Thimbron

An excerpt concerning the meanings of words and to whom and how well.

mircea_popescu: now - translation operates not on the object code (ie, the string quoted, or a string quoted) but on the whole program : any string plus ~the totality~ of conceptual content of the brain that produced it.

mircea_popescu: because no, words don’t "have meanings". your meanings for ANY WORD are a function of ALL THE OTHER WORDS YOU KNOW. which is why my definitions regularily blow out english dictionaries, wikipedia and other sources of “wisdom” out of the water - i know more words, and in this knowledge i know all the words i know _better. infinitely and irreproducibly so.

From the same conversation and regarding Aristotle:

asciilifeform: then i ask for coherent picture of subj in some current living language – and no dice

asciilifeform: why’d that be ?

mircea_popescu: because aristotle belongs to a dead language.

asciilifeform: but euclid, evidently – not

asciilifeform: ‘portable’

mircea_popescu: aha. however fellow was _marginal in his language.

mircea_popescu: as generally happens, mongols will comprehend the bums better than the middle class.

asciilifeform: folks who ‘can’t be translated into idiot mongol’ are guilty until proven innocent of playing glass bead games with words and pulling one another’s cocks

mircea_popescu: suppose you excavate tomb in valley of queens ; suppose you find _live, talking, cogent queen in there. suppose you take her to the shelf of items, and give her a questionnaire. she is to select “dildo spatula or hat” for each present item.

mircea_popescu: is she going to be disqualified from queenhood if she fails this multiple choice test ?

asciilifeform: how do you disqualify queen from a vanished throne ?

My gleanings from this conversation reflect somewhat my own experience studying Attic Greek and then being asked why by pretty much anyone who happens to find out, and having no way to answer because… the asker doesn’t know Greek.

I recently made the assertion to a friend that both Universities and MOOCs are failing. I don’t have much to back up this assertion, especially about MOOCs, other than some impressions.

MOOCs in general seem to be a naive attempt to either recreate the ability to take cool but non-essential electives online that one would normally take as part of a university undergraduate program or to be “modern” correspondence courses - similar to what I did during the summer in high school with my useless US government course.

None of these address what I see as the main failure of the collapsing university system, that being a failure of credibility.

Evidence of this failure is the Chinese use of the US university system for merit washing, through all sorts of exam and homework frauds that my wife personally witnessed at UC Berkeley.

There is this illusion that an instution can grant any sort of credibility. In fact only individuals can. The remnants of this are recommendation letters typically used to gain entrance to university programs. What goes on now, with Instutitions (corporate) considering only candidates for jobs who come from other Institutions (educational) is absurd and has resulted in complete impotence.

Competence can only come back once what matters is individual recommendations about individuals, educated in whatever manner individuals deem appropriate.

Additional evidence of the failure of University is that I have to great benefit updated my spam filter to send all traffic from .edu domains to the spam folder.

Vocabulary:

μικροψυχίας: meanness of spirit (n. gen.)
τιμὴν: honor, worship (n. acc?)
ἀτιμίαν: dishonor, disgrace, loss of civil rights (n. acc.?)
χαυνοῦσθαι: (passive?) be made flaccid, relax, or maybe middle
ἐλαχίστην: smallest (adj. fem. acc)
ὀδύρεσθαι: to lament, to bewail
δυσφορεῖν: to be impatient, angry, vexed
ἄτην: bewilderment, infatuation
ἀπότευγμα: failure
ὑπεξαίρεσθαι: lift up, lift off the earth

Original:

μικροψυχίας δ᾽ ἐστὶ τὸ μήτε τιμὴν μήτε ἀτιμίαν μήτε εὐτυχίαν μήτε ἀτυχίαν δύνασθαι φέρειν, ἀλλὰ τιμώμενον μὲν χαυνοῦσθαι, μικρὰ δὲ εὐτυχήσαντα ὑπεξαίρεσθαι, ἀτιμίαν δὲ μηδὲ τὴν ἐλαχίστην ἐνεγκεῖν δύνασθαι, ἀπότευγμα δ᾽ ἄτην καὶ ἀτυχίαν κρίνειν μεγάλην, ὀδύρεσθαι δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι καὶ δυσφορεῖν

Reordering and Translation:

μικροψυχίας δ᾽ ἐστὶ τὸ δύνασθαι φέρειν μήτε τιμὴν μήτε ἀτιμίαν μήτε εὐτυχίαν μήτε ἀτυχίαν,
It is of small mindedness to be able to bear neither honor nor dishonor nor fortune nor misfortune,

ἀλλὰ τιμώμενον μὲν χαυνοῦσθαι, μικρὰ δὲ εὐτυχήσαντα ὑπεξαίρεσθαι
but being honored to relax on the one hand, on the other hand having been a little lucky, to be lifted off the earth,

μηδὲ δὲ δύνασθαι ἐνεγκεῖν τὴν ἐλαχίστην ἀτιμίαν,
nor to be able to bear the smallest dishonor,

δ᾽καὶ κρίνειν ἀπότευγμα μεγάλην ἀτυχίαν, ὀδύρεσθαι δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι καὶ δυσφορεῖν.
and to judge a failure to be great misfortune, to bewail and to be vexed about everything.

