Reddit comments from May 2024

This is genius

Great analysis

I don't know how that movie exists, who thought it would make a return on investment, and who would go to see it again in IMAX. I enjoyed it despite how absolutely bizarre it was, but outside of a very very small cult fanbase I can't understand what would compel a theatre to show it

Very interesting take. Important to keep in mind there are many theories about the inimitability of the Quran, and linguistic miracle is only one of them that was first explicitly posited in about the 4th century.

It depends what you mean by a "critical understanding." There is no parallel textual criticism of the Qur’an in the same way that there is with the Bible. Both were and are seen by some as the inerrant word of God. The major difference is…

Awesome to see such a respected academic here.

Modern 12'er Shi'a use the theological works of the Mu'tazilah so yes they believe it is created. Atharis object to the term Qadīm (premordial, as opposed to 'Azl which is eternality into the future) because there's no direct narration…

Shah WaliAllah al-Dihlawi actually held that the Tawrah & Injīl were not corrupted and were preserved till his day. Obviously that flies in the face of modern textual criticism and he's an outlier voice as almost no other scholars held that view. Just an interesting rabbithole.

By rasm here I intended to indicate the skeletal letters without diacritical marks or nuqat, but I can see that the way I said it could be confusing. "It's very difficult to claim that the Rasm... source of the Qur'anic text" I could have included an aside to clarify what was meant here.

There's the oral Qur'an Muhammad dictated to his followers, that was certainly vowelized in pronunciation and used the various letters. Then there's those first miscellaneous writings of what Muhammad said. Then there's compilations before the Uthmani codification. Then there are the Uthmanic codices from which the modern Qur'an comes from. I was referring to that second stage, that what the early Muslims wrote down, before Uthman codified the Mus'haf, is mostly agreed upon to have come from Muhammad.

The reason why Qur'an-only movements are popular is because of philosophical liberalism. It's much easier to force the Qur'an to accord with liberal values without the clarifying corpus of the hadith. It's very hard to wholesale attack the veracity of the hadith corpus while leaving the Qur'an totally intact. But, they're attached to Islam to a certain degree, so instead of apostating outright they try to reform it within - which is a mission encouraged by the colonizers.

Look at historical characters like Mohammed Abduh that tried to reconcile Western liberalism with the Qur'an as a response to colonialism. These people assumed that geopolitical failure meant something is wrong with Islam, so they attempted to revise Islam to be more in accordance with dominant powers. Less extreme examples include Abdullah Yusuf Ali or the other modernist Salafis.

Some people's response when defeated is to admit the superiority of their opponent categorically. These people secularize outright. Some people hold on deeper to their values and see their defeat in light of Quranic narratives. These people are traditionalists. Most people are in the middle, slowly ceding more and more ground because they have a conventional moral framework.

Look into Erik Erikson's theory of moral development

There are several examples of Muhammad's miracles in the Qur'an, such as splitting the moon. Furthermore, other prophets perform miracles in the Qur'an.

Dr. M. M. Azami dealt with most of the flimsy attacks on the hadith cannon in his On Schacht's Origins of Mohammed Jurisprudence.

https://archive.org/download/OnSchachtsOriginsOfMuhammadanJurisprudenceByM.M.Azami/On_Schachts_Origins_of_Muhammadan_Jurisprudence.pdf

Also check out his Studies in Early Hadith Literature.

There are copies of written hadith from the time of Sahabah. See the Sahifa of Hammam b. Munabbih discovered by Mohammed Hamidullah. Almost all of the narrations written therein are word-for-word in Musnad Ahmad from almost 2 centuries later. There are other early surviving extant hadith writings.

This is a really silly argument. The Qur'an mentions every Prophet performing miracles. Clearly the intention is that Muhammad also performed miracles. Very early sources indicate that Muslims from the earliest times believed this was a miracle Allah gave Muhammad.

You may not believe it happened for whatever reason, but the Qur'an is clearly indicating that this was a Prophetic miracle - just like Nuh's ark, Ibrahim escaping the fire, the raising of Mount Sinai, splitting the Red Sea, Isa being raised up, the camel of Salih, or any of the other Prophetic miracles.

This revisionist reading of the Quran as a materialist book is incredibly strange. The Quran goes out of it's way to demonstrate that it is the competion of the semitic prophetic tradition. Jews & Christians in antiquity believed in miracles. If the Qur'an wanted to oppose them, why did it do everything to suggest otherwise?

If a person believes God Reveals Books to mankind then what is the stretch to believe that God can also do miracles?

If you wanted to use manuscripts and carbon dating, the sahifa of Hammam b. Munabbih would date as early as many of the early Qur'anic manuscripts. It's probably only a few decades later than the earliest ones, maybe 3-5 decades after the death of the Prophet. And it's clearly a copy of an even earlier non-extant text.

That's not based on isnad and ijma, that's based on manuscripts.

