Great Quotes III: Source and Context are Key

[Arakhor]

"If you want a glimpse of what a post-human future would be like, read Homer."

I'm not sure how that follows.

 

[Kyriakos]

^It belongs to the dumb quotes thread, imo, it makes no sense

 

[Kyriakos]

"The descent to Hades is the same from all places"
Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, said to a friend of his who was complaining he would have to die far away from his home-city

 

[Mouthwash]

I'm not sure how that follows.

Gray is criticizing the idea that humanity *as a whole* will achieve godlike status and live happily ever after.

 

[Flying Pig]

Without a government there is no Ireland. Just an island.

Where does that leave Antarctica? Or the Moon?

 

[Kyriakos]

Siege of Rome (537–38), Dialogue between Belisarius and the Gothic embassy

Ostrogoths: "[...] we give up to you Sicily, great as it is and of such wealth, seeing that without it you cannot possess Libya in security."

Belisarius: "And we on our side permit the Goths to have the whole of Britain, which is much larger than Sicily and was subject to the Romans in early times. For it is only fair to make an equal return to those who first do a good deed or perform a kindness."

 

[Kyriakos]

Emperor Marcian, canceling the tribute paid by the eastern roman empire to Attila:

"I have iron for Attila, but no gold"

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

"Hitler was incomptent [sic], and so was his army. It’s time we stopped looking at them as some kind of unstoppable army of bogeymen defeated only by dumb luck and numbers. They sucked. Their only victories were against small countries or armies that were badly led. They weren’t special, they weren’t elite. The only thing they excelled at was slaughtering unarmed civilians and prisoners."

—e350tb, "Nazi Germany: A Study in Incompetence"

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: The discussion leading off from Thorvald's quote can now be found here.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I just found this anecdote from Neil Gaiman about imposter syndrome, the feeling that you're a worthless PoS and any respect you get is because you've conned people into thinking you're not a worthless PoS.

Some years ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.

 

[Kyriakos]

I just found this anecdote from Neil Gaiman about imposter syndrome, the feeling that you're a worthless PoS and any respect you get is because you've conned people into thinking you're not a worthless PoS.

On the other hand there is the more common "legend in his own mind" syndrome

 

[GoodSarmatian]

On the other hand there is the more common "legend in his own mind" syndrome

I don't believe it's more common. The undeservedly confident also tend to be loudmouths who draw more attention to themselves and are more likely to become well know, either for doing something or, more likely, just fore being someone. They are not the majority, they just make the most noise.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't believe it's more common. The undeservedly confident also tend to be loudmouths who draw more attention to themselves and are more likely to become well know, either for doing something or, more likely, just fore being someone. They are not the majority, they just make the most noise.

Maybe so for the more vocal/extreme cases, but probably not so for the rest of the spectrum of such cases ^^

 

[Samson]

- He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

- It's difficult to be rigorous about whether a machine really 'knows', 'thinks', etc., because we're hard put to define these things. We understand human mental processes only slightly better than a fish understands swimming.

- When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found.

John McCarthy

Spoiler Some longer and more geeky :

Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs, and having beliefs seems to be a characteristic of most machines capable of problem solving performance. However, the machines mankind has so far found it useful to construct rarely have beliefs about beliefs, although such beliefs will be needed by computer programs that reason about what knowledge they lack and where to get it. Mental qualities peculiar to human-like motivational structures , such as love and hate, will not be required for intelligent behavior, but we could probably program computers to exhibit them if we wanted to, because our common sense notions about them translate readily into certain program and data structures. Still other mental qualities, e.g. humor and appreciation of beauty, seem much harder to model.

When we program a computer to make choices intelligently after determining its options, examining their consequences, and deciding which is most favorable or most moral or whatever, we must program it to take an attitude towards its freedom of choice essentially isomorphic to that which a human must take to his own.

[This] is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans.

 

[Kyriakos]

- He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

- It's difficult to be rigorous about whether a machine really 'knows', 'thinks', etc., because we're hard put to define these things. We understand human mental processes only slightly better than a fish understands swimming.

- When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found.

John McCarthy

Spoiler Some longer and more geeky :

Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs, and having beliefs seems to be a characteristic of most machines capable of problem solving performance. However, the machines mankind has so far found it useful to construct rarely have beliefs about beliefs, although such beliefs will be needed by computer programs that reason about what knowledge they lack and where to get it. Mental qualities peculiar to human-like motivational structures , such as love and hate, will not be required for intelligent behavior, but we could probably program computers to exhibit them if we wanted to, because our common sense notions about them translate readily into certain program and data structures. Still other mental qualities, e.g. humor and appreciation of beauty, seem much harder to model.

When we program a computer to make choices intelligently after determining its options, examining their consequences, and deciding which is most favorable or most moral or whatever, we must program it to take an attitude towards its freedom of choice essentially isomorphic to that which a human must take to his own.

[This] is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans.

I don't agree with him at all. Machines don't identify object independent of context, cause there is no sensed context in the first place for a machine. Contrast that to the billions of different contexts people can have to sense any one term, eg "go", "one", "add" etc.
To compare: any simple being or organism likely has at least some basic sense, and thus a context, and it doesn't matter that it cannot reflect on it. An ant identifies stuff as something, regardless of lack of (i suppose) ability to compare object with context. A computer? It doesn't sense anything, much like a stone doesn't sense free-fall despite running the 'program' of free fall just fine.

 

[Samson]

I don't agree with him at all. Machines don't identify object independent of context, cause there is no sensed context in the first place for a machine. Contrast that to the billions of different contexts people can have to sense any one term, eg "go", "one", "add" etc.
To compare: any simple being or organism likely has at least some basic sense, and thus a context, and it doesn't matter that it cannot reflect on it. An ant identifies stuff as something, regardless of lack of (i suppose) ability to compare object with context. A computer? It doesn't sense anything, much like a stone doesn't sense free-fall despite running the 'program' of free fall just fine.

Using his example, a thermostat (or at least a thermostatic control system) "senses" the temperature, "believes" the temperature should be something different, and responds by turning on the heating.

 

[Kyriakos]

Using his example, a thermostat (or at least a thermostatic control system) "senses" the temperature, "believes" the temperature should be something different, and responds by turning on the heating.

This isn't a belief, though. Much like using Basic (an old computer language) on Amstrad to have it run stuff when x>1 doesn't mean the Amstrad knows of 1, of >, of stuff, or of run. Isn't he using "belief" (something obviously requiring other procedures going on, and primarily a sense) i a misleading way, and a crucially wrong manner in this argument?
An electrical circuit isn't the analogous of a sense, otherwise a lamp believes it has to be lit when you turn it on.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Where does that leave Antarctica? Or the Moon?

Or Australia? Or New Zealand? Or Greeland? Or any island nation?
Screw you you know what I mean. And hey I even hinted at it. "There would just be an island" which yeah one may still call Ireland. But it would not be Ireland. Words suck. This is the lesson we can take from this.

 

[Lohrenswald]

"quote"

I ordered my horse to be brought from the stables. The servant did not understand my orders. So I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me and asked:
"Where is the master going?"
"I don't know," I said, "just out of here, just out of here. Out of here, nothing else, it's the only way I can reach my goal."
"So you know your goal?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied, "I've just told you. Out of here -- that's my goal."

"The departure" by Franz Kafka

dunno how good of a translation it is, I don't like the "--" in the final line tbh for example

 

[Kyriakos]

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?