Zompist Bboard Again

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 8:33 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sun Jun 22, 2025 6:37 amI understand that it is not easy to come up with a hopeful future history in these days of multiple crisis. But we are probably just in one of the periods when the wheel of progress is in reverse, like the 1930s, and better times will come. Because overall history is a story of progress, though with interruptions, not of impending doom. And it helps finding hope and confidence to work on a hopeful future history. When you are doing research for a hopeful yet realistic future history, you will find plenty of ideas how the current crisis can be overcome, and read or hear of many people who are trying to implement these ideas and make the world a better place. I have had times when I felt much like you (though not really as badly as you apparently do), but seeing how much can be done about the current situation strengthened my confidence that it can be overcome. (Also, the genre of hopeful near-future fiction has a name: it is called solarpunk, and it is a good way of showing people what kind of solutions exist. Become a part of the solution by writing solarpunk stories!)

Maybe so, but the intense enthusiasm for right wing populism over the past decade has really tarnished my impression of humanity quite honestly. Part of me worries that humans as a species are simply too stupid and evil for progress to continue.

It is not that I wasn't worried about right-wing populism - indeed, I am deeply worried about it. But humanity has managed to get rid of Hitler, Mussolini and their cronies, too, even if that required a gruesome war; and I haven't lost hope that this time we can get rid of the right-wing populists with less bloodshed, though I admit it will be difficult. But if we despair at the sight of such problems, we will achieve nothing. We have managed to get rid of Soviet communism without a war, and to get a handle on a number of environmental threats; remember that. You should really read this regularly; you will see that the current situation is not hopeless.

I don't like the way this thread is going. There's already another thread where malloc and his opponents can argue about doom.

I recently went to an Asian market (not many near me so I had to go fairly far afield), and was able to get quite a bit of candy and some cooking items. I'm fairly happy with it but I wish I had gotten more of these "baked wheat breads" they have. They make good sweet snacks or desserts for me, considering they're almost cakes but less sweet, and I don't normally have a big sweet tooth anyway. Think those little Hawaiian rolls but with different flavors and bigger.

The kid has also been enjoying some of the treats we got but I'm trying to limit how much sugar she has. I'm not going to disallow sweets and pastries for her, since I've known people and read studies that make me want to avoid a ban on any foods outside alcohol and similar. But I might want to give her even smaller portions than I have been. (Nothing to do with weight and everything to do with getting her to eat more veggies generally. We'll have to buy a lot more seaweed snacks and veggie straws I think.)

Asian snacks I got to wake myself up:

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 2:52 pm

alice wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 2:04 pm For some reason the word "iatrochemist" kept floating around inside my head yesterday.

Does it appear a lot in that book you told us you've been reading?

It doesn't appear at all; it probably found its way into my head by free association or something.

Finished the book btw; strongly recommended, and begging for a conlanger's equivalent.

One minor tangent from one of zompist's latest comic reviews reminded me of this: Decades ago, I read a comment in a German magazine saying that if you're not from New York City, the experience of visiting it is a bit like visiting Disneyland, in the sense that you get to see all the things for real that you already know from the movies. Any comments on that? I've never been there, so I can't tell.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jun 29, 2025 12:18 pm One minor tangent from one of zompist's latest comic reviews reminded me of this: Decades ago, I read a comment in a German magazine saying that if you're not from New York City, the experience of visiting it is a bit like visiting Disneyland, in the sense that you get to see all the things for real that you already know from the movies. Any comments on that? I've never been there, so I can't tell.

Obviously the statement is jocular, but it has a grain of truth. I'd say that to really experience America you need to visit three cities: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The first to to experience the cities you know from movies, TV, and video games, the last to see what the country is really like.

To the rest of the country, New York is stereotypically too big, too confusing, too frenetic. It's probably how the French think about Paris. Los Angeles gives you more of the Latin American flavor and balmy climate of the West, but as a city it's formless, just a mess of highways.

Of course, probably as in most countries, somebody will insist that the real nation is its small rural towns.

Thank you for the background information, zompist!

Unrelated: It's now 30 years since Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag building. It was under wraps from June 24th to July 7th 1995. I remember the discussions about it.

As it turned out, me and my family actually did a short trip to Berlin during the whole thing. The plastic wrap felt quite pleasant to the touch. There were large and busy crowds around the building, and I remember a man walking towards the building with a picket sign saying "This is not a work of art" (in German).

However, what I remember most from that time was not directly about Berlin or the Reichstag building. It was a cartoon in a German magazine. The cartoon showed three men standing in from of a poster hanging on a wall, which, in turn, showed the Eiffel Tower covered by a giant condom, and the caption said simply, "Non, Monsieur Christo!"

Starbeam wrote: ↑Mon Jun 23, 2025 9:06 am I feel like we should have "best quotes of the year", from pages of the zbb quote thread

There used to be the ZBB Awards where we voted for the best conlang, the best script, etc, including quote of the year. It was eventually cancelled because there were too few votes in each category.