Refer to the research of Dr. Hamidullah

Not familiar but I'm sure you can do research online

The Qur'an is not supposed to be Muhammad's speech so if you don't take hadith how is he supposed to lay claim to them anyways? That's totally nonsensical argument. How are you going to look for Muhammad's claims in Allah's Speech where Muhammad's speech is not present?

In the hadith literature he does lay claim to them.

Please send pdf so I can review this. Thank you.

Thanks

I'm struggling to even understand what points you're making or questions you are posing. It would be clearer if you elaborated on each thing

Not relevant and ITT a bunch non-academic silliness

You're right, I misremembered. There was a very early manuscript from the era of sahabah/early tabi'in but it was lost. It survives as a copy. That research is encompassed in Dr. Mohammed Hamidullah's analysis of Saĥīfat Ĥammām bin Munnabih.

Seems like this sub is devolving into anti-Islam apologetics or people pushing their own religious narratives, with little discussion of academic sources

I can't find a pdf. Introduction to the Conservation of Hadith https://a.co/d/8RxbliC

A person can be an academic and also an apologist if they keep the realms separate. But it's very hard to be an academic when you hate the thing you're studying, although possible. Graeme Wood is a good example.

Where is the controversy here? Is the idea to try to demonstrate that Arabian society was totally illiterate to bolster Prophet Muhammad's believed illiteracy? Or is there a conflation as to modern standards of literacy and premodern standards of literacy (something discussed by Bart Ehrman in "Misquoting Jesus")?

It seems a bit difficult to argue that Arabian society was illiterate when there's significant evidence not only in the archeological record but also in the Islamic religious tradition of writing. Obviously, literacy rates were not extremely high, nor was literacy what we think of it now, but I'm not understanding what's problematic here?

Is it fair to even categorize that as the traditionalist view? There is an orthodox Sunni opinion that includes Prophet Muhammad learning how to read before his death as well. Let alone many incidents from his life: Waraqah b. Nawfil, the entire idea of Ahl al-Kitab, al-Mu'allaqat in the Ka'bah, the incident with the Badri prisoners, etc.

Clearly there was a proliferation of education and writing after Islamic governance, especially after the introduction of Chinese papyrus into the Arabian peninsula with the conquests under Umar's caliphate, but that doesn't mean pre-Islamic Jahili society was "illiterate".

If there wasn't a formalized scribal practice for writing Arabic it sure would have made compiling the Qur'an quite difficult.

I didn't mean to suggest that it is highly contested. It's a fringe opinion (although not considered invalid) among traditionalists. It holds much more credence among modernists.

The most prominent traditionalist is Abu Walīd al-Bājī al-Mālikī who held this view. Al-Bājī is one of the greatest Mālikīs in history.

It was prominent enough that Ahmad b. Hajr, chief judge of Qatar's first Shari'ah court, wrote a book refuting the position "Al-Radd al-Wāfir".

Everyone agrees he was illiterate at the start of Revelation. They just disagree whether he learned later on. Vast majority said he didn't.

Some of the narrations they use as evidence: .‏" Narrated 'Ubaidullah bin `Abdullah: Ibn `Abbas said, "When the ailment of the Prophet (ﷺ) became worse, he said, 'Bring for me (writing) paper and I will write for you a statement after which…

I think we're getting into a bit of semantics and I'm not sure that al-Jallad's categorization is particularly useful outside of the very specific application he's using it for. I think Ehrman's classification as to literacy makes a lot more sense and is better applied here.

All of the facts are agreed upon. If you take the religious sentiment out of it, which is that the Arabs were backwards/uneducated and needed the light of Islam to enlighten them, then everyone can agree - according to Jallad's categorization - that they were "literate." The issue, it seems, is whether the word "literate" outside of this specific academic parlance speaks to the truth as to what was going on.

In that sense, traditionalists would probably be up in arms and disagree with it. They would not want the Jahili Arabs described as "literate" or having a sophisticated scribal practice. That's not because they don't agree with those facts independently, but I think it's the phraseology itself.

The contention here is what constitutes "decent." Decent relative to what? By modern standards, and even by Medieval Islamic standards, it wouldn't be considered "decent." This is where the tension is, I think.

According to Ehrman, most people's literacy standard prior to the middle ages, possibly up until the Reformation, was simply being able to scribe one's name. Reading and writing was seen as the purview of an elite class for specialized tasks in most of the pre-modern world.

Comparing Jahili Arabs to other pre-modern civilizations, the Europeans before the Enlightenment or later Reformation, and then calling it "decent" - is fair. But when we just use a relative term like that without tethering it to a frame of reference, it can certainly cause a misconception that especially apologists/religious scholarship wants to avoid.

I don't think that's what the Jallad quote you posted said and I think what you are saying is anachronistic to say the least. It's definitely a projection of modern literacy standards on the ancient world.

Even if "literacy" was much more widespread, the standard of literacy in the ancient world was usually being able to recognize your own name and sign it, or other basic functions beyond that.

Having a sophisticated Arabic scribal system, using it for official, or even for unofficial purposes, does not overcome some basic logistical facts about the 7th century Hijaz.

