Various interesting stuff

Here's one actually aimed at Feral:

https://aboveaverage.com/asshole-lab-rat-really-screwing-with-scientific-study/

The exact reason why we work on patients and not rats...

Good find, Jad!

Totally not creepy and can't possibly backfire. https://futurism.com/in-the-world-of-tomorrow-you-wont-just-watch-movies-theyll-watch-you/

I get to feel more and more like an Imperial Citizen of a hive world in Warhammer 40K recently, more and more...
Only Commisars and Inquisitors making use of the colected data are lacking (yet). So, you laughed at Commisar's Timmermans speech you have watched on YouTube? Aren't you being corrupted by the Ruinous Powers of Nationalism and Extremism...?

I see uses in such software, but the potential of misuse is mindboggling. In the hands of corrupt enough governments/corporations it could make anty freedoms an illusion, without any changes to the law...

I love the spider! Or actually wasp...

https://futurism.com/googles-machine-learning-software-has-learned-to-replicate-itself/

https://qz.com/1070266/the-name-of-a-country-can-only-really-mean-one-of-four-things/?utm_source=qzfb

How come Syria is not named after Assyrians?

Jad.3 wrote:

How come Syria is not named after Assyrians?

I guess because they lived east from it, mostly in modern western Iraq and SE Turkey? Syria at that time was a mosaic of Aramean and Phoenician city-states, shifting allegiences between Egypt, Assyria, Babilonia, Hitties, later Medes and Persians... Risking destruction and slaughter if they chose wrong. Middle East never changes. Only Romans pacified it in a semi civilised manner (well, save for a few small cases of genocide).

Feral wrote:

Jad.3 wrote:

How come Syria is not named after Assyrians?

I guess because they lived east from it, mostly in modern western Iraq and SE Turkey? Syria at that time was a mosaic of Aramean and Phoenician city-states, shifting allegiences between Egypt, Assyria, Babilonia, Hitties, later Medes and Persians... Risking destruction and slaughter if they chose wrong. Middle East never changes. Only Romans pacified it in a semi civilised manner (well, save for a few small cases of genocide).

So Assyrians were named after Syria instead?

This is a fun hypothesis: https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-trial-by-ordeal-was-actually-an-effective-test-of-guilt

No, after Aššur, their god of war.

The article was really good. Arab Bedouins still use it. They call it bisha: to touch the tongue with a red hot iron to see if the accused is guilty.

Ordeals don't work. The priest and the priests watching may be corrupt, the guilty may have bribed them into making the water not hot. The innocent may be poor and can't bribe them so he will get burnt if the priest doesn't find him guilty. Etc etc

"In practice, it might not have mattered whether ordeals were truly God’s judgments or instead the judgments of clever legal systems that leveraged criminal defendants’ incentives to correctly find fact. For, in either case, the result was the same: improved criminal justice, thanks to God."

No it fucking isn't. Only an absolute retard could think think that these ordeals grant improved criminal justice

What really would happen
If anyone is accused and chooses to take the ordeal, the priest could be bribed to either make sure that the accused would get his hands burned or not. The priest might even offer to be bribed himself, to the accused or his or her family. And since donations to the church were so common those days, the bribes had the perfect cover up.

I can even see the priest and the other authorities working together. The authority would accuse anyone it could get its hands on, and the priest would make sure they got burned so they would pay the fine, out of which the authority would give a parcel to the priest. Doing this for a while would create the belief amongst people that no one can escape an ordeal and even the non-guilty would rather confess since the fine and pain would be smaller.

Basically what cretino said.

Let's toss people in the rivers and see if they are blessed by the devil to float.

Karavolos wrote:

Let's toss people in the rivers and see if they are blessed by the devil to float.

Let's start with the sexual offenders... If they drown, they were innocent. If they float, they are sinners and need to be punished.

