@kelvin0mql
Lord Kelvin, if you find - in the popular imagination - such deviations from reality to be distracting, I fear you shall become so devoted to trying to explain to people that they are living in Plato's cave, that by the end of your life you shall have good units of measure that well represent reality named after you.

Heuristic shortcuts are EVERYWHERE. Most heartbreaking (to me) is when someone is imprisoned or excommunicated or killed because they used reality (or its closest proxy) as their benchmark, and their judges (&/or police) did not. An almost-literal witch-hunt.

#thereIsNoBoxYouInventedTheBox #platosCave #francisBacon #reality #cargoCults #witchHunt #politics #justice #science #hollywood #memes #memetics #thought #policing #police #whatWouldSirRobertPeelDo

@jonmsterling I once read of someone being complemented for their ability to think outside the box, to which they replied: "there is no box", and then after further thought they added: "you invented the box".

I write wagering that you might sympathise with such a commentator, who finds themselves explaining to their listener that they might live in, or have their thought constrained by, a box of their own making.

In a not-wholly-dissimilar vein, I wish that I knew to whom to attribute the quote "there's no such thing as software", which I came across, I assume written by an electrical engineer, when I read for the first time of Single Event Upsets or Bit-Flips.

As an aside I am also reminded of this short fictional story from @linuxgal https://techhub.social/@linuxgal/115442398217937734

#platosCave #plato #francisBacon #maths #math #mathematics #physics #science #firstPrinciples #FPGA #electricalEngineering

🌈 ☯️Teresita🐧👭 (@linuxgal@techhub.social)

Man: "Why is the speed of light that?" God: "What?" Man: "The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second. Why?" God: "First of all, the speed of light is 1 dumbass." #physics #0A

TechHub
Don Q and the hyenas of Plunderland

After the hyenas escaped from Plunderland Zoo, they laughed and copied themselves by running through the mirrors Don Q looked at himself in....

I feel sad for people who rely on #BBC #TheGuardian #nytimes #CNN as a source of #news to understand the world.

Their worldview is that of a person in #PlatosCave - trying to make sense of an increasingly complex world by looking at a set of carefully curated shadows; the courage needed to crawl out of the cave euthanised by their puppet masters lest they be shocked by the level of their own misinformation.

The world continues its whirl, the vultures continue circling, and down here on the ground we keep working hard to turn the tide on the ignorant before it’s too late. Still, it’s time to sit down, breathe and enjoy if you can some Sunday Morning Reading.

Perhaps you aren’t aware of the Second Circuit of Appeals decision rejecting the Internet Archive’s fair use defense. You can check out info on the decision here. Reading beyond that check out Matthew Ingram’s post The Second Circuit’s Decision in the Internet Archive Case is Bad. It is bad news for all of us. As a side note, Matthew has recently struck out on his own and you might want to check out his writing on The Torment Nexus. It promises to be a great place to read about issues in the intersection of technology, media, and, well…life.

Politics, or what passes for it these days, continues to dominate much of our attention even as it gets darker and more stupid with each passing day. Springfield, Ohio found itself the unwelcome center of the political world with all of the talk about eating pets and immigration. Isabel Fattal has a very good piece in The Atlantic titled The Springfield Effect. FWIW I don’t think Springfield is going to catch a break anytime soon, but then neither are the rest of us.

Voting is just around the corner, but the discussions and machinations around it now dominate our lives all the time. Check out Eli Saslow’s 3 Georgia Women Caught Up in a Flood of Suspicion About Voting. 

Sanewashing is just a new name in a long line of new names for ignoring the crazy, idiotic, and dangerous ways of the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist and his followers. Parker Malloy tells us Why The Atlantic’s Critique of Sanewashing Doesn’t Hold Up. There’s a link to the Atlantic piece in Malloy’s article. When a thing becomes a thing to criticize it becomes just another excuse for ignoring the truth.