This is when an act of intended altruism in fact causes harm to the recipient of the altruism. This is associated also with “virtue signaling,” in which an individual receives the social benefits of having been altruistic merely for holding and expressing an opinion without having to bear any cost.

Vocabulary

πλεονεξία: greediness, assumption, arrogance
ἀδικίας: wrongdoing, injustice

Original

ἀδικίας δ᾽ ἐστὶν εἴδη τρία, ἀσέβεια πλεονεξία ὕβρις

Reordering and Translation

ἐστὶν δ᾽ τρία εἴδη ἀδικίας, ἀσέβεια πλεονεξία ὕβρις
There are three forms of injustices: sacrilege, arrogance, and aggression.

Vocabulary

ἀκολουθεῖ: he/it follows (takes a dative)

δυσελπιστία: despondency

μεμψιμοιρία: faultfinding

μικροψυχίᾳ: littleness of soul, meanness of spirit

μικρολογία: meanness, stinginess

ταπεινότης: lowness

Original

ἀκολουθεῖ δὲ τῇ μικροψυχίᾳ μικρολογία, μεμψιμοιρία, δυσελπιστία, ταπεινότης

##Reordering

μικρολογία, μεμψιμοιρία, δυσελπιστία, ταπεινότης δὲ ἀκολουθεῖ τῇ μικροψυχίᾳ.

##Translation

Faultfinding, despondency, lowness on the other hand accompany meanness of spirit.

context

I have been studying Attic Greek for a few years now, and one aspect of it has given me endless trouble - rules of accentuation.

The rules (for most cases) were finally clearly explained to me in an excellent textbook entitled “Learn to Read Greek” by Andrew Keller and Stephanie Russel.

Following is their succinct summarization:

a = antepenult u = ultima p = penult

1. a p ù if u is followed by another word
2. a p ú if u is followed by pause punctuation
3. a ṕ u not possible if p long and u short
4. á p u if the u is short
5. a p ũ if the u is long
6. a †p ŭ if p is long and accented and u is short

† Please note that the penult in rule six should be marked with a circumflex, but is not because I couldn’t find any such unicode character after long and fruitless googling.

Terms

I recently had a discussion with and old friend about a particular video produced by Stefan Molyneux, namely The Truth About Slavery.

I recommended the piece to him as something to watch as “payment” for losing a wager we had loosely made over the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.

He watched the video and came away with a take strikingly different from my own. Having first watched it, I came away angered about not having known certain history related to slavery, such as the history of slavery in the Islamic world, the history of slavery in the ancient world, and the history of slavery elsewhere and at other different times.

My friend, on the contrary, also came away angered, but for a different reason entirely. He took great issue with Stefan’s use of the terms “slavery,” “white slavery,” and the concept that certain of the Irish in the new world may be considered to have been slaves. The issue seems to have arisen from a reference Stefan cited that is published on a site that also contains articles (by different authors than the one who penned Stefan’s reference) pertaining to 9/11 conspiracy theories. His conclusion appears to be that since Stefan referenced an article on this site, the article about Irish slavery was not a good source, and therefore the veracity of Stefan’s video was cast into doubt and likewise Stefan’s reputation as a historian and philosopher.

My friend’s argument applied directly to the text in question concerned was that Stefan was claiming that slavery was the same thing as indentured servitude which was not in fact what Stefan was doing. He was describing his own conception of slavery and categorizing the different types and comparing them. My friend had his own definition of slavery and was applying it to this piece that in fact has its own different definition of slavery and coming up with nonsensical results. So instead of trying to figure out what he was misunderstanding, he completely dismissed the piece.

Knowing something of my friend’s online history, I think I may have a theory as to his rather drastic repudiation of what to me appear to be a meaningful and coherent collection of facts about the history of slavery that runs contrary to my recieved knowledge from having attended public school in the US. He has spent long months (years ago) in the shitmines of redditmoria 9/11 conspiracy. I think the sight and association (however tenuous) of the 9/11 related posts triggered a fairly deep emotional response originating from long hours arguing with total morons about various 9/11 conspiracy theories. The tragedy of this – to me – is that I have listened to several Freedomainradio shows in which Stefan has painstakingly spent hours walking people down from the ledge of 9/11 conspiracy, alien abduction, belief in psychic powers, and all types of nuttery. Stefan and my friend are on the same side but it is likely that my friend has formed a permanent association between Stefan and nuttery that will be difficult to ever break given that he’d have to listen to more Stefan podcasts, but he won’t, because Stefan’s a nut apparantly.