Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Rustom Mody]

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 10:52:48 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> (Unlike *our* divine revelation, which is clearly the truth, the whole truth, 
> and nothing but the truth, *their* divine revolution is illusion, error and 
> lies. All of the gods are myth and superstition, except for the One True God 
> that conveniently has revealed himself to us rather than our enemies, who are 
> pagans and heretics the lot of them.)

The piquant situation of being human is that 20/20 vision is always available
— at least as hindsight.

The bible more of less describes the world as a few hundred kms east/west
of Eden.
By most modern accounts this is wrong.
So were the authors fools?
Would you or I have done better?

Newton painstakingly calculated the age of the universe to be
about 6000 years BC by counting biblical generations.
Questions similar to the above

Amerigo Vespucci asked if the wondrous animals he saw in the new world
were on Noah's ark.
Was he a religious nut?
Was he even specially religious?
Or just functioning under the pervasive assumptions of his age?


These seem like rhetorical questions.
Yet we remain cocksure of our assumtions inspite of the repeated data
that everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years

Lord Kelvin said that physics was a closed project -- everything had been
discovered.. Just a few universal constants needed to be measured to increased
accuracy
This was before relativity, quantum physics, stellar spectroscopy etc etc

And then Max Planck discovered (the precursors to) quantum physics
And he remained a staunch classicist his whole life
Wishing and believing that vile genie he had unwittingly unleashed would somehow
or other be re-bottled

And Knuth wept that the CS that he largely created is historicized
in a different sense than he envisaged:
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/abstract

My dear gpa to the end of his life would say:
“You guys can keep believing and worshipping who you like
For me the greatest is Socrates who said: ‘The one thing of which I am
100% certain is that I do not know.’ ”