for one person. Wouldn't it be fair to label that citizenry as immoral, even though the label would misapply to that one moral person? — RogueAI

I don't know what TofT is, but assuming it is immoral, the answer is still no. There are several factors that play into a society's actions besides the will of the people/government. On the individual's side, we may say they support an immoral action — in that instance — but we can't say their character is immoral, like we would of a serial r*pist.

but look into written history — L'éléphant

That is what my comment you quoted does(?).

if not the oldest — L'éléphant

It is not the oldest by any account. Mesopotamia and Egypt are far older. Minoa, Elam, and IVC are also older.

For a lot of it's history, yes. — RogueAI

Since you answered my question, I will go ahead and answer yours:

"If a moral theory concludes Nazi Germany was not evil, it should be scrapped. It's worthless. Do you agree?" — RogueAI

Yes.

With the disclaimer that moral theories shouldn't make moral judgements over whole societies that ranged over many years. Because of that, the more appropriate answer to both my and your question is that it doesn't apply.

Sorry, I will amend my statement:
...someone who has not been to Europe in the past 10 years would say.
Paris is a dump, London is beyond gone, Lisbon and Brussels are approaching a point of no return. Europe is busted. The belief that it is fine doesn't stand a one-week trip to The Hague.

Reading something exactly does make it part of my culture — tim wood

Not it doesn't. I am not confused. You just don't know how these things work, clearly as you are under the impression that every neat little piece of history that you find out suddenly becomes "part of your culture". But a culture, alas, is not a product that you patch over ad libitum — hence the difference between the traditional and the traditionless.

Greeks cannot read the Iliad in original Greek, any more than English speakers Beowulf — tim wood

Not comparable. Beowulf is in a different language than modern English. You don't understand Ancient or Modern Greek, you don't understand Anglo-Saxon either. The fact that Homeric Greek is different than Modern Greek, and that Greeks need training to understand it, does not change the fact that they have been raised in that language that is one despite one being more archaic than the other; Ancient Greek carries a way of thinking and a grammar that is realised in modern times in Modern Greek, not in English, a grammatically simplified language by all accounts — a Greek needs training to understand Homer, but he isn't learning a different language. This is a factor that is easy to understand for those whose languages have a history that extends far into the past, but for those who don't, it is not hard to get, you are forcing yourself not to.

it does not make any sense — tim wood

It doesn't make sense to those who have not had a strong aesthetic feeling elicited by a piece of their own history. The meaning is clear except for those that are stuck in the analytical mindset of separating texts proposition by proposition without ever taking the text in as a whole and transposing feelings that are being expressed.

In sum, your claims, perhaps having a grain of truth, are disqualified by the extravagance of them — tim wood

Again, Romans and Greeks abhorred most peoples around them and would have abhorred you too. They are not part of your culture. Your culture stands for everything opposite to their values — sexual deviancy, worship of minorities, effeminacy, worship of weakness and criminality, artistic decadence, and countless others. To prove my point even further, some of those things are exactly brought up by Cassius Dio about ancient Bretons (not related to the modern English but to the Welsh):

nay, those over whom I rule are Britons, men that do not know how to till the soil or ply a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war and hold all things in common, even children and wives, so that the latter possess the same dignity as the men.

None of these values are wrong or right. But the claim that people whose values are diametrically opposed to one's own values are part of one's culture is self-evidently absurd. Cultural appropriation and dilapidation.

I do not think you can expect any literary or musical talent from them (the captives from the wars in Britannia) — Cicero

Njal's Saga an excellent example of such a journey: a text that is at first alien and remote, that with reading becomes vividly alive. — tim wood

That is either woo or you are role-playing. Njal's Saga doesn't become alive to you. You aren't a Viking, you aren't Scandinavian. It is not my or your culture. I may read the translation of it and the story may be conveyed to me. But I don't share those feelings, the original style isn't passed on to me, the words used in the text are not the same words that my mom and dad spoke to me since the days I learned how to speak. The metaphors fly over my head and alliterations and assonances are completely lost.

You are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Example:

"Scholastics" with a capital "S"? What do you mean by that? — tim wood

As if the capitalisation of a word that may be capitalised somehow undermines the understanding of something.

On that point specifically, Scholastics arises exactly when the west rediscovers the classics and then attemps to marry it to Christian thought. How could it be that someone who comes from a different culture has classics as part of their culture when those classics were only introduced well into the end of the Middle Ages? With classics or not, your culture keeps existing, without the Iliad, there is no Greek culture.

And as to the Bible, clearly you're babbling. On your own account the Bible is not/cannot be read today, and thus any "Christianization" of ethics cannot be biblical. — tim wood

The way in which the contents of the Bible may be transmitted are a completely different discussion and pertains to people who know Catholic/Orthodox history. You built a strawman then refuted it with a non-sequitur. Our ethics are based strongly on Christianity, that much is obvious, and the main book of Christianity is the Bible. Simple, nothing more to read into this.

