Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

scrollprize.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–404 of 404 posts

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#401

Post by gunsle »

tialaramex wrote: post #353
benj111 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci fi tends to be about extrapolation and or cool things/things that improve the story. I don't think humans have changed, I don't think a human could begin to image a world so far away from their own. Humans tend to image faster horses. A few might imagine a steam engine. But then you have the social reality of everyone having a car. Of the environmental downsides. I don't think you can extrapolate all that. So yes…

> Humans tend to image faster horses. Well that's why most people aren't science fiction authors. Back in 1953 Isaac Asimov wrote, "It is easy to predict an automobile in 1880; it is very hard to predict a traffic problem". There are subsequent riffs on this idea, but in 1966 Heinlein observes that actually the surprise wasn't the traffic jam (Indeed Asimov is wrong, people complained about traffic jams before cars w…

Not to be that guy but you have a very well written comment here completely undermined by your choice of “fucking.” It just sounds crass in this context. Consider using “having sex” or something less aggressive next time. I have no problem with swearing fyi, but here it really has no need.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#403

Post by cben »

This is a stunning achievement for many reasons! Having been born in USSR, a particular reason it moves me to tears how this vindicates Bulgakov's famous "manuscripts don't burn", which he presented as a plain metaphysical fact:

"Unfortunately I cannot show it to you," replied the master, "because I burned it in my stove."

"I'm sorry but I don't believe you," said Woland. "You can't have done. Manuscripts don't burn." He turned to his cat. "Come on, Behemoth, let us have the novel."

– towards the end of The Master and Margarita. In the battle against both censorship & entropy, recovering a 2kyo text which was considered forever lost is an incredible victory.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#404

Post by thinkingemote »

card_zero wrote: post #389
thinkingemote wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 Are there really people ... Why would their lives be assumed not to be "real", what even is that mindset? Yes, there are a very great many! The philosopher David Gray says that most modern thinking sees our way of life and liberalism and "progress" as meaning growth and change. It implies it is inevitable, a kind of always changing improvement. Change that has occurred is for the good and its impossible to go bac…

OK, one of those "we need humbling" assertions. No we don't need humbling. I reckon you motivation is the other way round from what you state. Claiming to be empathetic about how people 2500 years ago are the same human beings as we are, and claiming that others miss this, is a way to oppose those who think of the world as always improving and evolving for the better. So it serves your goal, which is to dish out a hu…

Although advocating to have less empathy generally isnt considered good there are ancient and modern schools of thought that explicitly says that empathy can be bad.

To understand the enemy is to some extent to start to love the enemy and that's bad because the enemy is bad. The idea is that you can only have empathy for certain people.

Worth also pointing out that there's also a more modern but uncommon idea that empathy towards someone or a group may weaken and shutter their own "truth" or identity stories but this is for the moment only heard in radical academia not on the street.

Generally there's also a large amount of people who don't know what "empathy" means with the ever present confusion of it with "sympathy", endorsement and alignment.

Post reply on HN