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| (PG edition) Some time ago - never mind when precisely - I became embarrassed with the omission of Melville's Moby Dick, and encouraged by a read of "Bartleby the Scrivener" that Melville & I might be more sympatico than I had hitherto presuppose ...more | |
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| Luttwak's controversial thesis on interpreting the pre-Byzantine Roman Empire's geopolitical strategies from roughly the early Empire to Constantine as 3 broad systems of governance and frontier defense. (The Byzantine Empire's own long and intricate ...more | |
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The conclusion to the Second Apocalypse’s “The Aspect-Emperor” tetralogy, an extended double-book of The Great Ordeal/The Unholy Consult. After thousands of pages exhausting the reader in a ‘slog of slogs’, the two threads of the plot, the wizard and ...more |
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Gwern
made a comment on
his review
of
Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
"
I dunno who paid him (wasn't it just a bunch of random fans?). My point is more that it wasn't a good place to apply Bayes or a good use of Carrier's
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| New Legends is an anthology of SF stories picked by Bear with an eye toward the psychological & personal lives of scientists/researchers. I purchased a copy of it to look at the novella "Radiance" by Carter Scholz and compare it with the full nov ...more | |
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“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein
― Ludwig Wittgenstein
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
― Jorge Luis Borges
“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”
― Gene Wolfe, Shadow & Claw
― Gene Wolfe, Shadow & Claw
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
― David Hume
― David Hume
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A place where all Goodreads members can work together to improve the Goodreads book catalog. Non-librarians are welcome to join the group as well, to ...more
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Users of Less Wrong, a community blog dedicated to refining the art of human rationality.
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