11 ms·
Legends of the Ancient Web (2017)
- narag 9y agoIf you're not familiar with it, Ecclesiastes is a rant by an angry, elderly atheist that through some editorial oversight found its way into the Bible. Not an atheist. Ancient jews believed in God but not in the afterlife.
- autokad 9y agoyeah they kind of lost me at that point
- idlewords 9y agoThat's the first slide! You pulled the ripcord while the plane was still at the terminal.
- electricbanana 9y agoThank God for zero-zero ejection seats... unless you get sucked into the turbine of an overflying jet.
- autokad 9y agoi heard the engine rattling, and its not the only plane in the terminal. on a serious note, i already knew they didnt have their facts strait, and it was clear they were going to paint the article with some sort of rhetoric. i'm sure you enjoyed the article and it has good content, but it wasn't for me and i moved on.
- grive 9y agoBut even on such a tight schedule, you took the time to come to the comment and take part in a pointless thread about a joke. > i already knew they didnt have their facts strait Deducing this from this joke alone is irrational, so to be charitable let's assume you had other reasons for dismissing the talk. Why not expose them instead?
- timdavila 9y agoFYI - You're responding to the author.
- zellyn 9y agoIt's a joke.
- narag 9y agoIt doesn't matter.
- CiPHPerCoder 9y agoHN: Whereby, when presented with a Maciej slide deck, pedantry takes precedence over humor. Oh well, at least he can take solace in > that no matter how bad my talk, it won't be remembered.
- narag 9y agoHN: Whereby, when presented with a Maciej slide deck, pedantry takes precedence over humor. Please, try to understand what others try to do before throwing unwarranted insults in the conversation. That was a joke. So? There are a lot of people that ignores what I said. I wasn't attacking the author, just adding some rare facts to the conversation for people that could be unaware of it and wonder wth the author was meaning. Now your comment, what exactly does it add to the conversation? Edit: your response (that I can't responde to) is even worse. <sigh>
- CiPHPerCoder 9y ago> I wasn't attacking the author, just adding some rare facts to the conversation for people that could be unaware of it and wonder wth the author was meaning. I wasn't responding to your original comment, which I thought added value. I was responding to "It doesn't matter." You're dismissing someone else's perception of the context in which the statement was made. Sure, humor might not matter to you. To some HN users, it might even matter less than factual correctness to a granular level. But to say it doesn't matter, full stop? That's just rude. > Now your comment, what exactly does it add to the conversation? It circles back from your dickish dismissal with an excerpt from the webpage for the sake of humor. Try lightening up. Or, at the very least, maybe try to not be a dismissive jerk to other people. It costs very little to be kind. EDIT: If you want to respond, click the "x minutes ago" to access a comment directly and you'll get the reply box. i.e. https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=16107228 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=16107228
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- brlewis 9y agoYou're correct, but the article is overall a great read. This one little factual oversight is tangential.
- itp 9y agoI'm not an expert at all, but your response made me curious as to why that (presumably humorous) aside would have been thrown in. Anyway, my research, such as it is, took me as far as the Wikipedia article on Ecclesiastes[0], which maybe provides soft support for the claim? The presence of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is something of a puzzle, as the common themes of the Hebrew canon—a God who reveals and redeems, who elects and cares for a chosen people—are absent from it, which suggests that Kohelet had lost his faith in his old age. Anyway, I hope that this won't discourage people from reading the entire thing, which I thought was well written and well worth the time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Canonicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Canonicity
- narag 9y agoI have no idea who wrote that in Wikipedia. My source was a Theology PhD about 35 years ago. Before maccabees there was no believe in afterlife, that came from Egypt and eastern cultures. Even in Jesus times, Sadducees didn't believe in afterlife.
- bambax 9y ago> a God who reveals and redeems, who elects and cares for a chosen people Yhwh is indeed the God of his own people, and fights alongside his people, against other peoples and their god(s). Sometimes he gets upset with his people and punishes them, usually very harshly (mass drowning, mass fires, getting them lost in the desert for generations, etc.) The role of prophets is mainly to try to talk God into being a little more lenient and maybe not kill everyone this time. The idea of a benevolent God is fairly recent. (Conversely, the argument that God doesn't exist because there is so much evil in the world is fairly weak. The God of the Old Testament doesn't have a problem with evil, he just wants his team to win.)
- 52-6F-62 9y agoThis was a great talk! I really think more of the ideal this presentation expressed needs to be shared. It's very easy to be a cold, hard reasoner when your life is reasonably safe, comfortable, and your belly is full. It's very easy to forget the larger picture.