A widespread ability to write requires access to stationary, especially paper, or at least writing tablets. It's well established historically that the Hijaz did not have a means of local papyrus production.

If the idea was that there was a scribal school and a large percentage of the populace was fluent in reading and writing - what were they reading and writing on in those numbers? Where is the historical record of that?

The Jallad quote belies your argument. He clearly says that public inscriptions and private letters seemingly dictated to scribes do not provde widespread literacy, but only that a significant portion of the society were literate. I think most people believe that literacy was a sign of privilege in Jahili Arabia. Some people were literate and learned a formal tradition, but it was something for the bookish elite or people that served particular functions (ruwāt for example).

Al-Jallad, ... As Stein has pointed out, the wording of even the most personal letters suggests that the sender did not compose the text himself himself, and that recipients were not expected to read them. To explain this, he hypothesized…

I tried to bold certain parts of this for emphasis or put it in quotes but Reddit is acting weird.

Sahih al-Bukhari 7116
Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The Hour will not be established till the buttocks of the women of the tribe of Daus move while going round Dhi-al-Khalasa." Dhi-al-Khalasa was the idol of the Daus tribe which they used to worship in the Pre Islamic Period of ignorance.

https://sunnah.com/bukhari:7116

If it isn't through family, most people meet online nowadays. It's rare to serendipitously meet someone in person. Also, usually in-person attraction builds over time due to proximity. It's unlikely to meet someone once and instantly fall for them. In the past, communities were tighter knit with more IRL interaction, especially in "third spaces."

If you really want to meet someone it requires either seeking out places where Arab men congregate (as an Arab man, the only one I know of is the masjid which is gender segregated anyways but you could meet someone's mom/sister) or being much more intentional (marriage apps).

Most of the American Arabs I see getting married are getting married back home. Men and women. Sometimes they are meeting other Americans, but they meet them back home. There's a kind of dissolution of social fabric in America.

The messaging around men casually approaching women in public spaces is really mixed. Especially considering religious and cultural discouragement to do so. Over and over men are told to leave women alone in public, they aren't there to meet anyone.

Additionally, a lot of Arab women are very reticent to introduce anyone they met independently to their parents. I don't see how this is a viable option for Arab men to meet women honestly. Maybe non-Arab women, or Christian Arabs, but certainly not Muslim Arabs.

In the West there's the general cultural gender wars going on, if you add on top of that Arab cultural norms, and Islamic requirements, a small Arab population as it is, then it's really hard. I think it's actually easier to have an interaction like what you are describing in Egypt or some other Arab country. It's less unusual to meet someone and directly express interest in marriage there. Here there are so many barriers.

If you're a conventionally attractive man, this can work for you. If you're an average guy, even if you have other things going for you, or if you're even an attractive guy who has been sheltered from the opposite gender for religious reasons - this is unlikely to happen.

I think that women have to start picking up some of the slack. They need to initiate more. They need to be more intentional about what they are looking for.

The risk to reward ratio for young men to approach women in public makes no sense. The greatest risk is social opprobrium/being seen as a creep. The reward is that she gives you a chance. It makes much more sense to just use the internet.

If women want to be approached in public, there has to be less stigma and less risk for men. Otherwise it just doesn't make sense and it will keep happening less and less.

Made me laugh so hard

💯

Seems like meaningless word soup. Qur'an and Sunnah are very explicit about where Adam came from. Shoaib Malik has the most intelligent treatment of this subject.

This is beyond historically inaccurate.

The Ka'ba existed before the birth of Muhammad and is documented in Islamic and pre-Islamic sources. Even the pagan Arabs believed it was built by Abraham for generations before the advent of Islam or even the proliferation of Judaism or Christianity on the peninsula.

You do realize Muslims believe that Abraham built the Ka'ba?

There are two references in the Torah to the site of the Ka'ba. See my other comment.

Biblical reference to Makkah (originally called Bacca):

Pslams 84:

6As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.

It's well known that Abraham left Hagar and Ishmael in Arabia, although the details of his travels in Arabia are not detailed in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Biblical reference to a mountain in Madina:

Isaiah 42:11

Let the wilderness and its towns raise their voices; let the settlements where Kedar lives rejoice. Let the people of Sela sing for joy; let them shout from the mountaintops.

The Qur'an discusses extensively Abraham's travels in Arabia. He went once to leave Hagar and Ishmael then later when Ishmael was older, during which time Muslims believe they built (or re-built) the Ka'ba.

God knows best.

This is totally incorrect. Muslims believe at the end of times that people will all but forget about Islam and a rapture of sorts will take the last believers through a gentle wind that causes them to die. Dhimmis are those with a treaty of…

There's a difference between theology and law. In Islamic law Muslims are required to reconquer lost land. Failing to do so says nothing about Islam's truthfulness, especially because Islam says that at the end of times Muslims will all but…

This is a sub about theology. Theology is primarily a faith based exercised.

The Ka'ba is not an idea, it is a building. I don't know what you mean by "forms." This is not an amorphous conceptual structure.

