tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12980551476073040872024-03-12T19:40:53.179-07:00Sufficiently Wrong"The credulity of the people is a rich mine, which everybody is contending for." - Dupuis || Current topics: The A432hz Nutters, Barbara WalkerMiekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-23111826655360462622022-03-06T10:59:00.002-08:002022-03-17T05:11:22.997-07:00A Flaw in Pascal's Wager<p style="text-align: justify;">Most reasonable people probably recognize that Pascal's wager is not a very good argument from a purely epistemological point of view. There is, however, also a strange incentive structure to it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Follow along. If we want to 'minimize the negative outcomes', we should believe in the particular version of God, in which belief undoes the maximal amount of negative outcome. Thus, if you believe in a God that will punish you with an eternity in hell and I want you to turn to belief in a different God, I should present you with a God that will punish both you and anyone you know with an eternity in hell.</p><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;">But that's not even the end-point. We can imagine a God that will punish you with an eternity in hell, and infinitely improved pain receptors. We know there's multiple ever greater infinities, and we can imagine a God who increases the pain receptors and time in hell into ever greater infinities. Maybe God even can copy your consciousness and punish both? All three of them! An infinity of them!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Thus, the God that Pascal's wager would ultimately lead you to accept is either the <i>maximally cruel God </i>if such a God can be imaginable, or ever crueller Gods replacing each other as fast as preachers can invent ever crueller ones.</p>Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-1922629787919950712018-08-30T07:15:00.001-07:002020-10-14T14:34:37.490-07:00Google is a Draconian Lord<p>A good while ago, I wrote a couple of posts debunking a list of anti-semitic quote-mines and fabrications. After a while, Google's adSense informed me this post violated some policy, but the violation was unclearly described - essentially amounting to 'either copyright violation or hate-speech', and therefore, adSense would no longer have ads on this blog.<br />
<br />
I don't make much money off of adSense, I've probably earned like 20€ in the whole time my two main blogs have been in operation. The earnings will only be available to me once they reach 70€, so ... however, the earnings were roughly 50% from this blog, 50% from the other, so ... this basically doubles the time until I will receive any of that money.<br />
<br />
I did ask for a review of this decision, and was given an automatic response. There's no more ways of disputing it.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
A debunking of an anti-semitic fabrication is hate-speech? Or is it that the quoting of a list is copyright violation, a list that is of unknown provenance, that has been making the rounds over office fax machines, in far-right newspapers, in e-mails and mailing lists, ..? Even if it were copyrighted, I claim fair use! But in all the decades it's been making the rounds, no one has ever made a copyright claim.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. <br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p><br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p><br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p><br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p><br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p><br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p><br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you.<br />
<br />
Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p><p> Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. </p>Fuck you google. Sincerely, fuck you. <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-83351101524832682732017-01-30T04:28:00.000-08:002017-01-30T04:28:06.258-08:00My Suspicions about William Lane Craig<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am happy to notice that William L. Craig is less prevalent now in media than he was just a few years ago.I am convinced that debating him is not beneficial for anyone whose opinions differ from his, <i>nor is it beneficial for almost anyone in the audience.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Several skeptics have pointed out that his debates basically only uses the atheist participant as a foil against which to present something that the believers in the audience will find convincing – it serves to reinforce their beliefs, since they won't question his line of reasoning, and no matter how convincing the atheist, they'll shrug his arguments off.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I think it's more insidious than just that - I think he is aware that his arguments are not convincing, and I think he is also aware that most of his fans in the audience are not educated enough to realize this.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In essence, they experience a convincing argument, and are left baffled as to why the opposition - the atheist - does not understand that these arguments are convincing. They then have to conclude that the atheist either is stupid or disingenuous – he must have some underlying, illogical reason to reject the argument of the apologist: he must hate God.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I really think the primary thing Craig achieves is to seed that kind of suspicion in the minds of his fans - it's a subtle method of turning Christians ever more suspicious and hateful against people who think differently.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-62770227998728255032016-01-12T14:08:00.001-08:002016-01-14T01:02:04.482-08:00C.S. Lewis: Has People's Sense of Right and Wrong Changed Noticeably?<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lewis' argument mainly relies on the idea that our sense of morality is universal and that this proves that some kind of God must have existed. However, he responds to an objection regarding apparent changes in morality. He states the objection to his argument as such:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I conclude then, that though the difference between people’s ideas of Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of Behaviour at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these differences really prove just the opposite. But one word before I end. I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, ‘Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? [1, p. 14]</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although it might seem I quoted way too much, we will find there are reasons for that - I find problems in most parts of this paragraph.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although I thinkby presenting this objection in the context he did and phrasing it the way he did, Lewis made it seem more silly than it really is, I find myself still sympathizing with the sentiment in the argument <i>even in its apparently naive form</i>. Lewis counter-argument just goes to show how <i>bad </i>he was at thinking about things.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By attracting our attention to one of the most obvious examples - <i>witch-burnings</i> - he makes the case easy for himself (because if they really had existed, they would indeed have been terrible beings) but also makes us forget about all the less obvious examples (which would be greater evidence of moral differences). We have not stopped believing murderers exist, yet many people have stopped considering death penalty for murderers justifiable. Another example is sodomy, which in Britain was punished by death as recently as 1835. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We still believe 'sodomites' exist. Thus there's a problem for Lewis' argument here – to state his explanation analogously, we get</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But surely the reason we do not execute gay people is that we do not believe there are such things.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
clearly, this is nonsense of the highest order. Picking an obvious yet rather specific example makes it easy for Lewis to shrug this important problem off. No, clearly it should be more like</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But surely the reason we do not execute gay people is that we believe it to be wrong to do so, and people in former times had a different sense of right and wrong.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let us visit another issue, viz. that of differences of morality vs. differences of belief about facts. If the morality of an action relies on the beliefs about facts involved, would not very many quite appalling crimes turn out morally acceptable? Would not even an antisemitic act of murder, carried out in the belief that all Jews are conspiring against all of mankind, be morally sound - just factually mistaken?<br />
<br />
Clearly there's a difference in the morality of someone who also is a skeptic, and therefore ensures that his judgments of people is based on reasonably well established facts or not from the morality of someone who just goes gung-ho with whatever pretend-knowledge has been thrown their way.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lewis understanding of this issue is so weak that I wonder what justification there really is for calling him an 'intellectual giant'. If that is an apt description, he must have been quite the stumbling intellectual giant.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-61000771670615974292016-01-03T02:29:00.000-08:002016-01-03T02:29:21.221-08:00Sad News<div style="text-align: justify;">
D.M. Murdock / Acharya S has passed away in cancer. Although I criticized her work in minute detail, I never held any grudge against her as a person - indeed, the world would be a more interesting place if she had a full-long life-span ahead of her.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since illnesses such as cancer can leave the surviving family not only with grief but immense medical bills, you can support her family at <a href="https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/lsn9/u/updates/138747">giveforward</a>.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-77304241270343938002015-12-20T13:28:00.000-08:002015-12-20T13:29:52.216-08:00A Very Summary Review: C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity<div style="text-align: justify;">
