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Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

openculture.com

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Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#71

Post by cess11 »

nashashmi wrote: post #52

Some people here are reacting like the occult is fake. Magic is fake. It is an illusion and it is fun and games. And we have lots of stories about it, both fantasy and horror. Occult is real. There is no such thing as white magic. There is only black magic. And such magic involves making trades with spirits and demons and establishing relationships with them. These demons do not have a code. They slowly guide you tow…

We're already compromised and humiliated, why not bring forth some embers of the Morning Star along the way?

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#72

Post by dr_dshiv »

zoogeny wrote: post #64
dr_dshiv wrote: post #55

A good place to start is Cornelis Agrippa’s “Three Books on Occult Philosophy.” Agrippa was a lawyer and esoteric feminist (eg, he wrote “on the nobility and preeminence of the female sex”) and defended women accused of witchcraft throughout Europe. His “three books” gave birth to the “occult” nomenclature. Or my favorite, Marsilio Ficino. There is a statue to Ficino when you walk into the library. Ficino was hired b…

I think your description of Penrose's belief does not match a podcast I recently watched where he discusses these topics with the Christian apologist William Lane Craig [1]. In fact, he explicitly states early on in that video that he sees the world of ideas as primary as opposed to Craig's view that consciousness is primary. At any rate, this video might serve as a quick introduction to Penrose's three world idea fo…

Oh, cool! I don’t recall a “primary” in the book — he suggests a range of different possible configurations that he was open to. What struck you as not matching?

Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#73

Post by ryandv »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #72
zoogeny wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your description of Penrose's belief does not match a podcast I recently watched where he discusses these topics with the Christian apologist William Lane Craig [1]. In fact, he explicitly states early on in that video that he sees the world of ideas as primary as opposed to Craig's view that consciousness is primary. At any rate, this video might serve as a quick introduction to Penrose's three world idea fo…

Oh, cool! I don’t recall a “primary” in the book — he suggests a range of different possible configurations that he was open to. What struck you as not matching? Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

> Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

For some speculative philosophical fiction that explores related ideas I highly recommend Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#74

Post by dr_dshiv »

zozbot234 wrote: post #60
dr_dshiv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the books are the outcomes of the Renaissance. The relationship between “science” and spirituality was much closer then than now. Further, most books published in Europe between 1300-1700 were written in Neo-Latin. Most of these books, therefore, have not been digitized and translated. Now, to me, it seems like a real shame if this humanist core of European thought is deemed too dangerous for consumption. But…

> I personally believe that these materials should definitely be part of large model training. Already done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37752272 It turns out that the real safety risk with AI is not Mecha-Hitler, it's just that it might end up reading the wrong sorts of books and accidentally conjure a horde of demons.

> accidentally conjure a horde of demons.

If we have a certain perspective on demons as self-sustaining information processing loops—we’ll, yeah, demons abound.

And, yes, this hn post from BenBreen — is amazing. We’ve been in touch!

And if Ben is reading, we’ve made progress on our version controlled community—LLM book translation prototype. Of course, it’s much to early to share on hn. Or whatever, it’s great, take a peek: https://www.philosopherslibrary.com/

Upload books, get translations. We have a separate system where neolatin scholars can evaluate randomly selected paragraphs — so we can measure and report on the base rate of different qualities for each book as a whole.

I don’t know if it is technically important for advancing AI, but it might be.

80% of the Neo-Latin books in the library have not been translated. Most NeoLatin hasn’t been translated. And it is even worse with Sanskrit. So much material has not been digitized or translated.

Is it meaningful to try to get this humanist core into our language models? Maybe including only modern writing is a good bias, but I doubt it.

It will take at least 2 years to get all this stuff scanned, digitized, translated and published.

So it’s kind of urgent, given all the AI training taking place over the next two years.

I’m writing this in a rush, but I’m at the Houghton Library at Harvard and they just brought up 5 books from Marsilio Ficino, published 1497 and 1516.