If you believe Abraham is a legend then he never went anywhere and the question is totally moot to begin with because we can believe he went to Mars for all we know. If it is mythology then I am just as justified as believing he lived his entire life in Arabia as anything in the Torah. That position automatically invalidates any argument you make using scripture.

There are so many things wrong with this it's hard to know where to begin. 1. Ashkenazi Jews trace their origins to the Holy Roman Empire. 2. They intermarried with Europeans and had some European converts. Ethnically, they did not isolate…

No colonizer or settler has a claim to someone else's land. Colonization is fundamentally immoral and wrong. Muslims reject the Bible's description of God telling the Children of Israel to genocide Amalek. It's wrong to kill women, children, and the elderly - even in combat.

Jizya is literally a tax. By your logic anyone who is taxed by their government is entitled to fight against that government. So that means every person across the globe is being oppressed. Jizya is a smaller tax than any modern state imposes on it's citizens and it exempts Dhimmis from military service while affording them citizenship and autonomy.

God will judge between us.

Let's just assume your logic makes any sense and apply it fairly. Do Native Americans and Aboriginees have a claim to all of the land and wealth of Americans and Australians? Should Americans of European and African descent be violently forced out of north America and Australia?

Should the descendants of the Mongols be forced out of Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Turkistan, etc.?

If you think we should reset ethnic populations to some arbitrary point in time - first of all WHY? Second of all, at what point in history do we reset everything to? Thirdly, how do we stop natural migration and geopolitical developments?

These are the problems just assuming the nonsensical and factually untrue premises that are required to bolster a Zionist worldview. It's clear to me Zionists don't spend five minutes scrutinizing their own beliefs because those beliefs are advantagous to them.

You are not a Zionist because it's true. You are a Zionist because you want Jewish cultural chauvinism and land. But that's going to take a lot of spiritual reflection to realize that.

In Islam a person will have all of their desires fulfilled in Paradise - with the caveat that their desires will be purified from deviation (going against God's moral code or His natural laws). God can do what you ask, but there's no way to be sure that you would still want that in Paradise. You can be assured that whatever awaits is better than whatever you can even dream of now, but the challenge is actually getting into Paradise.

God knows best

I can't even remember man, it's been so long. I remember using Marek's Udemy course the second time. The first time I just used a book

Hands on is always going to help long term but with the exams you really need to do a lot of practice questions.

My advice 2 years out is - go take a systems design course for software engineers first. No AWS material I have seen explains at all what any of the components are being used for or why in any meaningful sense. I was just memorizing everything.

Systems design courses actually explain why you need load balancing, private networks, databases, etc. giving you real examples (i.e. let's build Instagram).

Once you take one of those the AWS material is going to make so much more sense, whether the exam or the hands on.

If all you want to do is pass the exam, take Marek's course and do a bunch of practice exams until you get 90%+. If you really want to understand it, take a systems design course first and consider Adrian Cantrill's course.

Not only is it definitely a skill but it's shocking how many software engineers are not great at this skill. What matters more with prompting LLMs to get great code is architectural design, from a software and infrastructure perspective, and knowing exactly what you need outputted (behavior design). A lot of SWEs it seems can only produce an output given all of that, so in that case LLMs are of little use to them outside of just outright replacing them.

If you understand cloud, networking, databases, servers, servesless, microservices, cybersecurity, and can code - it's a killer tool.

Coding with ChatGPT amounts to writing specs or behavior driven design modules. If you don't possess the architectural background to do systems design from a high level or the SWE background to write the specs - it's going to be hard to use.

What I do is write a very rough draft of the module I want. Then, I write a spec with the purpose and desired behavior of the code. I feed both to ChatGPT. Based on my example and spec, it gets me like 75% of the way there. Then I review its code, make changes based on my expertise, and then test it.

I then go through this as many times as needed until I finish.

Learn systems design, cloud architecture, database structure, and how to write BDD specs.

Right now the job market is really terrible and there are too many people with IT/CS degrees and entry-level certs. Senior IT and software engineers are getting laid off in droves. The unfortunate answer is that the standard of entry is higher than a BSIT, CompTIA Trifecta, and beginner Linux/AWS. With all of that, to land an entry-level position, you would also need a real life connection.

I suggest: upskilling (getting more certs, go for a master's), projects with marketing (make a youtube/blog with everything you are doing, and market it on Linkedin/SEO search), and real-life networking (go to events).

The competition at mid- and senior- level is less intense than entry-level, but it is borderline impossible to get those jobs without work experience. So, create your own work experience through projects and consulting. Get rarer more difficult certs along a specialty line.

The future is going to be dominated by the few people so dogged and singularly minded that no amount of rejection or required upskilling is a barrier for them to succeed. Most of those people will really love the work that they do. As AI and outsourcing maximize profits, the people who stand to win in the US are those with money/power that is already entrenched or those so obsessive that they can climb to the top against all odds. That is our grim reality.

I was never able to land an "entry-level" position. I jumped right to mid-level.

Are you okay man? Please breathe. What is this tirade because someone is upset that an advertised product is not as advertised? Their official text isn't even available on Amazon. Do you work for CompTIA? Did someone run over your kitten?

