"i bring shocking news - plato was a fan of math"
― future American striker hero (lukas), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 19:57 (thirteen years ago) link
lol @
Some experts say Plato is the greatest of all the Greek philosophers and together with Socrates, his mentor, and Aristotle, a student, founded modern Western culture and science.
not b/c I'm objected per se but to write that kind of crap e.g. "founded modern Western culture" it's like no you fuckhead culture isn't something one person can "found"
and then:
“It is a long and exciting story, but basically I cracked the code. I have shown rigorously that the books do contain codes and symbols and that unravelling them reveals the hidden philosophy of Plato.”
I'm guessing the journo wrote that line b/c the "but basically I cracked the code" is not the sort of thing a Plato scholar would say...I think/hope? although in grad school I started a course with a Plato scholar who in the first week started going on about the golden ratio & was like "the key to Plato...is this equation!" and since I also do math I was totally embarrassed at the ludicrousness of this and dropped the course pronto.
― So Messi! (Euler), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 20:21 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah i really hope the journalist is embellishing the quote there
there is no "hidden philosophy of plato" unless it is "hidden" because you are "illiterate"
― max, Wednesday, 30 June 2010 20:25 (thirteen years ago) link
fyi I have encoded a secret code into all my ilx posts
if you take the time and effort to unlock the code ... you will be richly rewarded
― got you all in ♜ ♔ (dyao), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 20:42 (thirteen years ago) link
I disagree with the idea that Socrates was strictly executed for "heresy" as well tbh
― I saw Mommy kissing Santa Cruz (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 21:23 (thirteen years ago) link
wow I didn't realise who this 'plato scholar' was but I met him earlier in the week on non-cryptographic business. he didn't seem like a guy who was about to drop one of the most revelatory jpegs in the history of philosophy:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48209000/jpg/_48209148_platocode_platobust.jpg
but then it wouldn't be v platonic of me to go by appearances. if yr curious, the much talked-up 'hidden meanings'/spurious correlations can be found here. nice to see he's worked the monochord into his theory, but I think harry smith employed it for better anti-platonic purposes 50 years previous.
― ogmor, Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:29 (thirteen years ago) link
fwiw im open to the idea of some weird musical pattern in plato
not down with cracking the code tho
― max, Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:33 (thirteen years ago) link
ugh they were talking about this jerk and his theory on NPR during my drive home, maybe i should have punched the dashboard rhythymically according to his code for better enlightenment
― Kool G. Frap (jjjusten), Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:34 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.source101.org/images/HFTNPD65.gif
― buzza, Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:34 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't really understand what the guy is saying tbrr
Dr Kennedy discovered that some key phrases, themes and words occurred during regular intervals throughout, which matched the spacing in the 12 note scale.
hmmmmmmm
He argued that Plato did not use the code for pleasure, but instead for his own safety after his teacher was executed for heresy.
does he say what the secret message is?
― j/k lol simmons (history mayne), Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:38 (thirteen years ago) link
xpyeah, I'm not greek enough to subscribe to clear distinction between content and form, but I think calling identification of extra structural features in plato "finding hidden meanings" is nonsense. he seems like a nice guy.
― ogmor, Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:39 (thirteen years ago) link
idg how the interval between words 'matches' the spacing of the 12-note scale, though im pretty dumm
― j/k lol simmons (history mayne), Thursday, 1 July 2010 18:39 (thirteen years ago) link
the lengths of speeches, the position of speeches within thedialogues, the location of significant turns in the arguments, and theabsolute lengths of the dialogues all provide evidence for an underly-ing stichometric organisation and, in particular, for the importance of atwelve-part structure.
his points, when they are non-ridiculous and not about the golden ratio, are about the structure mirroring the content w/ forms that are maybe pythagorean. not sure how he's going to turn this into a best-selling book, esp if the jpeg upthread is anything to go by.
― ogmor, Thursday, 1 July 2010 19:07 (thirteen years ago) link
Anyone who reads Plato seriously knows that there's a lot of form/content games going on in the dialogues. So while I'm open to there being some musical connection with this, calling it a "secret code" is silly.
― So Messi! (Euler), Thursday, 1 July 2010 19:12 (thirteen years ago) link
"The code supposedly hides Plato's dangerous idea, that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, not according to the whims of Zeus. But the celebration of mathematics is in plain view throughout the dialogues."
good takedown here, titled "Wanna crack the Plato code? Read Plato":
http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/index.php?post/2010/06/30/Plato-code
― future American striker hero (lukas), Thursday, 1 July 2010 19:41 (thirteen years ago) link
i decided i would read history of sexuality vol. 1 again, and maybe someday i'll get to vol. 2
― the girl with the butt tattoo (harbl), Thursday, 8 July 2010 15:29 (thirteen years ago) link
vol. 2 is a little nuts iirc
― max, Thursday, 8 July 2010 15:39 (thirteen years ago) link
the hidden musical messages in vol 2 are better
― ILX trolls and "autistic" use of the N-word (crüt), Thursday, 8 July 2010 15:43 (thirteen years ago) link
needs more reverb imo
― ksh, Thursday, 8 July 2010 15:45 (thirteen years ago) link
but just the right amount of flange
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 8 July 2010 16:52 (thirteen years ago) link
1 is so classic but 2 is confusing but worth it
― plax (ico), Thursday, 8 July 2010 21:29 (thirteen years ago) link
xp bravo
― ogmor, Thursday, 8 July 2010 21:51 (thirteen years ago) link
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5
hello science welcome to the 21st century
― max, Sunday, 25 July 2010 23:42 (thirteen years ago) link
lolz. Finally the obscure ideas of a little-known fella called Nietzsche are gaining some momentum.
what y'all reading at the moment? I've momentarily given up on my Francophone and Francophile bros to read Peter Kivy's Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience - very clever, precise, and thorough, but a bit on the dull side. Reasonably successful at avoiding that typical analytic philosophy of music thing of only being applicable to classical and early romantic music (even though that's pretty much all he's talking about), though, so there are flashes of excitement in there.