(If you or anyone is into this kind of thing, my email is in my profile — it’s my favorite hobby)

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#75

Post by throwanem »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #72
zoogeny wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your description of Penrose's belief does not match a podcast I recently watched where he discusses these topics with the Christian apologist William Lane Craig [1]. In fact, he explicitly states early on in that video that he sees the world of ideas as primary as opposed to Craig's view that consciousness is primary. At any rate, this video might serve as a quick introduction to Penrose's three world idea fo…

Oh, cool! I don’t recall a “primary” in the book — he suggests a range of different possible configurations that he was open to. What struck you as not matching? Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

All life also defecates, intelligent or otherwise. Curious how no one hastens to canonize that for its ubiquity.

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#76

Post by narrator »

dismalaf wrote: post #56
narrator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, the occult is just pre-modern social psychology and propaganda. How to get people to join your religion and fight, do bad stuff, and die for you is really old technology. Before modern psychology "Spellcasting" was saying something to someone for the effect it would have on them to manipulate their psychology to get them to do the thing you wanted them to do. It was a sort of pre-modern NLP. Christians and peop…

"Occult" means hidden practices. So it covers both non-mainstream religious/mystical/magical practices, but it also covers "hidden" beliefs within religions. Stuff like Kabbalah is considered occult, as it Christian mysticism, or folk mysticism that coexists with religion. Also, one can study things without making judgements about them. The history of human beliefs is interesting.

One of the interesting things I realize when I meet occult practitioners of the Hermeticist varieties is they refuse to acknowledge they are a religion and what they believe is only as true as any other religion. Like one adherent told me the universal consciousness has parts and I said, "that's fine that you believe that, but you acknowledge that is your religious belief?" and this person refused to even say that instead claiming that it was the absolute truth and not religion. I mean only the most bigoted religious zealot would claim that all other religions are false and his was the absolute truth and not a religion because it was absolutely true.

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#77

Post by zoogeny »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #72
zoogeny wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your description of Penrose's belief does not match a podcast I recently watched where he discusses these topics with the Christian apologist William Lane Craig [1]. In fact, he explicitly states early on in that video that he sees the world of ideas as primary as opposed to Craig's view that consciousness is primary. At any rate, this video might serve as a quick introduction to Penrose's three world idea fo…

Oh, cool! I don’t recall a “primary” in the book — he suggests a range of different possible configurations that he was open to. What struck you as not matching? Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

I was considering your explicit "material -> conscious -> ideas -> material" description. It feels more correct when you say he considers a range of possibilities that connect these, not explicit causality.

My take away was that he sees a mystery in the connections between these things (physical world, consciousness, ideas) that hints at some missing ideas in our conceptions of these things. But he clearly wants to avoid that mystery allowing what he calls out as "vague" answers to the question (mostly religious dogmatic certainties).

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#78

Post by wrp »

jrussino wrote: post #2

This sounds like the premise for a fun sci-fi/horror move. Uh-oh; we accidentally trained GPT6 on the Necronomicon!

I wonder how Terry Pratchett would have dealt with magical e-books? The goings on at the library of Unseen University were some of my favorite parts of Discworld.

Re: Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

#79

Post by ryandv »

narrator wrote: post #76
dismalaf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Occult" means hidden practices. So it covers both non-mainstream religious/mystical/magical practices, but it also covers "hidden" beliefs within religions. Stuff like Kabbalah is considered occult, as it Christian mysticism, or folk mysticism that coexists with religion. Also, one can study things without making judgements about them. The history of human beliefs is interesting.

One of the interesting things I realize when I meet occult practitioners of the Hermeticist varieties is they refuse to acknowledge they are a religion and what they believe is only as true as any other religion. Like one adherent told me the universal consciousness has parts and I said, "that's fine that you believe that, but you acknowledge that is your religious belief?" and this person refused to even say that in…

This is exactly how I feel when people start telling me about their own religious beliefs about things like "gender identity," right down to the absolute certitude in their faith and the bigoted, zealous excommunication of nonbelievers and heretics.
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