Cloud+!

About 13 years from diagnosis and 8 after an ilieum reduction. Suffered pretty badly on and off.

Imagine being this elitist for a job create imaginary lines of code in an imaginary virtual world to fuel the cold dead machinery of unfeeling capitalism.

You wouldn't want to work with a narcissist like that anyways.

- by Ali Shukri Amin

Best comment

>Some exec probably
>HEAR ME OUT BRO JUMANJI IN SPACE

There is no strong evidence justifying the sitar. Niqab is essentially required in the four schools, but sitar is a fringe opinion.

Can you set up an Etsy please?

Love it

Spirited Away

The Boy & the Heron

Princess Kaguya

Grave of the Fireflies

Boy & the Heron is sad too, it's Miyazaki's swan song, acceptance that his legacy was idiosyncratic and will die with him. It's the metaphoric acceptance of Ghibli's death

Really feels like the culmination of Miyazaki's career. People are hating on it because they feel it's too complex or disjointed. With the exception of the parrot people, I don't agree at all.

My gripe with it is that it's too short and didn't develop it's ideas as much as I'd like. Otherwise it's neck and neck with Spirited Away.

Agree. One of my least favorite Ghibli films. It really has no need to even be an animated film, it could have been shot using live action.

Your list is exactly mine

Him and Hideo Kojima 😂

...they're liyerally giving Israel a bunch of funding to continue with the genocide and arresting people for opposing the genocide under "antisemitism" laws. This is pure brownie point opportunism

If that's the case it opens up German officials to just as much liability to prosecution as Israelis. Israel could never have done this without American and European support.

Ali Shukri Amin says,

The amount of ignorance in this post is so infuriating. You guys realize that the architecture is not the important part here, right? China is engaging in a Sinocization policy to make all religions, firstly and foremostly Islam, subservient to the CCP. This includes targeting Muslims, putting them in concentration camps, and even attempting to rewrite the Quran to be in line with Chinese communism. They are trying to wipe out Islamicate culture in China that has existed since the time of the Sahabah and are perpetuating a genocide.

I honestly cannot believe the Muslims in this comment thread saying it's "good" like it's a design decision for what color to paint your house. You guys are the problem with the Ummah.

They're being literally genocided

May Allah raise you on Qiyama with the CCP and may He raise me with the Uighers oppressed in the camps for their Din. Ameen

Don't mollify or justify oppression

This is from a sahih hadith and is the right answer to the question

I think it's important to remember that it was the secular nationalist Young Turks that instigated the Armenian genocide, not the religious Ottoman sultanate. The empire hadn't been dissolved yet, but this wasn't something coming out of the ulama or religious class.

by Ali Shukri Amin

It would be downright ridiculous for a firm to be AI-native at this stage considering how primitive and laughably bad the AI solutions offered by the major firms are. Unless there's a big firm out there with a killer in-house app, being AI-centric with LexisNexis, Harvey, or Cocounsel would be a mistake. You might get 20% more efficiency, at the huge risk of hallucinated arguments or case references.

The legal AI solutions available now are a cash-grab. They are ChatGPT with a finely-tuned dataset and MAYBE Retrieval Augmented Generation (if they're "cutting-edge").

No one has launched a good creative product that helps attorneys make strategic decisions based on machine learning, big data, creative prompt flows, or sophisticated architecture. Once that product is released, then it absolutely makes sense to be AI-centric.

Right now attorneys are better off using a Custom GPT from OpenAI for $20 a month.

Too much color coordination, looks contrived like a cartoon character. Definitely big improvement though

Change the shoes and get a different pair of pants in a cream color, this one is like off white with a greenish hue?

Gorgeous

One of the most horrific and shocking things I've ever seen, but not because of gore, violence, or jump-scares. I have never been truly disturbed by a movie my entire life until I saw this one. This may be the most impactful film I have…

Yes. That's what it is. Bridge to Terebithia for adults.

Debating going to see it in theatres again

Never seen psychological horror like this. It's horrific in the life of the viewer, not just the world of the film. Insane.

Wishing that we didn't confront those difficult things that help us grow is a very Owen/Isabella take 👀

Seriously, it really is a disturbing film. There's nothing explicit that would warrant an R rating but this is the most conceptually raw and unsettling piece of art I've ever experienced.

It's a direct attack on everything people from our generation worry about the most played out in supernatural proportions.

I Saw the TV Glow

Their fathers as well

Muslimah youth and their fathers are anti-Muslim men

By raising them in this fashion, enabling them, and being a primary cause of the suffering of young Muslim men. Just like the OP

There is no guarantee that if you have stability, your own place, or even high income you can get married. There is a fundamental problem with the attitude of Muslim walis and their daughters in the West that needs to be challenged. Constantly shifting the goalpost for Muslim men is not beneficial.

Read Malcom Gladwell's Outliers. Success = innate skill * hard work/grit * privilege * random fortune ("luck"). Obviously luck is a huge component. If you are born a genius with a great work ethic and very privileged but you're drafted into a war or have terminal cancer at 20, none of it matters.

