I forgot what the questions were this far down the page.

Dear Europeans, recognise what you have before you let some insane populist convince you that you don’t need the EU.

Over the channel, we’re economically 8% down from where we would have been if we hadn’t left, there’s no money for anything and we’ve lost a chunk of consumer protection, a lot of data protection and our supreme court seem to be busily dismantling our equalities legislation, despite all that supposedly wonderful parliamentary sovereignty we were told we would regain. It’s all fucked up. Don’t do it. The EU is flawed, but you so very much want to keep in it, trust me.

What are your favorite 2-manifolds (compact or not)?

I have a detachable shower head hose and I am living the dream.

Yeah, spoilers don’t quite work because he is always so out there! They took some little different thing and ran with that instead of the full crazy. I feel like Terry Gilliam would have made good PKD movies. He gets insanity.

My lovely 3 bedroom detached house cost 4x my salary.
People treated gay people like they treat trans people now, but it started getting better, not worse.
Most people blamed the government when it underinvested in public services instead of blaming immigrants.
Unmetered internet was something that happened to other people unless you were at a university.

You’re right there - too complex, too much thinking, a bit weird.

No one makes Philip K Dick movies that are true to the book, but they often make interesting movies inspired by the book.

The only people who talk positively about bringing indoor smoking back are smokers and pub owners, and they’re in the minority.

You and I do not remotely represent the vast majority of people in any way shape or form. No one here does.

What you say about Lemmy users is true, but I wasn’t talking about Lemmy users, I was talking about the general public. Most people don’t smoke.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country

If it completely blocked the doorway, yes.

Absolutely this is the plan.

You’re lumping in other uses of AI with LLMs (chatGPT etc), which is how @[email protected] contradicted you.

It’s specifically the LLMs, which were trained with AI but are more like context-specific hyperplausible random text generators, and yes, are mass plagiarism projects currently being used as an excuse to fire a bunch of creative folk in multiple industries.

Other non-LLM AI uses tend to be more specifically problem-solving and narrowly useful.

The only people who talk positively about bringing indoor smoking back are smokers and pub owners, and they’re in the minority.

Of course it’s not morally equivalent to slavery, but the ban on smoking indoors made my life and a lot of people’s lives much nicer, even before you factor in the reduced risk of lung cancer from secondhand smoke.

The front end industry is pathologically obsessed with newness. So much unproductive churn.

“This project is DEAD! It hasn’t had a major release in THREE MONTHS!”
“This is the same API this framework had TWO YEARS AGO!”

I’m definitely not as clever as I like to think I am.

However, I don’t think insulting me personally refutes any of the wikipedia article’s points or conclusions about the historical existence of Jesus.

Love how you deleted all the bits of your original nonsense about what the commandments story says and substituted something from the other end of the Bible to prove me wrong, when I said that the commandments story doesn’t argue what you said it did. And you were claiming that someone else was moving the goalposts?!

Romans 1:20: since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made”.

Sounds to me that that’s a claim about God’s qualities rather than a logical argument for his existence. Again, I don’t think there are logical arguments about the existence of God in there, and I think you’re looking for that silly ontological argument some much later philosophers made (that God must exist because God is perfect and not existing is an imperfection or some such nonsense). I don’t think it’s in the Bible, and I don’t think philosophical arguments for the existence of God are in the Bible, because like I said hours ago, it’s an underlying assumption in the whole thing, not something presented as a logical argument, just a bunch of stories, poems and letters, some of them second or third hand, about how people perceived the events they experienced or heard of, through the perspective of their religion. The fact that you think their religion is hocum should not blind you, as a thinking person who claims an education and adherence to the evidence, to the historical existence of the real historical person Jesus, about whom those stories were written.

I admitted I might be wrong when I hadn’t checked (and I have no intention to read the whole Bible just to check if you’re wrong).

So you knowingly made an argument from ignorance?

Admitting you might be wrong when you’re not sure is the opposite of ignorance. Ignorance is refusing to learn and insisting you’re right when you’re worried you’re wrong. The stupidest things are said by people who can’t believe they might be mistaken.

For example, (and of course I might be wrong about this), I personally find it plausible that St George, Patron Saint of England, was a real historical figure who was killed in 303CE or thereabouts, but I strongly disbelieve that he fought or killed a dragon. You seem pathologically unable to emotionally and intellectually separate the existence of the person from the stories about them.

who wasn’t aware what the consensus of historians was

I absolutely were.

This is a silly denial

Yes because you can read my mind.

No, it was a silly (and ungrammatical) denial, not because I can read your mind, but because it was clear from the evidence of the text of your claims to me today, right here in this thread, that you had no idea that there was independent evidence and that historians largely agree that Jesus was a real historical person.

I might be wrong, but I’m not so sure there are any arguments about existence in it.

Again a claim based on ignorance.

Hehe. Unlike you, I admitted I might be wrong when I hadn’t checked (and I have no intention to read the whole Bible just to check if you’re wrong).

On the other hand, you didn’t even believe there was a wikipedia page about the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus! And you claim I was arguing from ignorance?

The Bible claims the 10 commandments are from god, and that god created the world, essentially making the claim that the existence of the world is evidence for god.

Sounds to me like “essentially” is doing all the work in that sentence. I think this is yet another silly philosophical argument about the existence of God that someone else wrote that’s just based on some Biblical text that it’s trivial to doubt and is therefore pointless because it can’t convince anyone either way who isn’t already convinced.