Something to file under "people being confused by gradually changing social/linguistic mores": I ordered something online earlier today, and got two different emails confirming my order (one from the online store where I bought it, and one from the actual supplier). The first confirmation email addressed me as "du" (informal), and the second as "sie" (formal).

Spicy take: Islam is a slightly more conservative sect of Christianity.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 8:33 am Spicy take: Islam is a slightly more conservative sect of Christianity.

Sweet-sour take: the more traditionalist variants of most other religions - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, what you got - are basically conservative Confucianism with added deities.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 8:41 am Sweet-sour take: the more traditionalist variants of most other religions - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, what you got - are basically conservative Confucianism with added deities.

I understand what you are saying with respect to the elementary learning. Since cultural analysis is never neat, I offer a counterargument: Confucianism is deeply invested in the cultivation of the civilized arts. Although it preaches against extravagance, it fundamentally supports artistic endeavors. Although it has historically leaned towards restricting education to ethics and history, reading the classics is one of the core practices of Confucianism. It even encourages playing games. These are some of the best features of the Confucian tradition. In contrast, many religious strands that see themselves as revolutionary, including certain sects of Buddhism (which traditionally bans chess and music for practitioners), Christianity, Islam and even Hinduism, strongly condemn such practices as corrupting influences.

Fair enough. Seeing certain texts as so important that either people in general, or at least the elite, should study them a lot seems to be a feature of a lot of religions, though.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 9:29 am Fair enough. Seeing certain texts as so important that either people in general, or at least the elite, should study them a lot seems to be a feature of a lot of religions, though.

It's true that all organized religions have their own library of "classics" that they encourage people to study. What's distinctive about the Confucian classics is that they are an edited selection of the general Chinese classics. It's not just a narrow-minded reinforcement of Confucian dogma. Confucian scholars routinely studied other classical books that hadn't been edited by Confucius or his scholars. This wasn't seen as heretical. Even so, they somehow managed to cultivate a stifling dogmatic mindset among the Chinese literati. There were occasional attempts to suppress works that explicitly contradicted the prevailing doctrine.

Another distinction is that Confucius explicitly said he didn't want class distinctions among what is taught to students. This most strikingly contrasts with the traditional Hindu attitude of having secret scriptures studied by a priestly class. Even Catholics wanted the bible to stay in Latin so that it wouldn't become accessible to the laity.

One thing that is very distinctive about Confucianism is that, unlike most major religions, it encourages games and competitions. AFAIK all traditional Chinese philosophies inspired by the Yijing share this attitude.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 8:33 am Spicy take: Islam is a slightly more conservative sect of Christianity.

Thats also the attitude of Heresies of the High Middle Ages, a book I found years ago in a library. not sure about 'more conservative', but a sect, definately.

keenir wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 10:28 am Thats also the attitude of Heresies of the High Middle Ages, a book I found years ago in a library. not sure about 'more conservative', but a sect, definately.

It depends on whether you want a prescriptive or descriptive definition. I'm assuming Islam consists of the 5 largest traditional madhhabs, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Ja'fari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhhab If you're a liberal Nizari, a Quranist, a progressive or a freeform Muslim (which has probably always been the largest group given the inalienable goofiness of the human race), that description doesn't necessarily apply.

Tangy take: When adults become devotees of a deity, their behavior resembles that of children with the deity as the parent figure. Authority figures prefer to interact with children instead of adults. This is why they tend to spread theism across the world.

(Confucianism didn't need this because it somehow convinced inferiors to treat both parents and authorities as "superiors".)

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 11:43 am Tangy take: When adults become devotees of a deity, their behavior resembles that of children with the deity as the parent figure. Authority figures prefer to interact with children instead of adults. This is why they tend to spread theism across the world.

(Confucianism didn't need this because it somehow convinced inferiors to treat both parents and authorities as "superiors".)

That would explain why followers of various religions simultaneously believe that their God is all-powerful, and that said God needs their help to get stuff done. It also explains why followers of some specific variants of Christianity (I don't know if there are counterparts in other religions) simultaneously believe that their God is all-knowing, and that said God needs to be reminded of things by worshippers using exactly the right phrases during prayer in order to take care of those things.

(zompist seems to be more fond of the God-as-ruler metaphor, though.)

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 11:53 am (zompist seems to be more fond of the God-as-ruler metaphor, though.)

God is sometimes a ruler (Christ is King, he who relieves the poor makes Mazda King, Allah is al-Malik, etc.), but is this common? Christians usually call on Christ for forgiveness like from a parent, right? In Judaism and Christianity, God is often referred to as the Father. This is never the case in Islam. Traditionally, you call God by the relevant Name. E.g. Ya Bashir (all seeing), you see my plight, ya Rahim (all compassionate), take pity on me, etc. That is, you call on God like a child calls a parent using the divine names which, if you take a good look at them, are names of parenting attributes. Since religion must have pointless mystification, there is also one name that is said to be Allah's favorite, the Ism-e-Azam. Oral tradition says it's al-Hayy al-Qayyum, the Immortal Sustainer. So, someone who will take care of you forever? The Islamic names also have less to do with ruling and more to do with caring for the worshipper like a parent is supposed to. Things may be different outside Abrahamic religions.