There’s sadly a chance of some sort of carnage, physical or psychic, post-election. Certainly there will be political casualties. Perhaps that’s why we should read Ian Rose’s piece The Hidden Value of Vultures. Let’s hope the vultures doing the cleanup are only feasting on those who caused the mess.

Karen Hao takes a look at Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI when it comes to Microsoft working with fossil-fuel companies while purporting to fight climate change.

In a world full of what feels like willful ignorance, Daniel R. DeNicola takes a look at Plato’s Cave and the Stubborn Persistence of Ignorance.

Elizabeth Laura Nelson has a very poignant piece called Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night. Don’t let moments and opportunities pass you by.

Before you clear your palette and move on to whatever you move on to, take a brief trip along with NatashaMH to Bangkok City in When The World’s Your Oyster.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

https://warnercrocker.com/2024/09/15/sunday-morning-reading-68/

#ai #AIPin #PlatoSCave #Politics #sanewashing #Tech #Trump #vultures

Second Circuit Rejects Internet Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending Scheme

For a second time, IA’s fair use defense is soundly rejected by a federal court On September 4, a panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision in

Copyright Alliance

@Readsalot

I beg your pardon; I chose a dreadful way to convey my thinking. I merely meant to differentiate between things that can be demonstrated to exist or be objective laws, and things that are human constructs.

Many of the basic concepts in #maths and #physics can be agreed to exist (for a given actuarial definition of existing) or be true. Many things like money and churches and nation-states are constructs of the mind; usually shared constructs, and often well-defined legal fictions.

I meant only to suggest that without a clear, universally agreed definition of 'health' or 'security' or some other such human construct, I feel unable to agree that such a thing exists or could be said to be true.

Again I ought to reiterate that when I say exists I mean exists like a prototype of a kilo of metal exists, or could be said to be true like addition or multiplication or perhaps thermodynamics could be said to be true.

My gut feeling is that we want to use the same words in different ways, rather than that we disagree upon the fabric of reality.

I of course welcome readjustment if I am clearly mistaken.

I regret again my limited lexicon; that I suspect I do not have the wit to adequately articulate or present my beliefs for wider consideration. I also accept that finer discussion might be out of scope, although I do think it might still bear some relevance if anyone can frame it with greater clarity than my feeble attempt.

#thermodynamics #physics #engineering #science #reality #platosCave #philosophy #maths #math #law #religion #health #security #money #safety #economics

The #BlindMenWithTheElephant is a better allegory for today than #PlatosCave, in the same way that #BraveNewWorld is more relevant than #1984. But they are all essential. #LiberalValues
#ORIGPOST 030123

continuing my ragingly popular studies on #elonstans, #cryptobro and #altright philosophical studies here...

#npc #thematrix #platoscave #meme #mamema #memes #musk #twitter #laplace #laplacedaemon #causality #entropy etc

"#philosophy" for crackheads
#ORIGPOST 020123

that whole community of we-are-gonna-escape-that-whole-libtard-matrix-and-become-billionaires i.e. #muskstans is obsessing quite heavily with who is or isnt a #npc..

..after having played video games and watched #thematrix they realize a theorem someone came up with 2500 years ago in some cave, i guess

guys, the debate didnt end there, it was (kind of) ended some 2200 years later.

lots_of_long_boring_books_with_trilling_ideas in between.

#musk #twitter #kant #schopenhauer #platoscave #mamema

----
another profound one that went to waste

PS: IF YOU CANT READ THE MUSK TWEET - IT IS IN THE PIC DESCRIPT.

sorry, thats the toll of trying my best to shrink things down.
if ever it is worth it i dont squeeze just as hard.

there is a cure for this; #WEBP
...i know, i know; yet here we are
ORIG POST: 211122

update on the #platoscave #meme!

how could i have forgotten the most relevant platform of them all; #truthsocial.

so, there we go!

#joinmastodon #philosophy #meme #memes #mamema #trump #riptwitter #elonmusk #musk #facebook #twitter