Focus on what you can control, which is hard work. Figure out what your innate skills are and leverage them. Take advantage of whatever privilege you do have, and find shortcuts around what you don't.

Good fortune is in the Hand of God.

Horrible take with no evidence or rationality to back it up. It wasn't until the political dominance of monotheistic religions that the vast majority of intellectual history happened. Just speaking statistically, most authorship and most exhibitions of brilliance happened after the political and social spread of monotheism (especially after the Islamic middle ages).

This is wrong on so many accounts. Taleb is brilliant but this isn't some well thought out theory, just like the incredibly laughable take on stochastic exercise in The Black Swan.

Taleb is an expert in skepticism and doubting things. His assertions and predictions are notoriously bad.

I think he clarifies in Black Swan that it's fine to fall into the narrative fallacy when it comes to art, literature, and nonprescriptive history. He even says that avoiding most fallacious thinking is impossible. But he advises putting safeguards around those decisions that could really affect our lives. He even says, go ahead and predict the weather for Sunday's picnic even if the world is far too complex for something like that, but when it comes to your life savings then really doubt all your assumptions

Numbers are numbers. Most books were written after the rise of monotheistic power. That's just a fact. Even before the industrial revolution, the intellectual output of Christendom and Islamicate was so much massively more quantitatively. You can make an argument on the basis of quality, but quantity is an objective historical fact.

Go do a statistical analysis of surviving texts. If you add all the Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, and Indian texts from before 700AD - then analyze the scope of their vocabulary (how many unique words) - then do the same big data analysis with texts only from Christendom and Islamicate for only the next 1000 years.

The 1000 years from 700-1700 had more of an intellectual output from a measurable statistical perspective than the previous 10,000 years.

Once we start talking about modernity and post-modernity, then it's almost not even a discussion.

Would love to see this

You always trade spaciousness and land for proximity to a major city. Given that they have a similar amount of rooms and bath, the variables you are controlling for here are: how far is it from DC (the closer you get, the nicer the area, more things to do, better amenities) & house-size/acreage.

It's a personal calculation an individual makes as to what they value more and also their stage of life. Someone working in DC who is single is not going to want a Vienna mansion. A retiree with his wife and kids would not want a Reston townhouse.

I personally agree, I would go for the larger house and land. I don't mind driving to things in NOVA & DC. But some people want everything closeby or have to commute 🤷‍♂️ Location is a big factor.

Look at The Wyndonn Estate in Phoenix, MD versus The Cliffs in McClean. Similar houses. Wyndonn actually has significantly more acerage. One is $33 million, the other is $6 million. The proximity to a major city, especially DC, matters a lot.

The market is also irrational and people don't make purchasing decisions solely based on logic. That's what behavorial economics is about. No such thing as a homo economicus. The sellers and the buyers are both humans. Plus the markets are irrationally inflated right now and algobots are driving prices higher

Anju in DC

The food just seems like it's dumbed down? Flavor profiles are so weak. Take a look at CHIKO from the same collective. Much better and cheaper food. Anju seems designed to appeal to a wide American audience whereas CHIKO seems more focused on the best food they can make.

As harsh as it is to say, youth is one of the main things men value in a life partner.

Many men will date older women for sure. But if she's looking for a partner as established as she is, she's unlikely to find one that doesn't discriminate against her based on age. Resource rich successful men, usually but not always, pick a woman younger than them.

It's as if it's a crime to point out basic biological facts...

Doesn't change men's biological hardwiring to find youth attractive

Food tasted way better in these 💯

For natural language AI ranks low on dependency grammar and burstiness. It also rarely makes any kind of grammarical or spelling errors. There's no reliable way to tell, code is almost impossible, but with language/text you have a better shot

You need to take an introduction to philosophy class not post this on reddit. You're asking whether qualia and consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon. Modern bioreductionists will say yes, the mind is the fumes wafting over the chemical soup of electrical signals in the brain. Most people naturally believe in a human spirit/soul that gives consciousness a nonbiological component. This is called "the problem of consciousness."

Where you stand on that problem tells you definitively whether or not AI can ever become conscious. Most redditors are secular or athiestic leaning, so ITT you'll see a lot of, "the brain is just a complex organic calculator. Our technology just isn't advanced enough yet."

I don't think it's true. I think consciousness is more than the happenstance collisions of neurological signals and chemicals in the brain. I don't think AI can ever have qualia or reach true sentience.

This isn't a question of psychology it's a question of philosophy. Psychology already presumes materialism, because it's a soft science that is based in post-Hegel epistemology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

No problem. Everyone starts somewhere. This issue as to what exactly constitutes consciousness has no clear evidentiary answer, but it's one of the most important ones. Although, I think it's possible to objectively reason out the bioreductionist approach (brains are just biological computers, so an advanced neural network could become conscious).

You can only conclude this if you believe there's no way to prove the existence of anything that isn't material. You only get that if you accept Hegelian epistemology at face value, which all modern Western forms of thinking do. But Hegel's epistemology has some serious flaws, and if you correct them you come to the opposite conclusion.

