Swiss Ephemeris

[Deborah Swanson]

Rustom Mody wrote, on Monday, April 10, 2017 11:50 PM
> 
> On Monday, April 10, 2017 at 11:26:47 AM UTC+5:30, Deborah Swanson
wrote:
> > The great ancients were no less endowed with intelligence than we
are, 
> > they simply directed it to different ends.
> 
> And just when I was convinced by the all-knowers that my gpa 
> was a monkey you've spoilt my complacence

Good! It's unhealthy the way modern folk strut around thinking they're
the smartest humans to ever walk this earth. We've gone farther with
technology than any other time or culture, but invention (and
innovation) is only one aspect of intelligence.

> > ... medical astrology...
> 
> whether that is hooey or scepticism of it is hooey, I dont 
> know [Yeah I genuinely don't know what that term means for you]

I don't know that anyone does. I use a very strict interpretation of the
orginal rules that you won't by find googling "medical astrology". (I
know, I've tried, in the old Google as well as the new.) There's no
pretension to mystic art in my form, but mine's a lot more accurate and
information rich, so far as I can see in the few writings about it. I
think concentrating on the actual and valid relationships while ignoring
all the mysticism yields more useful results. I know the ancient Greeks
were wed to their gods and I forgive them for that. I just think they
would have done better without the mythology.

> However you may be interested in 
> http://blog.languager.org/2016/01/how-long.html
> which is a > motley collection of the incredible 
> persistence of humans to erroneous ways and outlooks and 
> their damaging consequences

I think you also talk about the incredible persistence of other concepts
and perceptions, notably in music and mathematics (which were always
linked in earlier times).

I would find your other examples of erroneous thinking a bit skewed in
lengths of time. Tofler was right in Future Shock. We've accelerated our
intellectual development since the Middle Ages, though I don't think
it's because we're any smarter. I can't remember exactly when it was
that the human brain reached it's current size and mental capacity, but
it was shortly before the time of the ancients. Physiologically we've
changed very little since then, but the knowledge base we've built on
over time was what eventually caused the acceleration. No single person
in modern times is intellectually capable of buiding the concepts we now
use from scratch. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

> [Frank Admission: That list started with a discussion on this list
where I 
> suggested that OOP is already debunked hooey and that FP is 
> the way forward for programming. To which Steven asked that 
> since FP is at least 50 years old and has not got 
> very far, what makes one think its going anywhere...
> To which I wondered... Is 50 years a long time? By what standard? 
> Hence that list ]

50 years isn't that long, though you must consider the accelerated times
we're living in. LISP is likely doomed though. It's chief claim to fame
was AI, and it's unlikely to reclaim its former glory, not with
languages like Python leading the charge.  My only contact with LISP was
from a computer science professor in 1975, who literally raved about how
superior LISP was. I dunno. I was doing AI in PL1 then and had several
debates with this fellow. I don't remember much of the substance of
those debates, but I know he never persuaded me that LISP was superior
to PL1.

Deborah