Together with a friend, I decided to read through C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. To be sure, it is a respected and often referenced piece of apologetic literature. Thus I approached it with high hopes - not that I expected it to convert me to Christianity or even make me slightly more partial to considering Christian doctrines as 'potentially true'.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What I find is a pretty sophomoric level of sophistication. Lewis even stoops as low as <i>virtual ad hominem </i>responses to arguments. A lot of his arguments rely on lack of imagination, essentially 'false dilemmas' or even false trilemmas. Simply put, God can only be a certain way because that's the only way Lewis can imagine him. God must have been this way, because Lewis cannot imagine anything else. Thus Lewis sets his own mind up to be the meta-God by which any God must adhere.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A major conceit is present already in the title - and it's a conceit that later on is glossed over with a sprinkle of ad hominem. To spell out in detail what conceit I am referring to, it is the very notion of 'mere Christianity'. Lewis claims to express the most rudimental, fundamental parts of Christianity - these are the stances you <i>at least </i>need to hold<i> </i>to be a Christian. Yet, in the very first part of the book, he admits to the existence of Christians that do not hold them, and his argument for rejecting them is nothing but name-calling: <i>Christianity and water. </i>Their Christianity is dilute - that's given as an assertion or even an axiom, with no actual argument backing it up.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This bodes ill for the intellectual standards of apologetics from Lewis' day onwards.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lewis was fond of a form of <i>the argument from morality. </i>However, his lack of logic is quite evident as he rejects the notion that morality could be a form of herd instinct. He argues that morality is somehow clearly <i>external </i>to instinct [1, p. 10]. This he does by illustrating that morality is what <i>triggers </i>instincts and even strengthens some of them, and thus cannot be itself an instinct. I find this a weird argument with flawed premises: he assumes some kind of clear-cut hierarchy of things in the mind that also happens perfectly to correspond to our terminology for these things in the mind. For this to work, the instincts have to be objects of the exact same type, and in the exact same place in some hierarchy in the mind. There's no reason to believe that instincts really are as clear-cut as that, but Lewis probably believed in a created universe that was designed in a very organized manner. Using the un-established fact that the universe is like that to prove that the universe is created is <i>begging the question</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I shall post a series of posts dissecting the fallacies of Lewis' <i>magnum opus</i> in apologetics, a book still considered one of the greatest defenses of Christian faith.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-91812860385191828822015-10-09T14:43:00.001-07:002015-10-09T14:43:36.527-07:00Logical Conjunctions and ProbabilityI get the feeling when reading writings by theologians on the history of the early Church (and also on Judaism), that a great many of them do not quite understand what happens when you combine probability and logic. Let us consider the following situation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A <span class="texhtml"><span class="Unicode">∩</span> B </span><span class="Unicode">∩</span><span class="texhtml"> C </span><span class="Unicode">∩</span><span class="texhtml"> D </span><span class="Unicode">∩</span><span class="texhtml"> E </span><span class="texhtml">→ F</span></blockquote>
That is, if A, B, C, D and E hold true, then F holds true as well. In maths we can come to near complete certainty that A, B, C ... hold, and thus also conclude that the conclusion holds (with ever so slightly less certainty).<br />
<br />
Now, in fields like history and such, it's quite clear that we never have complete certainty – and here there's an interesting consequence of maths.<br />
<br />
If P(A) = 0.9, we can be quite certain that A holds ,right? What if the same probability of 0.9 holds for each of the five antecedents there? The probability of A and B both holding true, if they are independent of one another is P(A <span class="Unicode">∩</span> B) = P(A) * P(B). We can now recursively do this as P((A <span class="Unicode">∩</span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"></span> B) <span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span class="Unicode">∩</span> (C)) = P(</span>A <span class="Unicode">∩</span> B<span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';">) * P(C), and keep reiterating, and this obviously ends up giving us P(</span></span></span>A <span class="Unicode">∩</span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';">..</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Unicode">∩</span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';">E) </span></span></span></span></span> </span><span style="font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS' 'Lucida Sans Unicode';"></span>= P(A)*...*P(E).<br />
<br />
The probability of F holding true given P(A)=...=P(E) is no longer as impressive: 0.9⁵ ≃ 0.59. Still greater than 0.5, though.<br />
<br />
For a fair share of studies regarding, say, ancient Judaism or early Christianity, it seems a lot of the assumptions that do form part of the reasoning is way under 0.9, though - somewhere in the range of 0.6 to 0.8 would be a fair assessment. Even at the top range of that - 0.8 - we go below 0.5 at our fourth assumption.<br />
<br />
Certainly, some of the probabilities might not be independent – some
of the assumptions cannot hold without the previous one holding, for
instance. But in that case, we still end up with probabilities of the
form P(A)*P(B|A) – the likelihood of A and B, given that B's probability
is conditioned by A happening, so we're still dealing with
multiplication - which generally does produce quickly diminishing
numbers when all our values are within the range [0,1].<br />
<br />
<br />
What further bothers me in this situation is that oftentimes, a lot of assumptions remain unstated, and thus the list of antecedents is left incomplete, giving an impression of greater likelihood for the conclusion than is warranted. Certainly some of the assumptions might clock in at 0.99, but due to how multiplication works, ...<br />
<br />
This is a thing that started bothering me while reading Margaret Barker's The Great High Priest – the various arguments in favour of her hypothesis all seem somewhat plausible taken in isolation. However, they are not arguments that support one another - the conclusion relies on at least a very great number of them all being independently correct. So, we end up in a situation where the only argument you can present at the level of the individual pieces of evidence is <i>sure, these seem plausible, if not necessarily established facts</i>. But when you look at the whole structure of it, it seems you end up with something that is fairly unlikely. It is a very clever rhetorical trick, that makes any criticism of it seem vague and unclear.<br />
<br />
A good example of this is the following: Barker assumes that the esoteric teachings of the priesthood of the first temple were transmitted to the essenes. Further, Jesus was a member of this order. As a member, he acquired these teachings, and taught them to his disciples. The disciples propagated these teachings all the way to Origen more than 150 years later <br />
<br />
It might seem somewhat possible that the Essenes had in fact inherited traditions from the original priesthood of the First Temple; let us arbitrarily overestimate this probability at 0.8 - in reality, you have circumstances where it would seem less likely - wars, widespread illiteracy, . I think everyone would agree that this is a fairly kind estimate. As for Jesus and the Essenes, maybe we'll even grant 0.9. We don't know much about the Essenes - did they teach all their doctrine to all their members - if not, was Jesus among those members that got access to the more restricted teachings? If he had access, did he understand it correctly? Let's be kind again, and put the probability at 0.8. Further, did he get around to teach his pupils these teachings? Did they understand them? I'd say 0.9 would be reasonable kind there.<br />
<br />
Did these teachings get reliably passed down to Origen? Let's again go for 0.8. Maybe he had sources that did not learn from people who had learned from Jesus, or maybe his sources had misunderstood what they had learned from Jesus, etc.<br />
<br />
At this point, we're way down: 0.46. Keep in mind that I find the probabilities that I have assigned to be rather exaggeratedly kind: I genuinely feel like values somewhere in the range [0.2, 0.7] would be closer to the actual probabilities here, although these are guesses. Of course, some less probable things do contribute to a slight likelihood of her being correct about the main conclusion: maybe Origen's sources didn't get it from Jesus, and Jesus didn't get it from the Essenes who didn't get it from the First Temple clergy, but Origen got it by some other route that did go back to the First Temple? Such alternative ways of salvaging her thesis exist, but seem highly unlikely, and putting a number like "0.01 at best" on these seems to be excessively kind as well.<br />
<br />
If we were to look into greater detail with regards to the claims, we'd end up finding that the probability of the presented thesis falls far under 10%. <br />
<br /><br />
The same problem with regards to <i>compound probabilities </i>seems to beset a lot of work in the same field – I am compiling examples for a bigger post on this issue.<br />
<br />
This kind of "fallacy of implication of the intersection of many independently probable propositions" is a thing I've seldom seen discussed as a fallacy, and I think it's an important one. The best way to avoid it is to either support your propositions with very much in ways of evidence, or to argue for things that can be supported by disjunctions of facts instead - <i>or</i> adds up probabilities, whereas <i>and</i> multiplies them together. <br />
<br />Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-57508575133650521322015-07-20T12:34:00.001-07:002015-07-20T12:39:50.581-07:00Review: The Indo-European Controversy (Pereltsvaig, Lewis)<div style="text-align: justify;">
A Review: The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics (Asya Pereltsvaig, Martin W. Lewis)</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A few years ago, a team of researchers lead by Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson presented a mathematical model for the spread of language families. Applying this model in reverse to the Indo-European languages supported the Anatolian hypothesis, a minority position on the location of the Indo-European urheimat. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For some reason, this was widely published in media, and the paper <i>Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family</i> appeared at the same time in the journal <i>Science. </i>Gray and Atkinson have made very vocal and powerful claims about their findings: '<i>decisive support </i>[for the Anatolian hypothesis]<i>' </i>is among the various things they have said about their own work.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Pereltsvaig and Lewis go over the results in depth, and find them highly lacking: they find numerous problems in the geographical spread that it presents, including multiple instances where the sanity of the model is excruciatingly questionable. They present the evidence we have <i>against</i> the Anatolian hypothesis (and even more clearly, the evidence we have against the Gray-Atkinson version of the Anatolian hypothesis) and all the difficulties it brings with it, as well as the evidence we have for the Steppe hypothesis. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