- itp 9y agoWere you there to hear it in person? Even just reading it online, I found it really, really well done. Both in terms of content, but also structurally as a presentation itself.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoNo, unfortunately this is the first I'd heard of it. But it is a great read. Well structured, but with some great bits of history I didn't yet know. I also hadn't heard anything from Ecclesiastes since I was a kid. Churches started to depart from the old testament unless they wanted to condemn gay marriages, etc for a while there. I still kept my old Bible (as I do many texts). I might even have to give that book a re-read because I definitely didn't appreciate the basic wisdom when I was young. It was well-used, though; sparsely, and with cutting effect. I couldn't agree more with the conclusion, and it was beautifully illustrated.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThis was a great talk indeed. Highly recommended read. I liked the story from Poland near the end. I'm Polish, and I've never heard of it before. Regarding the ending, 'idlewords, you say: > I tell this story to reassure you that just because everything is heavy and political right now, it doesn't mean we can't also fight these fights on our own terms, as nerds. Does this mean a departure from your usual views that we should stop trying to solve political problems with tech, or am I misunderstanding either your usual views or that line in the presentation?
- idlewords 9y agoThank you for those kind words! I included the story about the radio astronomers because it's such a nice example of doing something creative with technology in the service of a broader goal, while staying true to who you are—a big giant nerd. I don't think applying technology to political problems is anathema, it just requires special care and humility. My quarrel is with people who think you can treat human society like a deterministic computer system, and 'hack' it. Politics is hard!
- vinceguidry 9y agoThe old school word for hacking human society is 'terrorism'. You look at the joints of the animal and figure out where to apply the most leverage.
- jacquesm 9y agoActivism might be a better term.
- vinceguidry 9y agoThere's a fine line between terrorism and activism. Civil disobedience actions like labor strikes toes it without stepping over.
- deleted 9y ago
- maxfurman 9y agoMaciej's talks are the best. His combination of humor and insight is, in my opinion, unmatched. I just wish he posted more often!
- jasonthevillain 9y agoI suspect he's consistently this awesome because he doesn't post that often, and can actually put time and effort into things.
- mrspeaker 9y agoA talk that has me both doing some mature self-examination regarding my next career move, AND wanting to learn HAM radio. Inspiring stuff!
- dionidium 9y ago"Outcomes matter, not intentions." Outcomes matter. Of course outcomes matter. But that can't be a complete moral reasoning. Intentions do matter in all things. Intentions are the difference between murder one and a forgivable accident. It's the difference between putting a knife in your wife's back because she cheated on you and swinging around in the kitchen too fast and putting that same knife in her gut by accident. Intentions tell me what to expect about your future behavior. Intentions, in other words, reveal something important about the actor (and, therefore, future outcomes) that outcomes don't. Of course outcomes matter. But when we stop caring about intentions, we start thinking of murderers like remorseful spouses, or, say, genuine racists like tasteless jokers. The idea that only outcomes matter has far too much currency in our current politics.
- autokad 9y agoif outcomes only mattered, i could try to murder my wife as much as i want, and as long as i failed its all good. edit: also,l we start leading down the machiavellian path, where the ends justify the means.
- stanfordkid 9y agoThe real problem is that scientists & technologists are not inherently power hungry. This has been true throughout human history. The second that technologists realize that it serves the human race for us to be power hungry (at the grandest scale -- not the ego-driven "I launched Instagram" scale) ... society will undergo rapid transformation. A unified, noble, technocracy is the future of human government... but it requires a new form of revolutionary indoctrination. EDIT: maybe I should replace "power hungry" with: wanting to be the ones calling the shots. Especially with regards to things like foreign policy etc. Most of us have strong pacifist views but seldom do we actually do anything that enables us to stop constant war. Constant war is culturally ingrained in our governments, which is why it continues to happen. One only needs to look at the history of the CIA, then compare that to what they are doing now to see this.
- idlewords 9y agoUsername checks out
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pault 9y agoI think there's an important distinction between being power hungry and recognizing the need for active participation in society, taking responsibility for how our work is deployed, and using democratic technology as a counterweight against the influence of despots and corporate oligopolies. The world needs more power hungry people like I need a hole in my head.
- oblio 9y agoA "noble" anything is the future of human government. I'm not betting on it happening during my lifetime. For now I'd prefer us to have better systems for using human flaws for good government (greed, fear, narcissism & pride, etc.).
- smacktoward 9y agoAnd the problem with that was identified by Lord Acton in 1887 (https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165acton.html https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165acton.html): "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Your technocrats may be noble, but they are also human. Give them enough power and they will swiftly lose their nobility.
- krylon 9y ago> If you didn't know radio existed, the whole thing would sound like a bunch of pseudoscientific hokum. I have never looked at it from that angle. Very interesting thought!
- TeMPOraL 9y agoRadios are magic. I like to reflect on the fact that antennas are basically pieces of metal twisted in funny geometrical patterns. The same metal our ancestors knew thousands of years ago.
