Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt" is great. He wrote about Q (he isn't a fan) in his blog, which seems to be struggling at the moment. https://www.richardcarrier.info

Thought experiments (including "reductio ad absurdum" method) aren't the best to explain the phenomenons of physical world: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/17279 Philosophers shoud better stay away from physics. Not saying here, that the thought experiments can't provide valuable insights. It's just they can't be used to define the truth about the reality.

Very fascinating! For anyone interested, the article on the of books that might be uncovered at Herculaneum, is a great read as well! https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/23380

I recommend Dennett's review of Harris's book to people who recommend it: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13814 Also Elbow Room, or, better, Freedom Evolves.

This article does a great job of explaining why you should question that consensus. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/5553

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14879 Richard Carrier takes an extremely similar position in total (ie: both in position towards "is ought" and biological grounding). It engages with Hume by providing a way to side step the problem.

True, but the sheer amount that was produced means that some, through fortunate circumstances, have been preserved to the present day: https://www.richardcarrier.info/papyrus/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/44968442

It is certainly a minority position, but some historians and scholars of religion do see reason for doubt: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/21420

This Tim O'Neil? https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14324

This sounds horrible, as if philosophy is now some kind of fringe pseudo thing. Quite the contrary, Richard Carrier for one is arguing[1] that what we are doing is (natural) philosophy and we should call it that (again) (and in fact some university departments have been renamed to contain the word 'philosophy' again). As for the other poster's remark on Thomism, Carrier writes[2]: "Thomism [...] the Medieval Dumbity that consists of purely armchair, and often pseudological, theorizing about natural reality, which ignores the entirety of the sciences and pretends facts and evidence don’t matter—and even don’t exist, contradicting its every conclusion", so not sure how viable that school of thinking is. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lvg4di3sAw [2] https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/18356

It doesn't change "drastically," only by a point or so. Knowing the way studies like this typically work, it could also be that if you are smart with your money (e.g. frugal and not chronically short on cash), you're just as happy as making someone more. I'm sure many of the 6's were in the "I'm doing okay, but man my life would be better if I weren't so broke right now" camp. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13954

A 20 year old roman could expect to live to ~50: http://www.richardcarrier.info/lifetbl.html In the US in 1900, a 20 year old could expect to live to ~62: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html Today, a 20 year old can expect to make it to about 80. So the gains aren't really limited to infant and child mortality. A substantial portion of the gain has certainly come from improvements there though.

> Here's a list of 9 counterfactual claims from just one video: https://www.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lrhznb/i_fact_... I don't think counterfactual means what you think it means. Anyways, I didn't ask for minutia of objections people have against him. Just for one thing he called bs that eventually turned out to be as good as how it was advertised. > Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)": https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345 Wow, such a well reasoned, calm and objective assessment form a non-partisan. > Appears he's also a creationist. Are you kidding me? He has the whole video cycle titled "Why do people laugh at creationists" from 16 years ago. It consists of 44 parts and is informative and hilarious. That's how I first encountered his content. Guy attacks beliefs semi-professionally. With first-hand science knowledge and math. He does that for more than a decade. People don't like their faith challenge so he accumulated a mountain of haters over the years. He doesn't care. It doesn't stop him from going after bs. Even if it's peddled by a billionaire. If you tried to prove that you don't know anything about him apart from the name and smearing produced by faithful that hate him and hate that he doesn't agree with their bs ... you couldn't have done it better. > It's called "Project Jarvis" and here's a whole article about…

> Care to share specifics? What was he ultimately wrong on? Here's a list of 9 counterfactual claims from just one video: https://www.reddit.com/r/thunderf00t/comments/lrhznb/i_fact_checked_th… Here's a well referenced article about the man, titled "The Never Sinking Ship: How Thunderf00t Sucks at Science (or Else He’s a Liar; Probably He’s Just a Liar)": https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/9345 Appears he's also a creationist. > Bezos isn't working on anything like Starship It's called "Project Jarvis" and here's a whole article about it with photos: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/first-images-of-blue-origins-p… > The only impressive thing about it is that they managed to do it with the second stage. Which means in only half-melted on re-entry and didn't tumble with engines forward like on the previous "flight". Cynicism is tiring. You don't have to find their achievements impressive. Their goal isn't to impress you. It seems to me that they're relentlessly accomplishing their goals step by step, as any good engineering team will. IFT5 is right around the corner. Booster has been loaded onto the OLM. I'm looking forward to all the improvements they'll be testing this go-round. It's a blast watching each test flight! > it's way simpler just to fling an empty pipe Not sure what you're attempting to describe here. If you think Starship is an empty pipe you aren't familiar with the details of…

That logic appears to be flawed though and involves a fair amount of hand-waving. https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13752 > Feser’s formalization of this argument appears around page 35. It has 49 premises. I shit you not. Most of them are uncontroversial on some interpretation of the words he employs (that doesn’t mean they are credible on his chosen interpretation of those words, but I’ll charitably ignore that here), except one, Premise 41, where his whole argument breaks down and bites the dust: “the forms or patterns manifest in all the things [the substrate] causes…can exist either in the concrete way in which they exist in individual particular things, or in the abstract way in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect.” This is a false dichotomy, otherwise known as a bifurcation fallacy. It’s simply not true that those are the only two options. And BTW, this Premise, is the same key premise (hereafter always hidden) in all five of his arguments. We can thus refute all of them, by simply refuting this single premise (more on that later).

To be honest, I'm stealing from here: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11868 (The cost of making excuses) Which if I understand; would go like this on explaining UFOs: Naive Approach: P(ALIENS) = 50% p(~ALIENS) = 50% Time elapses and I find some new evidence that looks like this: P(Evidence | ALIENS) = 30% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% Which gives my hypothesis (Its Aliens) a posterior probability of 25% => (50% X 30%)/(50% X 30% + 50% X 90%). I want it to be aliens so I say that they're conducting studies on us which juices P(Evidence | ALIENS && Studying Us) = 100%. But because I have no evidence to back that up, the odds are no better than 50/50; and I have to drop the prior of my new hypothesis (UFOs are Aliens who Study us) to 25% (50% X 50%). This nets out a new posterior probability of around 27%. P(ALIENS AND They Study Us) = 25% p(~ALIENS) = 75% P(Evidence | ALIENS & They Study Us) = 100% P(Evidence | ~ALIENS) = 90% I'm new to Bayesian logic and am still shaky with it, so there could totally be glaring errors I'm overlooking, but as I understand it that's what I was trying to get across - Every new caveat you add to explain away a poor data fit shouldn't juice your odds.

Well, I'm basing that particular claim on the published opinion of a professional academic historian of science. If you or anyone else interested has a lot of free time, you may want to skim these pages by Dr. Richard Carrier: http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006/11/science-and-medieval-christ… http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/search/label/history%20of%20science https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14660 Unfortunately, especially the first two links are into his blogs and challenge the reader to wade through a whole lot of polemic. The third one, though, makes for interesting general reading. In the second link, he explicitly addresses a list of advancements allegedly from the early Middle Ages. I did some rather superficial research on the first three items you mentioned: windmills and water mills and pumps. Lo and behold, all three were known and in use in the Roman Empire or well before the period Carrier focuses on, to wit, 200-1200. Admittedly, his focused time frame is shifted a bit from that of the discussion here in HN: We're talking about what happened after the Roman Empire tanked, while he's arguing against claims that Christianity was a boon to science.