They also present the evidence that has lead most linguists to accept Steppe Hypothesis instead. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The argumentation is persuasive and clear, well-nigh undeniable. This leads to an important question: how did <i>Science</i> let a paper that is so rife with unsound historical linguistics pass peer review? It turns out that linguists did peer review it, and Science ignored their judgment, because their negative comments did not pertain to the <i>maths</i> of the model - clearly, having a mathsy model is a guarantee that the mathsy model is correct in <i>Science's </i>view?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Publications such as Business Insider either repost bad science from the Gray-Atkinson team, or add their own even worse spin to it. Consider their version of the Gray-Atkinson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdQwalCPNAs">animated map</a>. This is, allegedly, how "Language" spread across Europe. In linguistics, "Language" signifies the general phenomenon, the fact that humans can communicate in a complicated system. So if we are to take Business Insider's video title seriously, this is how the ability to speak spread in Europe, and all the current language families were the first languages spoken in their areas. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Pereltsvaig and Lewis point out a very real problem: other scientists apparently do not take linguistics seriously, and we are facing a rise of armchair philosophers who disdain empiricism in favour of cute models (at least when going outside of their own field - i.e. Gray and Atkinson probably understand how to be scientific in their own field, but when working with language, the computational model seemingly blinds them to empirical facts). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This, in turn, is coupled with the modern phenomenon of clickbaiting, where the most attention-attracting claim is more likely than other claims to pull in ad money, and thus scientific claims are propagated online not by their likelihood of being accurate, but by how tittilating they are. This is a genuine problem, and needs to be curbed. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Pereltsvaig's and Lewis's book is less combative than this review, although at times it does take vigorous swings at the Gray-Atkinson teams publications. It is a good read, and gives a lot of information about historical linguistics and especially Indo-European historical linguistics. A certain glimpse into issues in the philosophy of science can also be gleaned. It is well written: both clear, enjoyable and relevant, and it does something wonderful: fight pseudoscience.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-60427022954806251812015-07-13T02:01:00.004-07:002015-07-13T03:45:17.207-07:00A Post on my Comment Policy<div style="text-align: justify;">
I deleted a comment, and I will probably be accused of censorship next time I run into the person who posted it, so this post serves only to preclude such accusations. I am not censoring any actual content of it. What I don't want to do, however, is to have my blog host texts that google will index and start posting the first line whenever my name is googled. The line goes like this:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"__________ is just another cyber-stalking lunatic posting his trash all
over the place like a troll."</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That is not exactly an honest description of me, and I think anyone can understand why I don't want seven of those comments to sit here. I'll give you the full comment here, just so whoever made it doesn't feel censored. I know who it is, and it's a person who's been hating on me since the beginning of this blog. In fact, I every now and then do look for this person online, find they're out doing their proselytizing shtick, and post some comment about just how full of flaws Murdock's books are. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
__________ is just another cyber-stalking lunatic posting his trash all
over the place like a troll. She already announced a 2nd edition for
Christ Conspiracy long ago, which makes your malicious smear campaign of
a blog irrelevant, obsolete and a complete waste of time so, grow up
and get over it. You need to get a life very, very badly!!!
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=26
If you had ANY integrity or character at all you would remove your blog
maliciously smearing, defaming and libeling a single female author with
stage 4 cancer whose work you obviously know nothing about. You have
zero relevant qualifications or credentials as you've admitted
elsewhere.
Besides, they did a great job at her forum exposing you and your BS
tactics so, nothing more needs to be said. _________________'s Smear Campaign
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=26761#p26761
; ) </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This comment was posted on several of my posts, even ones that have nothing to do with D.M. Murdock's work. Just shows you what kind of idiots are attracted to her work. I have tried engaging this person with arguments for years now, and it's always been exactly the same litany of how I'm evil, dumb, unqualified and various kinds of insane. I am quite sure this person is the moderator of Murdock's forum, one of the most unhinged persons I've had the bad luck of running into on internet. And in fact, that moderator is one of the few persons I genuinely hate. I have no personal animus towards Murdock herself.<br />
<br />
Anyways, comments are permitted, as long as they actually contain any reasonable content. The example given above is borderline forbidden by that rule, since it contains nothing but ad hominem bullshit. However, due to my long-standing conflict with the person who posted it, and the constant misrepresentation that person stoops to, I've decided not to censor this post in its entirety, but just remove my name from it. As comments cannot be edited, this was the only remaining option.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-47794481665537459022015-07-09T06:54:00.001-07:002017-01-22T09:29:28.289-08:00The Christ Conspiracy: An Index of the Review, pt 2<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 20:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-christ-conspiracy-alexandria.html">Pt 1</a> Various shenanigans with regards to trying to show that Christianity is <i>older</i> than the mainstream assessment has it. Here we find Taylor describing the early church in terms that would need some backing up – but as usual, no evidence is given, just assertion. It is also worth noting that Murdock uses motifs from the NT as historical evidence in the most contorted fashion. Polycarp is quote-mined. Some quite vacuous statements about the Essenes are made, including unsourced speculation reported as fact, bad etymologies, as well as directly contradicting the previous chapter regarding the relationship of Essenism and Christianity.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-20-on.html">Pt 2 </a>Eusebius' Interpretatio Christiana: did Eusebius claim that the Therapeutan monks were Christian <i>before Christianity? </i>A most precious thing emerges: the quote-mined quote-mine!<i> </i>Does allegorical reading imply gnosticism? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-christ-conspiracy-therapeuts-and.html">Pt 3</a> Irrelevant twaddle based on the previous identification of Christianity with the Therapeutans (given that all evidence in favour of such an identification given thus far is mistaken). Murdock thinks 'therapeut' and '<b>doctor</b> <span style="font-size: x-small;">of the law</span>' are etymologically connected. Murdock relies on Epiphanius' knowledge of Hebrew, which is more or less proven to be sub par. (Bad referencing practices, again.) Undue reliance on Higgins. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-christ-conspiracy-on-jews-chapter-2.html">Pt 4 </a>Murdock cites Geza Vermes, but gets Vermes's claim wrong. A somewhat misleading description of Jewish lending practices. Murdock focuses on the most anti-gentile intertestamental Jewish literature to paint an exaggeratedly hateful picture of Judaism.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-christ-conspiracy-and-their-plots.html">Pt 5</a> Murdock's ignorance of the Talmud is coupled with her insistence on thinking that she knows something about it. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 23:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23-out-of.html">Pt 1</a> Some rather weak reasoning with regards to where western culture originated.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/tcc-ch-23-pt-2.html">Pt 2</a> Murdock reports a quote-mine by Jochmans as a prima facie quote, in an attempt to make it seem like the Great Pyramid at some point has been covered by the sea. Some fairly bad arguments (Byblos being an Egyptian colony being presented as evidence for the Bible being an Egyptian book ...) Papyri allegedly five to ten thousand years of age are alluded to. A claim with no support or evidence presented at all, regarding 'Logia Iesou'. Some quotes that essentially consist of nothing but a nested quote, along the line of Murdock quoting Jackson quoting Kuhn, making looking the original source up tedious and <b>fucking well frustrating.</b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/tcc-23-pt-3.html">Pt 3</a> Misrepresentation of the Aryan Invasion Theory with regards to Indian archaeology and linguistics. Reliance on Hindu religious material for claims of really far back history (on the order of tens of thousand years ago). Not enough sources given to be able to assess the value of the presented claims. Murdock presents an argument that makes her claims regarding prehistory unfalsifiable. Value-judgments regarding <i>rishi-culture </i>and later <i>brahmanic culture</i> that rest on no ground whatsoever. Shitty historical linguistics: Murdock misrepresents the state of Indo-European linguistics as well as downright pulls the wool over our eyes with regards to the Nostratic theory. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23-in-and.html">Pt 4 </a>Mentions some Egyptian depiction of a fish trap as evidence of Sumerians being closely related to some North Europeans (but does not tell us anything about this depiction, so we cannot verify this claim). Conflates the Sumerians with Aryan invaders – something not even her source for this madcap claim actually does. Weird ideas about Semitic languages having gone into "permanent eclipse" are quoted. Iranians are mistaken for proto-Greeks and proto-Romans. Really weird arguments presented to show that the Hebrews were Indo-European (or at least a significant portion of them). Murdock mistakes 'levitical' and 'levirate' when reading her source (which got it right) and uses this conflation to present the idea that Levites were Indo-European (for the record, levirate and levitical are <i>highly </i>unrelated terms). Weird and unsourced claims about levirate marriages.