- Arcsech 9y agoI mean, transistor-based microelectronics are basically just special rocks that we have inscribed with very precise geometrical patterns and feed lightning into in order to make them behave how we want.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYeah. As the saying goes, "a CPU is literally a rock we tricked into thinking".
- Anthony-G 9y agoI’ve always thought we live in a magical world. On one level, I understand the physical working of many of the technologies that have been mainstream for most of the past century (television, radio, aeroplanes). On another level, I still find them to be magical and marvel at the achievements of human ingenuity, creativity and labour. This includes so many disparate human endeavours, e.g., the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable, the speed at which a modern block of offices can be built, weaving technology, the development of a free open source OS (Linux), flying all the way to the moon. I suppose this feeling is a case of Clarke’s third law, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. On a related note, when my younger (Christian) self read the Bible, I skipped Ecclesiastes and the Book of Psalms as they didn’t appeal to me. Thanks to Maciej’s excellent writing and apt quoting (even though I don’t agree that it was written by an atheist), I think my older (atheist) self might appreciate it better and get more out of it. There is plenty of food for thought in its opening verses: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%3A1-11&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%...
- tambourine_man 9y agoWill there be a video version released?
- partycoder 9y agoIf you are interested in the history of communications, you may also be interested in this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line
- wiremine 9y agoGreat talk! Wanted to add a few thoughts that came to mind as I read it: 1. The radio history lesson is great, and I'd agree is appropriate for our current situation. It reminds me a lot of early US history and the use of newspapers in the colonies. James Callender is one of many interesting people from that time. [1] He was Thomas Jefferson's to go muckraker. 2. Reed's Law [2] also came to mind. Radio and Newspapers are mass mediums, which the internet is not (only). Reed's law isn't perfect, but it's a good filter when trying to apply pre-internet lessons to the internet. 4. Just a theological aside: Ecclesiastes is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, which the Bible also calls the wisest man who ever lived. It was likely not actually pre-exilic, but it's interesting/helpful to read it as if it was given by the wisest man who ever lived who happened to have absolute power. [1] https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/james-callender https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jam... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law
- throwawayjava 9y agoIs the premise of Reed's Law relevant to the sorts of social control problems that the author is discussing, though? I think it's more the ability to do individual targeting that matters, from that perspective. And Reed's Law doesn't say anything about that (other than in the trivial "subnetworks of size of 1" sense) I think the internet is fundamentally different from the old broadcast media, but not because of Reed's combinatoric observation. In particular, notice that the radio also allowed these subgroups; e.g., the interference issues in the USA leading up to WWI seem like an apt historical example.
- wiremine 9y ago> the interference issues in the USA leading up to WWI seem like an apt historical example. It's a good question. I think you need to apply Reed's law at scale, not in the formative state. For example, the initial internet in 1969 was limited to a small group of universities, and not accessible like it is today. My point is you can't cherry pick a point in time for the technologies and compare them. Early radio vs. mature internet aren't the same thing. My original point was that radio and newspapers were one way mediums that limited control to a small group of people. A different way is to say the internet enables platforms, as opposed to gatekeepers. Both can be megaphones to the savvy and powerful, but they are fundamentally different in other ways. The recent #MeToo movement is an example of this: that never would have happened if we were limited to traditional mass media, because there was no way for people and have their voices amplified. This is a good example of how the combinatoric effect of Reed's Law relates the social control argument. It's a bit dated, but Small Pieces Loosely Joined lays out some of these ideas very well. http://www.smallpieces.com/ http://www.smallpieces.com/
- cobbzilla 9y agoIs this analogy apt or strained: As FDR and Hitler were to Radio, so is Trump to Twitter/Internet? [1] [1] https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/the-schizoid-presidency-of-donald-trump/ https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/the-schizoid-p...
- TeMPOraL 9y agoDepends on whether you compare to 1944!Hitler or 1930!Hitler. Point being, comparisons to Nazi Germany, or other evil regimes of the past are usually exaggerated because no western country in the present is a comparable regime. Nevertheless, there have been some worrying developments in the west over the past two decades, and they invite caution. Or, put more bluntly (and I think in line with Maciej's talks): Trump is not Hitler. But the next president - in the US or elsewhere - just might be.
- cobbzilla 9y agoNeither is Trump FDR, I think you missed my point. Trump, like both FDR and Hitler, made novel use of a new communications medium to rally their supporters and reach new ones, while their opponents scratched their heads trying to understand the phenomenon.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYou're right; I think I did miss your point. Thanks for clarification.
- agumonkey 9y agoKudos, learned a lot from history to politics.
- jacquesm 9y agoAbsolutely fantastic talk. Thanks for posting this. It certainly helps put recent developments into perspective.
