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The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

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Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#91

Post by dredmorbius »

jononomo wrote: post #87
dredmorbius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) is another rival, with Quotations from Chariman Mao Tse-tung having from 800 million to 6.5 billion printed copies, though a fair argument could be made that these were not market-based sales. The list of best-selling / most-published books includes the Bible (~5 billion copies), The Qur'an (~800 million), and the Book of Mormon (~190 million). Along with Mao's book, all of these share the chara…

Look at the Wikipedia page for best-selling authors, not best-selling books. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction...

Ah, thanks, though that has some notable omissions. There's the note:

Authors such as Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Rick Riordan, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Higgins, Isaac Asimov and Leon Uris have not been included in the table because no exact figures could be found.

Mao also seems to be omitted.

Certainty is a chimera.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#92

Post by jononomo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #91
jononomo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the Wikipedia page for best-selling authors, not best-selling books. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction...

Ah, thanks, though that has some notable omissions. There's the note: Authors such as Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Rick Riordan, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Higgins, Isaac Asimov and Leon Uris have not been included in the table because no exact figures could be found. Mao also seems to be omitted. Certainty is a chimera.

Mao deserves to be omitted. As for the others, they may be well known names, but in comparison to Agatha Christie they're off by a billion copies. They'd be lucky to compete with Danielle Steele.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#93

Post by dredmorbius »

jononomo wrote: post #92
dredmorbius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks, though that has some notable omissions. There's the note: Authors such as Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Rick Riordan, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Higgins, Isaac Asimov and Leon Uris have not been included in the table because no exact figures could be found. Mao also seems to be omitted. Certainty is a chimera.

Mao deserves to be omitted. As for the others, they may be well known names, but in comparison to Agatha Christie they're off by a billion copies. They'd be lucky to compete with Danielle Steele.

Mao deserves to be omitted.

On what basis, if you don't mind?

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#94

Post by the_af »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #89
the_af wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

Hahaha this is a good article. I love the part where the father didn’t believe them but the mother did and kind of published the photographs. And they did it only because of an argument with their mother. Could something like flat earth theory have started like this? A bad joke that people believed and it got hyped not because it is true but because idiots believing it is kind of fun.

Today? I think most flat-earthers are indeed having fun with an elaborate, long-running joke. Some even sort of admit it. (And some are truly deranged, of course).

Back then? Flat earth made all the sense in the world, according to the empirical observations possible at the time. Only it wasn't able to explain some phenomena (e.g ships "sinking" over the horizon), and so evidence accumulated against it, eventually.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#95

Post by weeblewobble »

tetris11 wrote: post #55
emodendroket wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Most of the stories are well done even if not every bit of his "ratiocination" holds up. I feel like one can enjoy them for what they are without trying to take them as real-life forensic science.

It just sits a bit bitter when you used to look at him as an unconventional man who employed the scientific process of deduction to solve his cases.... only for you to later realise that he was applying abductive reasoning the whole time, whilst claiming otherwise and chasing down any lead like a mad dog. Holmes wasn't smart, just driven.

Holmes does use a scientific process. He forms hypotheses and tests them, and when they are proven wrong he synthesizes the new information and then repeats until he solves the case.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#96

Post by jononomo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #93
jononomo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mao deserves to be omitted. As for the others, they may be well known names, but in comparison to Agatha Christie they're off by a billion copies. They'd be lucky to compete with Danielle Steele.

Mao deserves to be omitted. On what basis, if you don't mind?

I guess I don’t think people were honestly buying and reading Mao’s pamphlet at the rate of billions.

If Elon Musk printed 10 billion copies of some pamphlet he wrote and mailed a copy to every person in the world, that wouldn’t make him the best-selling author of all time.

People actually read Agatha Christie novels.

Agatha Christie’s novels aren’t “great literature”. Great literature does not get read by every third person in Earth. Tolkien has only sold 200 million copies, for instance — one tenth the numbers that Agatha Christie put up. Anyone can enjoy an Agatha Christie novel.

I suppose Shakespeare counts as “great literature” (maybe the greatest?) but he had a head start on Agatha Christie by a few hundred years and is taught in practically high school and college in the world (and I would bet that Shakespeare is not read as much as he is sold). People don’t buy Agatha Christie novels just to display in their bookcase.

Having said all that, and having read a ton of Agatha Christie novels as a kid, I guess I’m still surprised at how monumentally popular she was. Apparently she sells particularly well in French because Poirot is a popular character with French-speaking people.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

jononomo wrote: post #96
dredmorbius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mao deserves to be omitted. On what basis, if you don't mind?

I guess I don’t think people were honestly buying and reading Mao’s pamphlet at the rate of billions. If Elon Musk printed 10 billion copies of some pamphlet he wrote and mailed a copy to every person in the world, that wouldn’t make him the best-selling author of all time. People actually read Agatha Christie novels. Agatha Christie’s novels aren’t “great literature”. Great literature does not get read by every thir…

Fair enough.

What of the religious tracts (Bible, Qu'ran, Book of Mormon)?

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#98

Post by jononomo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #97
jononomo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don’t think people were honestly buying and reading Mao’s pamphlet at the rate of billions. If Elon Musk printed 10 billion copies of some pamphlet he wrote and mailed a copy to every person in the world, that wouldn’t make him the best-selling author of all time. People actually read Agatha Christie novels. Agatha Christie’s novels aren’t “great literature”. Great literature does not get read by every thir…

Fair enough. What of the religious tracts (Bible, Qu'ran, Book of Mormon)?

Well, I suppose the God is the best-selling author of all time, given that he is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Author of Authors.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#99

Post by dredmorbius »

jononomo wrote: post #98
dredmorbius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. What of the religious tracts (Bible, Qu'ran, Book of Mormon)?

Well, I suppose the God is the best-selling author of all time, given that he is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Author of Authors.

In the beginning was the Word ...

Though also: of the making of books there is no end.

In seriousness, however, I had in mind the ... less than fully-voluntary publication and distribution of such works, as compared with commercial publications for which, presumably, there is some general demand amongst the population.

Then there's the realisation that some EULA from Facebook or TikTok is probably the most-published text in all history.

Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)

#100

Post by jononomo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #99
jononomo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I suppose the God is the best-selling author of all time, given that he is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Author of Authors.

In the beginning was the Word ... Though also: of the making of books there is no end. In seriousness, however, I had in mind the ... less than fully-voluntary publication and distribution of such works, as compared with commercial publications for which, presumably, there is some general demand amongst the population. Then there's the realisation that some EULA from Facebook or TikTok is probably the most-published…

Well, I'm a theist and I buy the "in the beginning was the Word" idea 100%. It is the truest statement that can be expressed in human language.

In my view the "hard problem of consciousness" that Sam Harris keeps referring to is in fact "the hard problem for materialism".

And I don't doubt that the Bible is the most-published book of all time. The Bible is one of the few books that a person may easily own two dozen copies of over a lifetime.

And people do actually read the Bible. In fact, if you're unfamiliar with the Bible that a great many references in other great literature will be lost on you. It is a truly foundational text.

As for EULAs, they don't count because no one reads them.

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