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Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

jewjewjew.com

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Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#91

Post by WJW »

Faaak wrote: post #85
WJW wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not tricked, he put the loopholes there on purpose. You can't trick an omniscient being.

Supposing you're right, then why did they put these loopholes by purpose if they're going to be discovered someday ? To play games with us maybe ? But then is that morally ok to do so ?

I can't claim to understand everything, as he apparently moves in mysterious ways. However, just from the definitions we can deduce it's morally OK to do, since otherwise a perfect being wouldn't do so.

To play games? Perhaps, but presumably a perfect being is already perfectly happy and has no need for games. You could see it as a test for humans: only the truly devout study the laws closely enough to notice the loopholes.

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#92

Post by rsynnott »

reallydontask wrote: post #16

I can't find the exact quote but I think a comedian once said something along the lines of (large pinches of salt on the quote and whether it was said by a comedian): You think your god is all knowing, etc.. but at the same time stupid enough to fall for these work arounds

On a similar note, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, on (an analog of) Pascal's Wager:

> Upon his death, the philosopher in question found himself surrounded by a group of angry gods with clubs. The last thing he heard was 'We're going to show you how we deal with Mister Clever Dick around here…'

(As mentioned elsewhere, while this particular example may not be great, this sort of thing is accepted practice.)

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#93

Post by 082349872349872 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #40

Unless a shabbat goy is employed (who would have to be human) I don’t think you can have a compliant search engine. The machine can work at any point of the week but a jew cannot operate it on shabbat. A non jew could, but not acting on a direct command. The rules are quite watertight. Siri and co. are a no-go and there are no obvious ways to adapt smart assistants that would restore functionality. Anything that’s no…

Thinking of elevators which stop at every floor on shabbat, maybe the search engine ought to run on a timeout, returning results for all the "most common searches" (such as the auto-fill suggestions for each letter?) on some interleaved schedule.

(I'm not concerned with electricity here so much as with "בורר", selection.)

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#94

Post by himinlomax »

emosenkis wrote: post #25

As on Orthodox Jew, while I don't have anything against this and it sounds like a fun hobby project, I don't like that it misleads regarding what Jewish law actually requires. As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath - computers aren't Jews (Jewish law only expects Jews to keep the sabbath). If it's Jews working to generate the electricity (most "mo…

So how do you know if you're compliant? Can you do some A/B testing?

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#96

Post by reallydontask »

WJW wrote: post #77
reallydontask wrote: post #16

I can't find the exact quote but I think a comedian once said something along the lines of (large pinches of salt on the quote and whether it was said by a comedian): You think your god is all knowing, etc.. but at the same time stupid enough to fall for these work arounds

God can't be stupid since (by axiom) he is all-knowing, perfect and presumably cares about the laws he sets. Therefore, any loopholes in the laws were put there on purpose and the believer is actually extra virtuous for paying close enough attention to notice the workarounds.

How do we know that the laws were set by him and not say a person who thought god was talking to him and somehow convinced people that they came from god?

How do we know that the loopholes are not there to test the to the letter followers versus the spirit of the law followers?

and how do we know which of those groups does god prefer?

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#97

Post by rsynnott »

dangus wrote: post #83

As someone who isn’t religious, it’s really, REALLY hard to remind myself that not only do people still believe this stuff, but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God and all the underlying mythology. I feel like the rational outcome would be that only a small minority of people would still buy into these ideologies. But I guess economists already know that people aren’t rational. O…

> but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God

This is probably no longer literally true; in polling a majority of Europeans who identify as Christian don't usually believe in a personal god, and significant numbers who identify as Christian don't believe in the supernatural at all.

> and all the underlying mythology.

Believing in _all_, or even most, of the mythology, as something that actually happened, is unusual; you're basically talking Biblical literalists, who are a small minority of Christians.

> For example, doesn’t the change from the Julian and Gregorian calendars throw a wrench into what day we are actually on?

For most Christians, the only one that's particularly important that it be on the right day there is Easter, which is dealt with. The Gregorian shift, in any case, was seen as a _correction_; from the point of view of those who initiated it the problem would have been the time that went before.

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#99

Post by slavak »

rbanffy wrote: post #71
rsynnott wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sort of thing reads as absurd in Christian majority cultures mostly because mainstream Christianity does not currently have many restrictions which inconvenience people day to day. Back when it did, they did stuff that was at least as weird; did you know that both beavers and certain types of geese were regionally considered to be fish to get around the no meat on Fridays thing?

A very non-practicing Jewish friend of mine joked that he went to the local butcher, pointed to the pork and ordered, while pointing, "that fish". Growing up with those restrictions seems to do wonders for one's sense of humor.

In Israel it's affectionately known as "short cow".

Re: Kosher search engine powered by 4 car batteries on a passively cooled server

#100

Post by MH15 »

The tongue-in-cheek humor of this project aside, it returns an astoundingly antisemitic search result on the home page. See https://wethoughttheywerewhite.tumblr.com/, a blog dedicated to blaming the Jewish people for the international slave trade. It's awful.
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