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23.html"> Pt 5</a> Unsubstantiated ideas about Abraham's origin are restated. Some pretty bad etymologies presented, of which my favourite is Jessulmer as the origin of the name Jerusalem - which simply cannot hold, since Jessulmer is named for a medieval king. Also, false claims about words in Sanskrit. No references for claims about Jerusalem's origin in Egyptian religion, although pretty fat claims are made. A conspiracy theory regarding the Rosetta stone sneaks in. Some very out there claims about the origins of various British things, such as the word Britain and the druids. Finally, Murdock ascribes some credibility to notions that western culture has its origin on Ireland. A nationalistic creed that probably makes some irish people very happy, but c'mon, not an evidence-based claim in any sense whatsoever. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23-part-6.html"> Pt 6.</a> Here, full-on delusionality is evident: Pygmies at the root of all culture! A lot of evidence alluded to, none actually given. Bad understanding of the theory of evolution. . </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 24:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-christ-conspiracy-evidence-of.html">Pt 1</a> Bad understanding of evolutionary theory. Bad logic. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/01/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization.html">Pt 2 </a>Shoddy linguistics, shoddy referencing, shoddily unclear claims, chains of sources getting things more wrong during each step, reliance on religiously mislead 19th-century scholars who tried finding the lost tribes of Israel in the Americas, claims about the Chimalpopoca manuscript that are <b><i>wrong</i></b>. These fabrications are used to bolster the notion that the Biblical creation myth was present in the Americas. Lots of unsupported assertions.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/02/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization_6.html">Pt 3</a> Shoddy linguistics regarding languages of America and India.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/02/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization.html">Pt 4</a> Unreliable sources (James Churchward). Lots of assertions without any evidence. Bad linguistics. Appealing to previous bad linguistics as though it were evidence. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/03/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization.html">Pt 5</a> Pyramids. In this part, Murdock quotes UFOlogists and new age kooks. Murdock accepts the Ica stones as genuine. Murdock accepts exaggerated
claims about the 'precision' of the Costa Rican stone spheres as
accurate without thinking about the methodology of measuring such stones</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/03/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization_14.html">Pt 6</a> Giants. Ancient Maps. Saturn having been a 'pole star'. Murdock relies on sources that think writing goes back 150 000 years. Murdock also seems to believe that the original religion of humanity must have been objectively <i>good</i> in some sense - which is a weird idea.</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-27246038792914297282015-07-08T09:01:00.003-07:002015-07-10T04:05:37.523-07:00Deception and Effort<div style="text-align: justify;">
Honest skepticism has a genuine problem. This problem has to do with the somewhat fleeting character of fairness. How do we grant a claim a fair hearing? Or more specifically, how much of a hearing do we have to grant for the hearing to have been fair?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Basically, the problem boils down to this: for every true claim, for every usefully accurate model, for every insightful understanding, there's hundreds of mistaken claims, models that obfuscate or mislead, and misunderstandings. If we were to grant each proposal the same amount of interest and attention, we would definitely be wasting our time.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This, essentially, is at the root of why 'falsifiability' is so important to science. If we were to nurture a method of looking for truth where non-falsifiable hypotheses were given a lot of attention, we would waste a lot of effort on things that are, to be blunt, <i>very </i>mistaken. Falsifiability permits us to direct our effort where it matters – towards improvement of our understanding of something.<br />
<br />
This is why a critical approach to knowledge is the most important tool in the toolkit: it gives us a fighting chance to stave off wastefulness, and to focus on things that are potentially fruitful instead. A big ugly problem rears its head here, though: some people are so attached to their ideas that they will not look at them with a critical eye. Heck, for many of this kind of people, voicing any criticism of an idea is an attack on them as a person. These people simply do not want to play by the rules - they want their ideas to be given a pass, to be excempt from vetting.<br />
<br />
This is a kind of deceptive approach - although I don't think they themselves realize just how deceitful this is. They may very well believe they are correct, but by not letting others check whether they in fact are correct, they are trying to rig the process of finding truth, so that their idea will come out on top no matter how accurate it is.<br />
<br />
Now, if we granted each idea an equal, thorough hearing, we'd be drowned in frustratingly useless work. We'd end up reading thousands of pages of worthless speculation, just in the hopes of finding even a nugget of vaguely truth-like essence. So, already when one has taken a good first look at the work of an author and found that their work doesn't impress at all due to bad research, bad logic (etc), it is quite justifiable to refuse to go on. At that point, one can be sure there are more fruitful venues elsewhere. There's too much work to be done in the world, to let the ideologically blind lead us down gardenpaths of bad evidence. <br />
<br />
However, those who do not want to play by the rules (and who are so enamored with their own ideas) will not concede the point at this point. They'll just keep demanding to be taken seriously. The bulk of this blog, in fact, stands as testimony to the amount of work such bad scholarship leads us to: I've spent several hundred hours reading Murdock's sources, looking for them, cross-referencing stuff, tracing stuff, translating stuff, ... and her fans still think my criticism of her work is just an ad hominem rant.<br />
<br />
In essence, the criticism of one particular book that I've presented on this blog is testimony to what superfluous work has to be done if we entertain the notion that pseudoscience has to be permitted a fair hearing. The amount of text I've written amounts to, roughly speaking, the length of a PhD thesis. The time and effort I have invested is considerable. The conclusion that The Christ Conspiracy is <i>worthless</i> is unavoidable and quite well substantiated – its conclusions are less waterproof than a sieve. Yet this work gets us nowhere – Murdock's fans still propagate her claims around the internet, and her claims are nice clickbait. Solid, scholarly work has no impact on the delusional fringe, and wasting effort on debunking it is essentially futile. This does not stop me, since I would get a bad conscience otherwise, but I fear that in these days of clickbait, reason and rationality will lose out to mass-appeal and controversy.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-67813914424303635952015-07-08T08:29:00.001-07:002015-07-08T08:29:05.856-07:00Fallacies II: General Word-related Fallacies<h2 style="text-align: justify;">
Fallacies: General Word-related Fallacies</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
as well as Fallacies with Similar Basic Flaws in Reasoning</h3>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There are many kinds of fallacies that fly by rather unnoticed, especially in online debates. <a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2012/12/fallacies-i-unworkable-definitions.html" target="_blank">The previous example</a> is but one, and it is not even of a similar type of word-related fallacy that I am thinking of right now. Having consulted several lists of fallacies, it turns out only some of the semantic fallacies seem to have names - and even then, the scope they are given tends to be fairly restricted, even if the same kind of fallacy easily could be applied elsewhere as well.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Often, these fallacies are of a kind I would call <i>naive prescriptive lexical Platonic realism</i>. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Example 1</b>: The <i>Jews</i> are the members of a religion, hence <i>the Jews</i> cannot form an ethnicity too.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This assumes that the definitions of <i>religion</i> and <i>ethnicity </i>are</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<ul>
<li>mutually exclusive</li>
<li>objectively right and true</li>
<li>prescriptive, rather than descriptive</li>
</ul>
<div>
Mutually exclusive signifying that if something signifies a religion, it cannot also signify the members of an ethnicity and vice versa. Objectively right and true in that using even slightly different definitions somehow is objectionable - and some seem to think this objectionableness is objectively true, even - essentially stating that there is an absolute ethics that forbids using terms in a different way. Prescriptive, in that if something is a <i>religion</i>, it must conform - religion is strictly defined, and when we say something is a religion, all this baggage suddenly comes along and we can also therefore predict a lot of things about the subject - in this case, Judaism - once we know it is a religion.</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Usually, the thing we can know about a religion - any religion, really, but Judaism will be the example I will use here - is that it is exactly like protestant Christianity. Viz. <i>it has a scripture, which is its only source of doctrine and rules, which are obtained by a literal reading of that book. It has ceremonies and beliefs, and if you do not hold those beliefs, you are going to hell. If you hold the right beliefs, you go to heaven. The rabbi is the person who leads the service, and he serves as some kind of interface between God and the believer. He also has the right to officiate at weddings, and perform circumcisions and so on. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
All of those are basically wrong to different extents:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<ul>
<li>Judaism does have scripture, but they are not the only source of doctrines and rules, and the rules are not obtained by literal readings of the text.</li>
<li>The beliefs about the afterlife are not clearly spelled out, but it would seem almost all Jews reject the idea of an eternal hell, as well as the belief that condemnation depends on belief. Going to heaven is definitely not predicated on having the right belief.</li>