I don’t believe you can link me to where the Bible says that because the commandments came from God (for which you already have to believe the story), and because God created the world (for which you also already have to believe the story), the existence of the world proves God exists (which I believe isn’t even in the story, unless you can prove me otherwise. Right back atcha with the “link or it didn’t happen”. Again, there’s so much in the Bible that youth might have chosen to criticise and yet you pick something that isn’t really there?! There’s still much in the Bible that you might have chosen to claim was invented and you pick the simple existence of Jesus the person?!)

And even if that silly argument came from the Bible instead of some silly philosopher trying to prove via silly logic the existence of God, it was such a weak argument with so many logical holes I’m surprised your philosophy teachers gave it the time of day to teach you it.

At least I see where you learned to make circular arguments where you have to believe the consequent before you can accept the antecedent. You argued that Jesus never existed because there’s no evidence, and also you argued that there can’t be any evidence because he never existed. Surely if you’ve studied any philosophy at all, you must recognise that this is about as far from a syllogism as it’s possible to be.

I’m well aware that some philosophers regularly dismiss Christianity and Marxism in the same sentence as deluded nonsense, but I think that you have adopted that prejudice wholesale, and that prejudice has led you to lack knowledge about the historical evidence and consensus for the bare existence of Jesus the historical person.

Can I advise you in the future to (a) check your facts, (b) argue where you’re strongest rather than weakest and © be prepared to admit you didn’t realise something. It undermines your position otherwise.

who wasn’t aware what the consensus of historians was

I absolutely were.

This is a silly denial. I was the one who told you. You are the one who claims I’m making it up and are disbelieving in the existence even of a wikipedia article without lifting a finger to check for yourself. And you expect me to believe you’ve given any serious look into this historical question of existence when you didn’t even google?

You can’t just quote “wikipedia” you have to give the link to the page, so others can see the context. For all I know those quotes could be from a page about things stupid people believe.

This also is a silly thing to be skeptical about or debate, when google exists. I knew (from having looked it up in the past) that the consensus of historians was that Jesus was a real historical figure but that the claims about him in the Bible were religious rather than historical. So I googled “Is there evidence that Jesus was a real historical person” or something like that, scrolled past the religious links and clicked on the wikipedia entry which was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

All the arguments of the existence of god in the bible are based on ignorance

I might be wrong, but I’m not so sure there are any arguments about existence in it. I think it’s just a bunch of stories told with that included as an assumption. All the arguments about existence or not are from the philosophers, mostly much much later on. And I think they’re silly too.

Like I said, feel free to doubt the religious claims in the Bible, or any other religious text you have negative feelings about, but it’s silly to disagree with historians about the simple existence of Jesus the man, once you know you’re on the wrong side of that question compared to the experts whose day job it is to examine and more to the point, evaluate historical evidence!

You present yourself as the scientific mind who decides on the basis of evidence, whilst dismissing, with obvious prejudice, those who have examined the evidence. You clearly believe what you believe because it feels right to you, not because you learned anything about it.

I notice that you didn’t answer whether your (presumed) disbelief in Islam caused you to disbelieve in the existence of Mohammed, or your (presumed) rejection of Buddhism caused you to think that the Buddha himself was invented?

WTF are you quoting??? Quoting without a source is nonsensical.

I already said: wikipedia.

This scholarly consensus is 100% based on a circle jerk, where scholars conclude according to their own beliefs in Christianity without evidence.

Forgive me for trusting the scholarship of the majority of historians rather than some random on the internet who wasn’t aware what the consensus of historians was that Jesus was a real person until a few hours ago, and just assumed there was no corroborating evidence because you didn’t think there would be!

Historians, as their day job, what they’re best at, and expert in, is evaluating historical documents, taking into account the bias of their authors and drawing appropriate conclusions. I’m going to trust them over you ranting.

Feel free to doubt the religious claims of the Bible, but it’s silly to base your whole argument against the church on the one thing that historians, with a few exceptions, agree on.

You’re behaving like a vaccine skeptic or climate change denier. There is a field of experts. There was controversy. There was a lot of examination of the evidence and now there is a consensus. You are disagreeing with the consensus on the basis of your instincts and your preexisting beliefs.

My beliefs on the issue are based on the evidence

No they aren’t! You had no idea there was any, you haven’t even begun to look into it, you have no intention of looking into it in any serious way, and you just today claimed that there couldn’t be any on the grounds that it wasn’t true! It’s a circular argument only supported by it’s conclusion!

Of all the things to disagree with the Bible on, you pick the physical existence of Jesus as the one you most ardently dispute? There’s so much that’s easy for you to argue is implausible in the Bible, but you pick the very existence of some guy going round preaching to a bunch of religious folk that they should be nice to each other?

Why is it so hard for you to accept that Jesus might have been a real person? Do you disbelieve in Mohammed’s physical existence, or the Buddha, just because you disbelieve their religious claims? It’s irrational. You disbelieve me; am I therefore non-existent?

It’s so illogical, and you have your eyes so tightly shut to the possibility that something slightly less simple than “it’s all complete nonsense” is true.

Those who will not listen can never learn new things.

Jesus was real.

Very few serious historians doubt the existence of Jesus the person.

The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has had no support in critical studies for more than a century, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement.[21][2][note 4]

The theory that Jesus the person was himself a myth turns up in the 19th century, whereas skepticism and disbelief about the claims in the Bible about Jesus etc, (which are referenced in it) are older than the book itself, which iirc was begun tens of years after his death.

There are at least fourteen independent sources for the historicity of Jesus from multiple authors within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus[22][note 5]

Clearly you can believe whatever you want to believe of course, and I don’t think for a minute wikipedia is going to convince you that Jesus was a historical person, (you don’t strike me as someone who would take a detailed look into it having already decided it’s proposterous), but for the record, I have to tell you that your assertion that there is no evidence is just factually incorrect.