- dbg31415 9y agoI love how the page about the "ancient web" is built in 2017 using tables. This made me smile. Some followup watching: * Empire of the Air | PBS || http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/ http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/
- ubertaco 9y agoJust a note: Ecclesiastes is definitely not "a rant by an angry, elderly atheist that through some editorial oversight found its way into the Bible." Rather, it's a compiled lament by Solomon (Jewish king and son of the Jewish king David) about the futility/emptiness of a life lived apart from devout devotion to his god, and the stuff in the book is described later as "many proverbs" that were "arranged with great care" (Ecclesiastes 12:9), a description that comes after a long paragraph by that supposed-atheist that starts >Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; and just before a paragraph ending in >The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. Not exactly "a rant by an...atheist".
- dvt 9y agoWanted to chime in and say the same thing, so thank you. It really irks me when people with little to no theological or historical background pretend to understand religious texts.
- throwawayjava 9y agoI'm pretty sure it was a light-hearted joke, not a serious theological thesis.
- dvt 9y agoMaybe I don't get the joke then. To me, it just seems to be purposefully inflammatory and edgy. As it turns out, it's really off-base, too.
- throwawayjava 9y ago> Maybe I don't get the joke then. The juxtaposition of a cranky critic or unserious person becoming a near-absolute authority on the thing he's cranky/not serious about is a common comedic trope. E.g., insert joke about Satoshi creating bitcoin to make an ironic joke about the dotcom bubble and accidentally launching the first ICO. The Mel Books skit is not intended to seriously suggest that there were originally 15 commandments. And Satoshi probably wasn't making performance art about late capitalism. And Ecclesiastes wasn't written by a cranky atheist. It's a joke. > To me, it just seems to be purposefully inflammatory and edgy The commonness of this trope indicates that lots of people find it funny, perhaps especially when it's disconnected from anything that's important to them. But more importantly, no one is laughing at you, and the intent of this joke isn't to inflame. The author is using a relevant quote from a source, and leading into that quote with a light-hearted joke. The fact that this joke is about Ecclesiastes has more to do with the fact that the author is using a quote from that book (to make a serious point, and a point that's at least not incongruent with the original intent). The author is instantiating a common joke template in the context of a quote he's using the lead off a talk. That's all. > As it turns out, it's really off-base, too. No, it's not, because it wasn't a serious premise. You can tell that this is the case by the fact that the 20+ slides that follow this one are not on the subject of theology or christian/jewish history...
- peter303 9y agoThe telegraph was the first Internet. It permitted messages to travel across a country in seconds instead of of days. For example the Battle of New Orleans, 29 years before the first telegraph, was fought after the peace treaty for the War of 1812 was signed. The first telegraphs had only a rate of 20 bits a second (measured in those days at 40 words per minute). Various inventions like multiplexing and speeds via punched tape could increase that an order of magnitude. Thomas Edison inevented several of these speedups.
- timthorn 9y agoBeacons enabled rapid messaging in Roman times - message size was clearly limited but messages could cross a country in minutes.
- NoGravitas 9y agoThis reminds me strongly of the Clacks in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (which is heavily based on the real-world telegraph, though it was a mechanical semaphore system). It quickly took on internet-like characteristics, including image transmission, and then, rather soon, image compression. X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett" http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/ http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/
- emmelaich 9y agoIt's very interesting how similar Coughlin's mannerisms are to Hitler's. I would not be surprised if Hitler copied him. Just to show not all mass media Catholic priests are so unpleasant I give you Fulton Sheen, popular on radio 20s, 30s and TV in the 50s. Was popular among non-Catholics and even won an Emmy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen
- madez 9y agoAt first, I found the direct comparison of Google with the Nazi ideology as happened in the picture (https://static.pinboard.in/ancient/thumbs/law.034.thumb.jpg https://static.pinboard.in/ancient/thumbs/law.034.thumb.jpg) and the text > You don't get a clear warning that you're working on something that's bad for the world. They put you to work designing a machine that answers to "OK Google", not "OK Goebbels". not justified, as Google is a very different organization and has different values and motives. But then I understood the comparison as a mean of drastically warning about what unforeseen consequences lie in these data collections, derived models, undemocratically and centrally controlled systems, proprietary systems, and the induced shift of powers in our society. That change can be devastating for society. As a society, we need constantly be on watch over what these systems and do who controls them. Closed and proprietary systems manufacturers and developers have an immense political influence on our society. Do we agree with their statement? Can we even afford that as a society?
- madprops 9y ago>I don't think we've even seen a Father Coughlin of the Internet Alex Jones?
- NoGravitas 9y agoIn tone, yeah, but Alex Jones has nowhere near the influence of Father Coughlin.