<li>The rabbi is a scholar of Judaism, not a middleman. He is supposed to know the rules of Judaism well, and to be able to reach conclusions on new issues in Jewish law. It is tradition that each Jewish congregation should have a rabbi as its leader, but he does not have any specific role in the service (although some congregations may have traditions along the lines of 'the rabbi must never turn his back to the congregation during a service', essentially placing him the furthest back!). Any bar-mitzva Jewish man (and in conservative and reform Judaism women as well) who knows the liturgy can lead it. It is not unusual that the rabbi does not take that role. I gather in more liberal versions of Judaism, it is more common for a rabbi to officiate, but even then this is not mandatory.</li>
<li>Jewish rabbis do officiate at weddings in some countries where secular law has given them that right (or, from a Jewish religious point of view, forced that responsibility on them by requiring that someone officiate at weddings in the first place). Jewish law does not require that, but instead requires witnesses and the signing of a wedding contract - the ketubah. Oftentimes, of course, the only persons available to check the validity of the ketubah per Jewish law is a rabbi, but if someone else of sufficient knowledge can verify it, that is ok. The verification, as far as I can tell, need not occur during the wedding itself but can be done earlier.</li>
</ul>
<div>
All of these are things I have seen people assume hold true for Judaism simply because Judaism is a religion. Apparently, people believe that the word <i>religion</i> only includes things which satisfy all the things I italicized above (or some other similar list of distinctive features).<br />
<br />
Similarly, you run into some atheists who refuse to accept that Buddhism is a religion because it is not theistic, or it lacks this or that trait that protestant Christianity has.<br />
<br />
To me, this seems a very naive view of what it means for something to be something. When a chef calls a fruit a berry, he is not disagreeing with the botanist, he is not making a statement along the lines that modern biology is wrong. He is classifying the various plant parts he runs into according to their use in cooking and such characteristics that he readily can discern.<br />
<br />
A commonly raised objection to my stance here would be that <i style="font-weight: bold;">words mean things</i>, and superficially, it would seem my stance undermines this guarantee. I have two major responses to that criticism.<br />
<br />
First, this is in fact typical of human language, and enables it to adapt to any number of new situations. We cannot a priori know which traits are important distinguishing lines, and a purely taxonomic approach will probably be useless - if the chef adhered to biological taxonomy, the fruit compote suddenly turns into a berry, drupe and aggregate fruit compote and the average green salad no longer contains vegetables, but tubers, leafs, false fruits (cucumber), ...<br />
Clearly words have to have <b>useful meanings </b>as well; and for the chef, vegetable is a more <b>useful category </b>than most botanical meanings<b>. I am not saying the botanist is wrong, I am saying his or her classification is useful in one context, not the other.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Further, the classificatory scheme used by the botanists and biologists in general rely on observations that are needlessly complex for most real-world situations. Developing some kind of artificial fertilizer might benefit from such observations - cooking probably does not.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Finally, words still mean things in my approach. </b>In fact, it turns out my approach preserves, with greater fidelity, the meaning of words as they are attested in actual use. If we made a tool intended to efficiently fix a certain problem, and people found another use for it that was better, more useful, and so on, would we be right to refuse to accept the results of their use of it, to scorn them for finding a better application for it? This is what a prescriptive armchair prescriptivist approach essentially does.<br />
<br />
Getting back to the main example I have been running with - viz. Jews - members of a religion or members of an ethnicity?- we can easily find a synthesis of these two statements. Judaism is indeed a religion, a religion that concerns itself a lot with a specific ethnicity. Non-members of this ethnicity can believe in the religion without joining the ethnicity, (but this is unusual). Non-members of the ethnicity who wish to join the ethnicity, can do so. In doing so, they become part of the community - and ethnicities tend to form communities. Ethnicity and religion both are somewhat fluid concepts, and both are relatively recent concepts as well. Judaism as a religion predates the current "formal" definition of what a religion is. The Jewish people, as an ethnicity, predates the current "formal" definition of what an ethnicity is.<br />
<br />
Both <i>religion</i> and <i>ethnicity </i>are terms that have been made up to describe some phenomena we have experiences of - viz. some humans have cultural, linguistic, etc links that make them form a kind of group. Ethnicity, in addition, is somewhat fuzzy, one can simultaneously belong to several different ethnicities that overlap in various ways, not necessarily even hierarchically. I am simultaneously a member of the Swedish-speaking Finns, the Finns, the major Swedish ethnical sphere (but I am not a member of the <i>Swedish-ethnicity in Sweden</i>), Ostrobothnians, and maybe even some other group. I know Jewish people that are Jewish, Swedish-speaking Finns and Finns, and Jewish people that are Jews and Finns. I also know Jewish people who are Jewish and American. The fact that Jewish people can be members of other ethnicities does not preclude Jewish people from being members of a Jewish ethnicity as well - ethnicities are not necessarily mutually exclusive, except in some specific frameworks - but if we demand that such a framework is adhered to, we are enforcing an interpretation of things, not trying to describe them objectively.<br />
<br />
There we run into an important concept: frameworks. Whether a certain thing is an ethnicity or not may very well be different in the eyes of secular law, the opinions of individual members of the different ethnicities, etc. We need to know which framework is being assumed to know whether something is accurate and to know what knowledge we can derive from a statement made in that framework. If someone says Buddhism isn't a religion, we must know what kind of framework this statement is made in to be able to know what it says about Buddhism - on the other hand, the same applies when someone says Buddhism is a religion. <i>Words still mean things, but context tells us what things they mean.</i><br />
<br />
Too often "words mean things" is used to reach a conclusion that does not validly follow from what is known about a thing, and the examples I gave above with regards to conclusions about Judaism based on knowing one single factoid about Judaism should amply illustrate just how flawed this form of reasoning is. Yet it's a fairly popular form of reasoning even among people who pretend to be rationalists, skeptics and scientifically minded.</div>
</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-6640840918257723102015-06-16T11:22:00.001-07:002019-06-23T11:25:01.054-07:00The Christ Conspiracy: An Index to the Review<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since the review of The Christ Conspiracy reached spectacular lengths, a post that indexes the articles seems called for. Short summaries of the problems identified in each instalment follows. This post should be seen as an appendix to the <a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2014/11/conclusions-christ-conspiracy.html">conclusion</a>. Due to the proliferation of posts dealing with chapters 20, 23 and 24, and their close relationship, there are multiple separate entries for these.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2012/11/the-christ-conspiracy-introduction-and.html">Chapter 1</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The problems encountered in this chapter do not really relate all that closely to the thesis itself, but do showcase that Murdock plays fast and loose with the truth.</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2012/11/the-christ-conspiracy-holy-forgery-mill.html">Chapter 2</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A couple of really fudgy claims, based on a sequence of sources misunderstanding and exaggerating each other's claims. Unreliable sources in general. However, the chapter itself does not contribute much to the conclusion of the book. The <i>general claim </i>that is made could be made with credible sources – Murdock has just chosen to use shoddy sources and shoddy claims to prop up a reasonable claim.</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2012/11/the-christ-conspiracy-ch-3-4.html">Chapter 3, 4</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Some fallacies along the lines of the etymological fallacy, and a particularly strange logical fallacy – viz. the idea that someone acting illogically is evidence of his non-existence. She also claims that 'pious fraud' was coined to describe Christian practices, when the phrase in fact pre-dates Christianity by several decades. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2012/11/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-6.html">Chapter 6</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Protestant slander of a pope taken seriously. Saman and Maga? Sources please. Pure speculation about the role of gnostics. Speculation about the 'malodorous chrism' as a term for sperm. A fabrication about the contents of the Nag Hammadi library.</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/01/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-7-part-1.html">Chapter 7</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A mistaken reference (demonstrating that Murdock has not verified the veracity of the sources of her source). Unreliable numismatic third-hand evidence. Shoddy referencing. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/02/the-christ-conspiracy-ch8-draft.html">Chapter 8</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Misunderstands the Documentary Hypothesis. The orthodox dating of Pharaohs is off. A naive understanding of translation is evident. Ignorance of Hebrew phonemes makes for the amusing thought that the tetragrammaton contains the name of Eve. Acharya thinks that the use of the designation "Askhenazi" for eastern European Jews is evidence that early Judaism was greatly influenced by Aryans. Mr. Spock's <b>(!)</b><i> Vulcan</i> Salute is presented as evidence that the Jewish God is a <i>volcano</i> God. Silly attempts to identify "Israel" as "Isis-Ra-El". Some more bullshit linguistics.</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/02/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-10-pt-1.html"> Chapter 10, pt 1</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A genuinely sub-par understanding of what allegory is, as well as mischaracterizing the Hebrew grammatical gender as a system of allegory.<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/02/the-christ-conspiracy-ch10-pt-2.html"><br /></a></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/02/the-christ-conspiracy-ch10-pt-2.html">Chapter 10, pt 2</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Identifies the Book of Jasher referred to in the Bible as the medieval Book of Jasher. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/05/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-10-study.html">Chapter 10, pt 3</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Reads Amos' harangue against the worshippers of the God Kaiwan as though this was admission that Kaiwan is part of Biblical theology. Without any supporting evidence, she equates Kaiwan and El. This is followed what looks suspiciously much like Acharya admitting to believing in astrology - her definition of astrology is very positive and downright naive. <br />
