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A comment on Pythagorean Theorem Found on Clay Tablet 1k Years Older Than Pythagoras. Parent comment

Re:Pythagorean Theorem Found on Clay Tablet 1k Years Older T... by pavlov on Thursday October 05, 2023 @09:08AM (#37778116)
> "The relationship between math and spirituality was very strong back then!"

Seems to me this connection is having a resurgence now as people attempt to project the capabilities of computers beyond human capabilities, where the implications are necessarily bordering on spiritual.

Examples include transhumanism, Yudkowsky-style absurdly extrapolated rationalism (Basilisk etc), the simulation hypothesis, AGI salvation hopes...

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Re:Pythagorean Theorem Found on Clay Tablet 1k Years Older T... by nerddadnear40 on Thursday October 05, 2023 @09:31AM (#37778379)
Always has been. My favorite example:

George Boole (Who we get Boolean from), had a road to Damascus experience as a teenager and later wrote "An Investigation of the Laws of Thought" where we get our 0s and 1s from, and truth operations, largely to prove God is Good.

The concept of 0 and 1, absolute truth and false, was born from his spiritual views.

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Re:Pythagorean Theorem Found on Clay Tablet 1k Years Older T... by carapace on Thursday October 05, 2023 @11:42AM (#37780058)
> Examples include transhumanism, Yudkowsky-style absurdly extrapolated rationalism (Basilisk etc), the simulation hypothesis, AGI salvation hopes...

But those are all examples of ways to avoid spirituality.

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Re:Pythagorean Theorem Found on Clay Tablet 1k Years Older T... by pavlov on Thursday October 05, 2023 @02:39PM (#37782338)
They are often ways to transmute spirituality into a form more palatable to contemporary sensibilities trained on technology.

Who runs the universal simulation? Another name for God. The eternal torment of Roko’s Basilisk? Another name for Hell. AGI will save us from ourselves with its incomprehensible intelligence? A cyber-Jesus. Moving your mind into a transhumanist body? Souls rising to Heaven. Etc.

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Re:Pythagorean Theorem Found on Clay Tablet 1k Years Older T... by briankelly on Thursday October 05, 2023 @08:49PM (#37786054)
Similarly, sometimes practitioners of technical analysis for financial securities treat it spiritually.
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