― Merdeyeux, Monday, 26 July 2010 00:27 (thirteen years ago) link
omg the title of that piece
― markers, Monday, 26 July 2010 03:28 (thirteen years ago) link
i sorta love those kind of trend pieces--helps when i try to convince students that philosophy is cutting edge.
what y'all reading at the moment?
I still really want to read "After Finitude," but currently planning to use precious reading time on the new translation of Isabelle Stengers' "Cosmopolitics" and very excited about it.
― ryan, Monday, 26 July 2010 21:41 (thirteen years ago) link
ah yes that looks interesting. Someone had better translate her Penser avec Whitehead soon or I'll be forced to finally learn French.
― Merdeyeux, Monday, 26 July 2010 21:44 (thirteen years ago) link
cosmopolitics looks interesting. I'm now reading marshall mcluhan's understanding media which is an unexpected&has a huge explanatory power which surprised me. among the many strands he ties together is stuff on language&maths not dissimilar to the maxticle, but historicised & treating the phonetic alphabet/finger-counting &c. as technologies w/ concomitant effects on 'ratios between the senses' & broader socio-economic patterns. full of artfully deployed amazing facts and I'd strongly recommend to anyone remotely interested despite not being philosophy.
― ogmor, Monday, 26 July 2010 23:19 (thirteen years ago) link
oh i want to read that. def on my long list of classics to read.
― ryan, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:05 (thirteen years ago) link
he does what I'd hoped phenomenology might do in terms of tying/blurring thought&practice/inner&outer, BUT he does it as a way of making sense of societal change, and in turn uses his understanding of that macro-level of technological change&media to make sense of how people engage/perceive/act in&think about the world. love the guy & find his explanations of why things&ppl necessarily developed as they did really convincing. lots of stuff on electric lighting, the phonetic alphabet, villages&roads, and zero. written w/ unusual sense of style and restraint&slow to digest because of that but so worth it.
― ogmor, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:34 (thirteen years ago) link
what is the meaning of life?
― mittens, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:42 (thirteen years ago) link
http://bananafishmagazine.com/Book%20Images/Man%27s%20Search.jpg
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:44 (thirteen years ago) link
(Just read that for the first time last week, btw.)
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:45 (thirteen years ago) link
thanks that cleared it up for me
― mittens, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:45 (thirteen years ago) link
np
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:46 (thirteen years ago) link
search for Meaning = belief in teleology imo
― ogmor, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:49 (thirteen years ago) link
mcluhan is really great, I need to pick up that rerelease of understanding media
― You’re going off of her word that the farmer’s wife is the farmer’s wife? (dyao), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:49 (thirteen years ago) link
not necessarily xp
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:49 (thirteen years ago) link
like all overmen i create my own meaning
― max, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:51 (thirteen years ago) link
i fashion it out of the skulls of my enemies
currently reading Susan Buck-Morss's book on the Arcades Project, along with a random smattering of Benjamin (just finished the Baudelaire essay); want to add Adorno's book on Kierkegaard to the mix at some point, too. sometimes I think I could spend the rest of my life reading early-20th-century eurobros on mid-19th-century eurobros.
― stuff that's what it is (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:51 (thirteen years ago) link
the Susan Buck-Morss book is great, tho her whole reading of dialectic images is kinda unpopular (lol inside-benjamin academic baseball)
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:52 (thirteen years ago) link
what don't people like about it?/what is the 'right way' to read dialectical images? (funny question)
― stuff that's what it is (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:54 (thirteen years ago) link
soft silly music is meaningful magical, iirc
― markers, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:55 (thirteen years ago) link
deeeeeep
― mittens, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 00:59 (thirteen years ago) link
xp as far i remember it, it's an argument over whether it's an actual image or not -- buck-morss says it is and i think basically everyone else says it isn't
― Mordy, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 02:06 (thirteen years ago) link
Robin Hanson always rocking it: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/brave-position-club.html
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 04:05 (thirteen years ago) link
lot of discussion of moral realism, meta-ethics, on the blogs at the mo, mostly sparked by Sam Harris' TED talk. I think I'm a knee-jerk moral realist, but feel like I've forgotten everything I ever knew about the subject, struggling to deal with even the basics.
Harris:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html
today's reading:http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=2077http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/its-a-contingent-fact-that-we-care/
― ledge, Thursday, 26 August 2010 14:20 (thirteen years ago) link
we are against any current philosophy that is not based in principles from evolutionary or cognitive science.
― rage for the machine (banaka), Friday, 27 August 2010 02:00 (thirteen years ago) link
feel like I've forgotten everything I ever knew about the subject, struggling to deal with even the basics.
― Can You Please LOL Out Your Window? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 27 August 2010 03:41 (thirteen years ago) link