Why assume corruption from the start? These were the times when people really believed in those things, including priests and secular officials. They would have feared fire eternal for tempering with G*d's works. At least most of them.
Ordeals went out of practice when the belief of vast majority was shaken by the bubonic plague and Western Schism. This is not quite coincidental. When people started to doubt, it made no sense, since the guilty ones took their chances instead of confessing. Authorities noticed and went for other options.

The exact reason why it wouldn't have worked in the West nowadays, while it does work among the Beduin. Not because Allah makes it so, but because they believe in it (at least vast majority does).

It doesn't work. It's humanity fault, not god's (for He does not exist) - because humans are flawed, they can't create a perfect system, one that cannot be exploited.
It doesn't matter if you believe god is going to out you, because it's up to the priest if you are guilty or not!
And " the guilty ones took their chances instead of confessing".

Feral wrote:

Why assume corruption from the start?

Because we're talking about human beings. And because leaders and clergymen have abused their status to control and extort the "common folk" for millenia, way before Christianity became a thing. And isn't the priest tampering with the boiling water corruption too? Even if he is not bribed, just by him purposefully tampering with the ordeal in order to save or condemn someone based on his own wishes is already a form of corruption to me.

Feral wrote:

These were the times when people really believed in those things, including priests and secular officials. They would have feared fire eternal for tempering with G*d's works. At least most of them.
Ordeals went out of practice when the belief of vast majority was shaken by the bubonic plague and Western Schism. This is not quite coincidental. When people started to doubt, it made no sense, since the guilty ones took their chances instead of confessing. Authorities noticed and went for other options.

I think in some ways we both overestimate and underestimate the influence of people's beliefs in their actions at those ages. And again, even if the priest did not take any money, just by letting the water cool for one but not for other is already "tampering with god's works". And we also have plenty of evidence that a lot of high-ranking church officials weren't so keen on the morals they vouched.

Feral wrote:

The exact reason why it wouldn't have worked in the West nowadays, while it does work among the Beduin. Not because Allah makes it so, but because they believe in it (at least vast majority does).

We don't know if it works among the Beduin. We just know that they use it. Do they have periods they can tampers with the hot metal too?

ThePhilosopher wrote:

We don't know if it works among the Beduin. We just know that they use it. Do they have periods they can tampers with the hot metal too?

From what I have seen they simply take it out of a fire and put to the defendants tongue.

Ah, Francis could not be so bad... Only chaotic, inconsequent and incoherent. Normal for a Latinoamerican. *Apply ice to the burned area meme here*

Sorry. I am mean. It is a racial trait, so you get to be tolerant.

Feral wrote:

Ah, Francis could not be so bad... Only chaotic, inconsequent and incoherent. Normal for a Latinoamerican. *Apply ice to the burned area meme here*

Joke's on you, I didn't get it.

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Feral wrote:

Ah, Francis could not be so bad... Only chaotic, inconsequent and incoherent. Normal for a Latinoamerican. *Apply ice to the burned area meme here*

Joke's on you, I didn't get it.

Argentinians are a lot like Italians: loud, speaking a lot, making little sense, contradicting themselves... Like Francis...

https://youtu.be/p-ma3aCDr5o?t=46s

Feral wrote:

ThePhilosopher wrote:

We don't know if it works among the Beduin. We just know that they use it. Do they have periods they can tampers with the hot metal too?

From what I have seen they simply take it out of a fire and put to the defendants tongue.

Ah, Francis could not be so bad... Only chaotic, inconsequent and incoherent. Normal for a Latinoamerican. *Apply ice to the burned area meme here*

Sorry. I am mean. It is a racial trait, so you get to be tolerant.

Just to finish the on the Ordeal topic, we are brazilians. We hold not most, but ALL the records about corruption! And don't dare say otherwise - we might try to do even better (or bribe the judges to give us the awards)!

Do you go for the driving license with a bribe for the lowest clerk?

Jad.3 wrote:

Do you go for the driving license with a bribe for the lowest clerk?

So far, I tried it without cheats. 6 times. Next monday I will try the seventh time; if I fail, I will bribe the hell out of them (like everyone else I guess).