<br />
This is followed by use of an unreliable source (Pike). It is claimed that toponomies in the Bible are widely astrological - a claim that rests on such a weak foundation that it's in fact laughable. (From an unreliable source, again). Strong pareidolia (since there's seven stars in the Pleiades, all sevens in Judaism much represent the Pleiades).<br />
<br />
Also, the book of Job is a freemasonic ritual manual (as in, that's its origins)</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/08/the-christ-conspiracy-other-elements.html">Chapter 14, pt 1</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The seven archangels are the seven <i>hathors</i>. Angels are the <i>angles </i>of the zodiac. Murdock thinks metaphor is what you get when you read literally. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/09/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-14-pt-ii.html">Chapter 14, pt 2.</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Jesus being aware of crosses as an execution method is taken as evidence that he must be invented. A few severely misleading pieces of reasoning regarding etymologies (hell, pesach), and other bad linguistics. Generally some of the reasoning indicates that Murdock thinks English designations are magical lenses into the past of a number of concepts. Bad dating of the Talmud. Claims which were not supported by their source whatsoever (i.e. Barbara Walker claiming that various things derive from Egyptian prayers to Osiris.)</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/09/the-christ-conspiracy-ch-16-etymology.html">Chapter 16</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A treasure trove of bad linguistics.</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2013/11/the-christ-conspiracy-ch-17-meaning-of.html">Chapter 17, pt 1</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An instance of the linguistic fallacy of very short words (John - Aan), as well as an unsubstantiated and somewhat suspicious assertion. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2014/01/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-17.html"> Chapter 17, pt 2</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A seriously debunked dating of the Dendera temple. Atlantean racial theories pop up - i.e. the fact that the author of Revelations mentions a 'man' as one out of four symbols is seen as evidence that the author of Revelations believed in Theosophist racial theories (i.e. Adam is The Atlantean). There's a distinct lack of argumentation beyond assertions. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2014/01/the-christ-conspiracy-ch-19-essenes.html">Chapter 19, pt 1</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Murdock subscribes naively to idealizing descriptions of the Essenes. She rejects the DSS as having anything to do with them, and thus basically ends up having next to no evidence regarding their beliefs. Nevertheless, she dares make several sweeping statements as to what these beliefs were. Her argument in general is unclear. </blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 20:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-christ-conspiracy-alexandria.html">Pt 1</a> Various shenanigans with regards to trying to show that Christianity is <i>older</i>
than the mainstream assessment has it. Here we find Taylor describing
the early church in terms that would need some backing up – but as
usual, no evidence is given, just assertion. It is also worth noting
that Murdock uses motifs from the NT as historical evidence in the most
contorted fashion. Polycarp is quote-mined. Some quite vacuous
statements about the Essenes are made, including unsourced speculation
reported as fact, bad etymologies, as well as directly contradicting the
previous chapter regarding the relationship of Essenism and
Christianity.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-20-on.html">Pt 2 </a>Eusebius' Interpretatio Christiana: did Eusebius claim that the Therapeutan monks were Christian <i>before Christianity? </i>A most precious thing emerges: the quote-mined quote-mine!<i> </i>Does allegorical reading imply gnosticism? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-christ-conspiracy-therapeuts-and.html">Pt 3</a>
Irrelevant twaddle based on the previous identification of Christianity
with the Therapeutans (given that all evidence in favour of such an
identification given thus far is mistaken). Murdock thinks 'therapeut'
and '<b>doctor</b> <span style="font-size: x-small;">of the law</span>'
are etymologically connected. Murdock relies on Epiphanius' knowledge
of Hebrew, which is more or less proven to be sub par. (Bad referencing
practices, again.) Undue reliance on Higgins. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-christ-conspiracy-on-jews-chapter-2.html">Pt 4 </a>Murdock
cites Geza Vermes, but gets Vermes's claim wrong. A somewhat misleading
description of Jewish lending practices. Murdock focuses on the most
anti-gentile intertestamental Jewish literature to paint an
exaggeratedly hateful picture of Judaism.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-christ-conspiracy-and-their-plots.html">Pt 5</a> Murdock's ignorance of the Talmud is coupled with her insistence on thinking that she knows something about it. </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 23:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23-out-of.html">Pt 1</a> Some rather weak reasoning with regards to where western culture originated.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/tcc-ch-23-pt-2.html">Pt 2</a>
Murdock reports a quote-mine by Jochmans as a prima facie quote, in an
attempt to make it seem like the Great Pyramid at some point has been
covered by the sea. Some fairly bad arguments (Byblos being an Egyptian
colony being presented as evidence for the Bible being an Egyptian book
...) Papyri allegedly five to ten thousand years of age are alluded to.
A claim with no support or evidence presented at all, regarding 'Logia
Iesou'. Some quotes that essentially consist of nothing but a nested
quote, along the line of Murdock quoting Jackson quoting Kuhn, making
looking the original source up tedious and <b>fucking well frustrating.</b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/tcc-23-pt-3.html">Pt 3</a>
Misrepresentation of the Aryan Invasion Theory with regards to Indian
archaeology and linguistics. Reliance on Hindu religious material for
claims of really far back history (on the order of tens of thousand
years ago). Not enough sources given to be able to assess the value of
the presented claims. Murdock presents an argument that makes her claims
regarding prehistory unfalsifiable. Value-judgments regarding <i>rishi-culture </i>and later <i>brahmanic culture</i>
that rest on no ground whatsoever. Shitty historical linguistics:
Murdock misrepresents the state of Indo-European linguistics as well as
downright pulls the wool over our eyes with regards to the Nostratic
theory. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23-in-and.html">Pt 4 </a>Mentions
some Egyptian depiction of a fish trap as evidence of Sumerians being
closely related to some North Europeans (but does not tell us anything
about this depiction, so we cannot verify this claim). Conflates the
Sumerians with Aryan invaders – something not even her source for this
madcap claim actually does. Weird ideas about Semitic languages having
gone into "permanent eclipse" are quoted. Iranians are mistaken for
proto-Greeks and proto-Romans. Really weird arguments presented to show
that the Hebrews were Indo-European (or at least a significant portion
of them). Murdock mistakes 'levitical' and 'levirate' when reading her
source (which got it right) and uses this conflation to present the idea
that Levites were Indo-European (for the record, levirate and levitical
are <i>highly </i>unrelated terms). Weird and unsourced claims about levirate marriages.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23.html"> Pt 5</a>
Unsubstantiated ideas about Abraham's origin are restated. Some pretty
bad etymologies presented, of which my favourite is Jessulmer as the
origin of the name Jerusalem - which simply cannot hold, since Jessulmer
is named for a medieval king. Also, false claims about words in
Sanskrit. No references for claims about Jerusalem's origin in Egyptian
religion, although pretty fat claims are made. A conspiracy theory
regarding the Rosetta stone sneaks in. Some very out there claims about
the origins of various British things, such as the word Britain and the
druids. Finally, Murdock ascribes some credibility to notions that
western culture has its origin on Ireland. A nationalistic creed that
probably makes some irish people very happy, but c'mon, not an
evidence-based claim in any sense whatsoever. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-christ-conspiracy-chapter-23-part-6.html"> Pt 6.</a>
Here, full-on delusionality is evident: Pygmies at the root of all
culture! A lot of evidence alluded to, none actually given. Bad
understanding of the theory of evolution. . </blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Chapter 24:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-christ-conspiracy-evidence-of.html">Pt 1</a> Bad understanding of evolutionary theory. Bad logic. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/01/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization.html">Pt 2 </a>Shoddy
linguistics, shoddy referencing, shoddily unclear claims, chains of
sources getting things more wrong during each step, reliance on
religiously mislead 19th-century scholars who tried finding the lost
tribes of Israel in the Americas, claims about the Chimalpopoca
manuscript that are <b><i>wrong</i></b>. These fabrications are used to
bolster the notion that the Biblical creation myth was present in the
Americas. Lots of unsupported assertions.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/02/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization_6.html">Pt 3</a> Shoddy linguistics regarding languages of America and India.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/02/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization.html">Pt 4</a>
Unreliable sources (James Churchward). Lots of assertions without any
evidence. Bad linguistics. Appealing to previous bad linguistics as
though it were evidence. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/03/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization.html">Pt 5</a>
Pyramids. In this part, Murdock quotes UFOlogists and new age kooks.