Speaking of babbling:

And anyway, I prefer the term "civilizing." As in the civilizing of ethics. Which, on consideration, less than half the world is concerned with. — tim wood

Which, if I am to read this correctly, is implying that the half the world is not concerned with civilising of ethics, whatever that means. Again, another attitude that is antithetical to the Roman way, universalising and syncretic, instead of ignorant and xenophobic.

Not really philosophy, better posted on a history board.

but as the end-point in our development is it not thwarting creativity and vitally original human thought — Nemo2124

That is viewed negatively if we naively take such things to be the goal of themselves. If creativity is what we use to make art and art aims at making something beautiful, AI can assist us in such a goal; but AI itself doesn't make something beautiful, it doesn't speak to the human spirit because it doesn't have one (yet at least).
If not, what is the purpose of creativity and originality? Pleasure and satisfaction? Those are the things that are the goal of themselves, and AI surely can help us acheive them.
If you mean to say however that AI will make us overly dependent on them like calculators in our phones killed the need to be good at mental arithmetic, I would say that is not an issue, we are doing just fine after The Rise of Calculators, and I find myself to be good at mental arithmetic regardless.

it's a real cultural heritage — Wayfarer

As I explained, to you it is not. Do you speak Greek? Do you speak Spanish? You will never feel the same thing a born-and-raised Greek person feels when you look up to the Acropolis, you will most likely never read the Iliad — a translation of the Iliad is not the Iliad, it is a different book with the same story and structure. It is beyond you just like it is beyond all of us to really understand the Great Wall of China — it is not our story. The prime difference in the latter case is that there aren't hordes trying to steal that heritage because they have no ancient history. I think the term is "cultural appropriation", but I don't really keep up.

No. "Reason" there is used as "supporting evidence", not as "cause". Reading something doesn't make it part of your culture, you are not Japanese because you read Mishima.
English speakers have nothing to do (negative to do, even) with Cicerone, nothing to do with Caesar, nothing to do Thales or Evripides. It is not your culture, not your history, it has nothing to do with you. The Eneide or Iliada didn't shape your culture. I single out "English speakers" because I don't see Poles or Hungarians (who also have nothing to do) here saying nonsense about a people that explicitly considered their ancestors subhuman; otherwise, I will edit my post to address them as well. Sorry, history isn't nice, and culture is a downstream of it.

If a moral theory concludes the US is not evil, it should be scrapped. It's worthless. Do you agree?

Oh, Europe's just fine. You needn't worry about it. — Ciceronianus

That's something that someone who has never been to Europe would say. Of it, Rome and Greece are places that exist outside of history books, they can be seen physically today, the glory is still there — someone who ignores it today would ignore it back then too.

So that's a good thing now? — Outlander

There is no good and evil. Read the last sentence of my post.

What if someone "conquests" you of your wallet and blood pressure levels by way of a stabbing on your next morning walk? Don't call 911 or bother other people now. — Outlander

Invaders in Europe (not immigrants) already do that. The difference is that those so called "refugees" (who are mostly able-bodied fighting-age males) are not leaving advanced technology, medicine, science, philosophy, and infrastructure wherever they pass by, they are really just killing and raping. But the hypocrites will defend it and say those fiends are victims of society — as if such a phrase wasn't evidently meaningless.

along with the Greek and Roman classics — Athena

Greek and Roman classics are not part of anybody's culture except the people who speak their languages — that doesn't apply to most here —, and the reason for that is exactly Scholastics. When it comes to the Bible, it is true, our morality is heavily Christianised whether we want it or not, whether we are atheist or evangelical.

this is an entirely fatuous OP. — Wayfarer

I had to look that word up. But there are worse threads on the frontpage right now, honestly.

In my opinion there are no non conscious, everything has a consc, but consc types vary; someone may be 1/16 quantum, others may be 1/1 quantum and there could be other types other than quantum(or as you would term 'real', instead of quantum, but I find quantum a better term because something that is, improperly defined as unreal, if existent, is also real, so this real/unreal logic doesn't work - the correct term is Quantum.) — Barkon

Fatuous schizophrenia.

Why would we care about Bangladesh unless… — Moses

For people who portray themselves as caring about human suffering and children, there is awfully little talk about the half a million Bengali child refugees.

The world can not be simultaneously Euclidean and non-Euclidean. — fishfry

I am not talking about the fabric of space-time.

Nothing to do with the physical world. — fishfry

Right, except for the kinds of realism that make it about the physical world, but that is one type among many.

Maybe you are misunderstanding what "abstract" means in those quotations. It doesn't mean something that we conceive in our minds, but a real object that exists independently of any conscious being, but that is outside space and time.

That's a lot more subtle than saying that realism believes that math is literally true in the world. — fishfry

Of course a single sentence doesn't represent a family of views. But one of the minimal characteristics of mathematical realism is that things such as "2+2=4" are true and they are true even if we are all dead — in other words, it is about the world.

But I don't think you are using mathematical realism in the same sense as Google and Wikipedia. — fishfry

I hope not, my sources are academic.