Most people don't know any of this and are just going with their gut. Do I think that the material world is everything or don't I? They think they are being rational or logical but they haven't questioned their thoughts at all.

Programming, IT architecture, and writing for my business. Use it nonstop when I am working.

Brilliant

What about the 50% of people that have no inner monologue? Do they have any certainty of existence?

https://www.bustle.com/wellness/does-everyone-have-an-internal-monologue

I was being obviously sarcastic because clearly you don't need to think to exist. Decartes was a systematic skeptic who ultimately concluded that self-evident proof of existence was thought, though he ultimately doubted even that with the evil demon thought experiment and ultimately concluded belief in some benevolent ultimate power (God) was the only way to tether epistemology.

No one who has even the slightest understanding of philosophy would imagine that Decartes was postulating that people cease to exist because their inner monologue pauses or does not exist. It's a joke

A lot of things are not represented here. Seems like the survey focused a lot on child-beating and sexual assault, which are very horrible. What about other kinds of male trauma that get little spotlight? Bullying, lack of romantic relationships, medical conditions, psychiatric issues, juvenile incarceration, etc.? There's a lot of ways men feel invisible outside of SA or being beaten as a child.

Seems like people who know how to leverage AI and people who don't are about to start living in separate universes

You're smarter than you realize. Don't let go of these ideas. Make it happen.

...just use Linkedin?

How do these junk ideas gain these insane valuations and so much investment? Absolutely baffling

I need to find these FOMOvestors 😂 I have a real product 💀

I think the formula we're seeing here is:

1. Good resume (i.e. elite schools)
2. Good connections
3. An idea so childishly ridiculous that it has a reverse psychology effect of seeming downright futuristic
4. Exuberent confidence
5. VCs investing in people like themselves (privileged, connected, confident)

Basically, it's privilege. These VCs are selecting for unvarnished privilege without doing due diligence.

The qualities that make someone good at interviewing for FAANG are probably not the same ones that would make them a good entrepreneur. Having the mathematical logical mind to cram data structures & algorithms is very rarely found in the kind of creative, social, and abstract intelligence clusters needed to lead a large company. My 2 cents

The solution seems to be to bootstrap and just build a product your customers want, then go back for funding after you have traction.

Good points

It seems that the buy now price was also the lowest bid, so instead of telling me my bid was too low and to adjust it, it just automatically raised it to the lowest bid (which is the buy now price) without telling me, and then confirmed the transaction. Absolutely trash UI/UX on StockX's part.

You might be right but I think it was because it made me login in the middle and took me to a checkout screen without my realizing that it wasn't a bid screen. I certainly clicked bid and clicked the amount, but ended up in a buy now screen. Anyways StockX cancelled it, refunded me, and I was able to make my original bid. All's well that ends well

They already refunded me. I was able to make the bid I actually wanted. Thanks

Japan is the cultural and technological early-adopter for techno-modernism. Where Japan is in terms of gender dynamics, birth-rates, and technological replacement of human connection is where the US will be in 5-10 years

That's an interesting analysis. I don't think there's any way to tell for sure. Really the US is less homogenous and much larger than both South Korea and Japan, so the exact development will be uniquely American.

My bets are on augmented reality glasses + AI + Boston Dynamics marriagebots. I think once a company develops a human-like robotic skeleton with sexdoll skin/gel that has a degree of autonomy around an apartment, coupled with an AI companion trained on the person's personality, and augmented reality so people can character create their ideal person - modern societies are over.

Hikikomori/NEETs/the 70%+ of men disaffected by modern society will jump at the opportunity to have an ideal woman marriagebot. At that point birthrates will plummet so rapidly I don't think any society that doesn't ban them immediately can recover.

I think the Chinese would ban them but US would take too long to act.

China is perpetuating a genocide at an even larger scale than Israel, just at a lower intensity and more tactful. Russia has been repressing Muslim populations for years. All of these major world powers are targeting Muslim communities. Just because Israel = bad doesn't make China = good.

They just opportunistically point out each other's evil. When US politicians say that China is engaging in genocide - that's true. When China criticizes US & Israel over the genocide in Gaza - that's also true.

Genocide is bad no matter who does it. I don't see how this is a controversial take. No justification of cultural homogenity or national unity justifies genocide. What China is doing to the Uyghers is genocide. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is genocide. What the Russian-backed Serbs did in Srebrenica was genocide.

There is no Palestinian genocide. There is most definitely mass repression to deal with the terrorism of a fringe, unintegrated, highly rural population with less history of urbanization and state development clashing with a rising modern nation-state. That's not the cultural or physical destruction of Palestinians. It's instead part of a repeating theme in history of progressive centers clashing with backwards outlying areas of the state, for example, France and Brittany. In this case, it's driven by Israel developing and the historical antisemitism against Jews. Palestine is changing as it's increasingly informed by changes in the only democracy in the Middle East.