Murdock accepts the Ica stones as genuine. Murdock accepts exaggerated
claims about the 'precision' of the Costa Rican stone spheres as
accurate without thinking about the methodology of measuring such stones</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/03/evidence-of-ancient-global-civilization_14.html">Pt 6</a>
Giants. Ancient Maps. Saturn having been a 'pole star'. Murdock relies
on sources that think writing goes back 150 000 years. Murdock also
seems to believe that the original religion of humanity must have been
objectively <i>good</i> in some sense - which is a weird idea.</blockquote>
<a href="https://somerationalism.blogspot.com/2014/11/conclusions-christ-conspiracy.html">My Conclusion</a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Pretty much what the title says, my summary and the conclusion I drew from reading The Christ Conspiracy, evaluating its arguments, checking its sources, evaluating the sources, etc. </blockquote>
</div>
</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-78430064773051586812015-06-12T13:29:00.000-07:002016-04-22T01:46:44.713-07:00On Historical Linguistics: Part 2<div style="text-align: justify;">
The model I presented in the <a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2015/05/on-historical-linguistics-part-1.html">previous post</a> only presents a way of structuring the findings once we have them. The next question then is what changes are the most useful ones to trace?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
People like to think that similarities in vocabulary are a reliable indicator - this is probably why the belief that English descends from Latin is quite popular, even to the extent that ignorant teachers tell their pupils this as a fact. The problems with just looking at individual words is that words are borrowed quite freely from one language to another (or, well, at least it seems this is the case in Eurasia - for some reason, South American native langauges seem to have had more free exchange of grammar for whatever reason).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Another type of similarity is typological similarity. Typology is the study of the "properties" of languages, things like "what order do subject, verb and object come in", "does the language predominantly use suffixes, prefixes or neither", "does the language have prepositions or postpositions", and a lot of similar stuff. But here we have a rather interesting problem.<br />
<br />
For some reason, various features tend to cluster together: it's not unusual for languages with this or that feature also to have these particular other features - and it seems this follows from some property of our brains or as some consequence of something more subtle about language itself. <br />
<br />
Thus, even languages that recently have changed in certain ways, and where we can know contact with a language that already had a certain property is not the cause for the change, we can see that the other features often tend to hobble along in the same direction. Of course, language contact can make this even more powerful – unrelated languages can acquire features by influence, one from another. In fact, large areas of such belts of influence have been identified, and are called 'sprachbunds' or 'convergence areas'. So we find that from the perspective of historical linguistics, the fact that some pair of languages do a lot of things in similar ways (suffixes, SOV, postpositions, ... or whatever other bundle of features you can imagine) does not necessarily tell us anything about whether they are related or not.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, one type of change is very amenable to a hierarchical analysis - sound changes. Over time, languages have sound changes happening to them. These can sort of be expressed as "search-and-replace". We represent the language in a textual form. (Note: we are of course rather used to this nowadays, given that we have literacy and all, but even a few centuries ago this was not a very common skill. Language is primarily spoken, and representing it as text when dealing with the history of spoken languages does kind of deserve mention of this fact.) We can then, for instance, do a sound change along the lines of this:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
t → t<sup>h</sup><br />
d → t
</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A word such as tin would come out as t<sup>h</sup>in. Now, in case t<sup>h </sup>did not exist in the language previously, the language has not lost any phonological distinctions - all words that previously were distinct still are distinct. But let's imagine another change:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
t → t<br />
d → t</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This change removes a distinction, and thus we lose some "knowledge" about how the language was previously - after this, we cannot tell by just looking at a word whether it previously had a <i>t</i> or a <i>d</i> where there now is a <i>t</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There also are conditional changes. These are basically changes that consist of rules where one sound is changed depending on sounds nearby, e.g. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
k → t͡ʃ, / _e, _i</blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This would replace k with t͡ʃ when followed by e or i, a sound change that has happened in many languages worldwide. Essentially, though, such changes can be written like this instead, to remove the need for the notation with / _e, _i:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ke → t͡ʃe<br />
ki → t͡ʃi </blockquote>
Notice, however, that the <i>k → t͡ʃ, / _e, _i</i> notation is more succinct, and we also are less likely by accident to forget some particular instance. In fact, the change there could possibly be expressed even more powerfully as k → t͡ʃ, / _V, when V is a front vowel.<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Other contextual things that may be of relevance are whether a sound is in word-initial or word-final position, whether it's before or after or even in the same syllable as the word stress, whether it's in such a position with regards to some weaker stresses of the same word, etc. To make the notation able to deal with such, symbols for stresses of different types is all it takes. Similar additions coding for whatever feature we need to trace should be easy to add as well. The notation that expresses contexts with / [surrounding sound]_[surrounding sound] is more compact than writing out every single substitution separately, but I am not going for a full Historical Linguistics 101 course here, so I will not regale you with such details.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A good principle: <i> </i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>i) shared innovations indicate closer relationships</i><br />
<i>ii) shared retentions do not indicate anything very interesting with regards to distance</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Why would this be the case? There are lots of possible changes - a shared change is thus somewhat a priori unlikely. Anytime some part of a language has not been hit by a change we will have a retention, though, so retentions by their nature will occur a lot more often than shared innovations.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although I previously mentioned that the lexicon is somewhat unreliable, an analogy based on the lexicon might be better. Let us imagine we have a small island on which there are two languages. We do not know whether these first entered the island, and then diverged, or diverged and only then entered the island. We find that there's an animal on the island that does not exist elsewhere. It also turns out that they have very similar words for it, words that do not exist in any of the related languages outside of the island. How likely is it that they both came up with the same word independently? Fairly unlikely.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If they have different words, this does not necessarily tell us <i>anything at all. </i>One - or even both - of the languages might have come up with new words more recently. If they have the same word, we need to account for that: either, one of the languages has borrowed it from the other after arriving on the island separately from the other group (who borrowed from whom does not necessarily tell us who were there first, however!), or they arrived as one language that only more recently has differentiated into two.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, one thing that would more clearly suggest that they did not arrive together is if one of the languages shared a lot of innovations with some language (or group of languages) outside of the island, and the other didn't - or even better if it shared innovations with another group of languages altogether. The likelihood that all of these groups started diverging from a shared origin at the same time, and some of the groups in isolation from the others had done the same innovations is very low.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A language probably goes through far fewer sound changes than lexical changes - by an order of magnitude, at the very least - through any time span. Sound changes are further not really "loaned" after the fact - they tend to spread through a speaker community - and sometimes beyond it - but there isn't really any way in which they could be loaned. Words are loaned, not processes that happened in the past. A process that is going on can spill over, a process that has already happened is not relevant any longer.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Some changes seem to be fairly common cross-linguistically. We can observe, for instance, that historical *k has become t͡ʃ in certain very similar positions in English and Swedish as spoken in Finland. We know Swedish as spoken in Finland is closer related to Swedish as spoken in Sweden than it is to English, however. The same change has happened in a lot of languages, but Swedish and English are similar enough that one might find the shared change somewhat significant. It's not significant, really – Swedish as spoken in Finland and English don't have any particular affinities. However, such common changes might seem to undermine our use of sound change and shared innovation. There is a solution, however!</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The order in which changes have happened may leave traces that make it possible to resolve what the order was. Languages in which a series of early changes have happened in the same order from some ancestral form (after which more divergent changes have happened) are thus very likely to be more closely related than languages in which no such shared order exists.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