Palestinian genocide is just part of a Communist propaganda campaign to reinforce the containment of Israel by spreading alarm over the territories it's reintegrating after the chaos of the 20th century, i.e. WWII, the Holocaust, the reunification of Jews with the Holy Land, the 7-day war, etc.

You sound exactly like the Zionists.

Native Americans were genocided too. There's such a thing as a cultural genocide. This isn't something mysterious in the academic literature. Uyghers are being mass detained, raped, sterilized, AND killed. It's a cultural and physical genocide.

Re-education camps for the global population? This sounds like some international fascist regime. How could that possibly be good?

Basic universalized values? Whatever basic universal values you think you are proposing constitute a religion, my friend. Sorry to tell you. There is no such thing as a secular morality divorced from the idea of dogma.

Please refer to Talal Asad's Formations of the Secular.

What is the concept of north Sudan exactly? It's the product of colonial divisions of former Ottoman territories, colonialism, and an amalgamation of recently uprooted cultures.

In order to have a viable state you need: strong in-group unity, a national narrative, an evolutionary viable culture (fit for survival in its context), competent governance, and a population that's relatively provided for.

As Africans and Muslims we have to give up the idea of a Westphalian nation-state, secularism, and democracy. Democracy is something that happened in ancient Greece, what they have in the US is a competitive oligarchy.

We once had the most sophisticated intellectual and cultural civilization in history under Islam. Western civilization is more advanced in STEM and business than we were, but we were far more sophisticated in spirituality, leading fulfilling lives, ethical principles, and other things that matter way more than developing advanced technologies of death and misery.

It's time to realize that these arbitrarily drawn lines in the sands of north Africa are just the playthings of colonial masters and so long as our mission is to establish what they gave us, we will always lose.

https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:1630

Still haven't gotten the chance to get them out, been too busy

Typical modernist misconception. Take a look at Slavery by Jonathan A. C. Brown. People believed the world was round since the 10th century or earlier without consequence. Yes the Medieval church was pretty bad and that's why they had the Enlightenment then the Protestant reformation. Islamic world & other pre-modern societies didn't have a lot of those problems.

The distinction between gender and sex is a false one. Gender stereotypes or cultrual gender expectations are one thing. But men are men and women are women. Anything else is detached

Most of these sisters are unwell, disturbed, and detached from reality. They are not making good decisions. They are holding the jama'ah hostage as part of a modernist suicide pact and all vying for the rare one in 10 million unicorn husband. Or they're entering marriages of convenience with every intention to "upgrade" at the first opportunity. Nothing they are doing is Islamic

Humans are humans first. Very few people transcend fundamental human temptations to follow their ideas or spiritual teachings. This is why Islam emphasizes societal and governmental implementation so much, because the number of people that can truly resist all forms of pressure from other humans is astronomically low (hence the reverence for figures like Ibrahim).

Women are more susceptible to environmental pressures than men. Much more. So the governing societal and legal rules have an outsize influence on them.

Muslim women in these environments will certainly be different, but there's no way to know statistically HOW different. So, instead of rolling the dice on your life, it's best to learn from the nonMuslims already going through this. Why would we need to conduct our own pilot experiments in our own lives instead of learning from others that have already been through it?

Traditional Muslim women should avoid working outside the home without her mahram altogether, not just pick a different field

She won't have any problem getting married inshaAllah. Lots of brothers that don't want children for a lot of reasons. Many righteous ulama never had children.

Most sisters in the West are feminists, including niqabis, alimat degree holders, and hafizhat

Is there data for 2023?

ITT - freedom of speech, conscience, and religion until it isn't Western style liberal secularism. Then no free speech

He's definitely got a fixation lol

Love Yellow & Albi

Pastries at Elle are great

Green print is fire

Pique and ribbed cardigans, denim wool trucker, long sleeve ribbed polos 👌 gorgeous

Love the idea of doing renders beforehand

Panna & tobacco knits are gorgeous

Just track usage and if someone is a power user charge more?

If your startup was just a GPT wrapper with no application or sophistication out of what it was obvious OpenAI would develop into - probably deserved to die. It was clear what they were progressing into and building next. You can use ChatGPT to make some unique, useful, products - but it requires more sophistication than just making a UI skin for ChatGPT

There are plenty of novel implementations of AI that don't exist yet, they just require more complexity than GPT wrapper.

Idea is too narrow. It should be a portfolio style app where you can find EVERYTHING a particular prominent person has done & get notified. A unified thing.

Malcom Gladwell's podcast interviews on other people's shows, news interviews, his own podcasts, email newsletters, social media posts, news articles about him, blogposts, writings in the New Yorker, etc. You can subscribe to everything he's doing in the public on one app & get notified.

So whenever Gladwell does anything that hits the internet, you get a push notification for it.

Man purchased a native American tribal tent

They ARE socks 💀

Sherwood. Dungeon.

I knew I was old when I saw Skibidi and it was mainstream

I remember G-Mod video edits since I was a kid but it was always a weird fringe thing. Skibidi is definitely hilarious, top notch G-Mod video