An example might be helpful here. Let us imagine a language <b>L </b>and a sound change, lets call it A<sup>→</sup>, where a final syllable having /i/ as its vowel causes the vowel of the previous syllable to become fronted, so e.g. /kaki/ → /keki/. (/a u o/ are 'back vowels' and /i e/ are front vowels; why they're called that can be learned from books on phonology, and I will not get into it. Suffice to say, this has to do with articulatory features of the vowels). Another change I already mentioned has k turn into t͡ʃ before front vowels, let's call it B<sup>→</sup>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If A<sup>→</sup> happens before B<sup>→</sup>, /kaki/ will end up as /t͡ʃet͡ʃi/, but if B<sup>→ </sup>happens before A<sup>→</sup>,we get /ket͡ʃi/. We might find that some related language <b>K </b>has /kaki/ or /keki/ or /keke/ or whatever for a similar meaning, and we can posit with great likelihood that the original form was something like *kaki. However, our hunch would be better supported if we found many words where <b>L</b>'s /t͡ʃ/ corresponds to <b>K</b>'s /k/. If we were to find that a lot of words in <b>L </b>had <i>t͡ʃ</i> where <b>K</b> had <i>k, </i>and likewise a lot of words have <i>k </i>in both of the languages, we need to account for that - and an ordered pair of sound changes in one of them is a realistic and simple way of doing that. The fewer the sound changes we need to posit to explain it, however, the better we're doing (due to Occam's razor - don't posit a hundred changes when two suffice, etc). </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If ten sound changes has happened, there's factorial of ten orders they could have happened in. That's a whopping 362880 different possible orders, each order roughly equally likely. (Well, some changes may depend on a previous change, reducing the number of possible orders a bit, but still.) The likelihood of two languages sharing ten sound changes in the same order without being in close contact is thus pretty low. (A further caveat, however: sometimes, sound changes do not have effects that make it possible to decide which out of two or even three changes happened first).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, now that we have considered the benefits of the shared sound change as our measure of similarity, we will go on to try and see where this leads us.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-29465413378818299722015-05-27T12:44:00.005-07:002021-03-17T04:33:12.914-07:00On Historical Linguistics: Part 1<div style="text-align: justify;">
Historical linguistics is a field that does not produce very "practically" useful results - in a way, I guess it can be compared to G.H. Hardy's characterization of pure maths. However, historically there has been a great interest in it - many of the greatest minds of the late 19th century invested huge amounts of effort in this area. In part this can be attributed to <i style="font-weight: bold;">nationalism</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since historical linguistics deals with long-term history in a way that naturally is associated with the history of ethnicities and tribes, it is natural that methods have been developed to differentiate claims that have been made just to appeal to nationalist sensibilities from accurate claims about linguistic relationship that tell us something <i>confirmably real.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, the fact of two languages being related does not really convey any ethical obligations between the two groups, does not create any reason for speakers of one of the languages to be conflated with speakers of the other, or to assume that speakers of the two languages think in similar fashions and have similar political desires. Nor should it be seen as a way for the other group to claim part in more recent achievements of the other group.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, <i>various idiots have failed to understand this</i> and used as well as abused proper methodology with an axe to grind for whatever retarded reason. Still, the ability to at least somewhat differentiate nationalist propaganda from stuff that is more likely to have some real historical core to it has probably helped rein in some of the most inane pseudolinguistic hypotheses. Such pseudolinguistics still are aired frequently in various venues for nationalistic, religious or possibly even other reasons. I will return to these pseudolinguistic claims later on, so as to tie back to the main topic of this blog.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, another important part in trying to figure out the history of languages was probably general human curiosity - you get a very real puzzle with some very real information about prehistory.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The first observation we'll make is that some languages are similar to each other. These similarities come in many shapes: German and Dutch have similar phonologies, a lot of shared vocabulary, and a large amount of shared grammar. The same goes for, say, Italian and Spanish. Realizing that such pairings (or even larger tuplets) of languages are somehow related was a starting point, in some sense.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A natural follow-up question is how we rank the relatedness of several closely related languages? Say German, Dutch and English, or Spanish, Romanian and Italian. And by 'how', I don't mean "what is the rank", I mean "how do we go about to rank them".</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let's first define what we mean when we say two languages are "related":</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Def. 1: </i>Two languages are related if they have come about by distinct sets of historical changes that have happened to a shared ancestral language.</div>
</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihpldBNSB9bVVmXxHbhjXiG7c4xK2gnSMWFImtaiK27cND3PCBDYUHuRP7jHOiB6vU8iyr2w7wj1NTTCSkjbL1csxLwMvpjHqZLfeOc4eRkEY0rkan0CWg9nPordLiB7FGbLsKpdXCar4/s1600/stgraph.png.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihpldBNSB9bVVmXxHbhjXiG7c4xK2gnSMWFImtaiK27cND3PCBDYUHuRP7jHOiB6vU8iyr2w7wj1NTTCSkjbL1csxLwMvpjHqZLfeOc4eRkEY0rkan0CWg9nPordLiB7FGbLsKpdXCar4/s1600/stgraph.png.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graph 1: an example</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The edges in the graph represent changes. We could also use an empty set of changes:</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicmmpPwUajuC2EmuLcyydNVuSkZfpn6M2SH7aPExuR2E7jpZlcqU7j0bJwGojJ3Gr56Th654tYMVtRFsVct1aD9Vkd387ZfxPW4Hwix-fP7PbNvCRsSY23UgxAEcTrAGY020nF74-cfg/s1600/stgraph.png+%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicmmpPwUajuC2EmuLcyydNVuSkZfpn6M2SH7aPExuR2E7jpZlcqU7j0bJwGojJ3Gr56Th654tYMVtRFsVct1aD9Vkd387ZfxPW4Hwix-fP7PbNvCRsSY23UgxAEcTrAGY020nF74-cfg/s1600/stgraph.png+%25281%2529.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graph 2</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Latin and Italian are related, because both Italian and Latin can be derived from Latin by different sets of changes. Now we can start wondering about things like relative distances.</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is clear that Latin is closer related to Latin than Italian is to Latin. This is a trivial statement, but it can be developed a bit. The model I will present will have a slight flaw, but one that is rather 'acceptable' as far as practical consequences go: we will not be able to distinguish whether Spanish or Italian is closer to Latin. I will later give a closer justification for this particular gap in the system.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjefP-B_GPEWtOHaHM90YPVN0ENuZxNGiLTwcmf5_DS54V1IQqQgzV5XiY988ckF8MvImbJx8AfmP1qRCE3kc-U-iSRq7wQYJ30BkplY4RxFi19wnoVqC32DjGSppFyzoBAprYD8QFMzwM/s1600/stgraph.png+%25282%2529.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjefP-B_GPEWtOHaHM90YPVN0ENuZxNGiLTwcmf5_DS54V1IQqQgzV5XiY988ckF8MvImbJx8AfmP1qRCE3kc-U-iSRq7wQYJ30BkplY4RxFi19wnoVqC32DjGSppFyzoBAprYD8QFMzwM/s1600/stgraph.png+%25282%2529.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graph 3: A small tree of related languages</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now, we can clearly form a bigger structure like graph 3. Since I have not yet described why we know this structure, we shall just see this as an example of how relations work, rather than as a statement of facts about these languages. With the assumptions given in the graph, we a situation where Spanish, Italian and French form a rather tight group, and German, English and Dutch likewise. We basically can say that languages that share a node, are closer related to each other than they are to languages that do not share that node.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8nIyxEBQJMXDAs-0YpF9uJatDSHco6gi0pS3TJA9bYYKpU-gpfH_pJBq4MDySPH-eXz61VVy4itGXoHscHCtd11j4550VuYMTcuUhvXcYCu8qv3H1DIxfeJPeLqixeQXb-bkfz1WwoL8/s1600/stgraph.png+%25284%2529.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8nIyxEBQJMXDAs-0YpF9uJatDSHco6gi0pS3TJA9bYYKpU-gpfH_pJBq4MDySPH-eXz61VVy4itGXoHscHCtd11j4550VuYMTcuUhvXcYCu8qv3H1DIxfeJPeLqixeQXb-bkfz1WwoL8/s320/stgraph.png+%25284%2529.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graph 4: a tree with a complication</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We might think that this gives us an opening as for how to compare how close a language is to the root: count the number of intervening nodes. Under that assumption, Latin is closer to Indo-European than Spanish, Italian, French, English, German or Dutch. However, since we really don't know the exact distance of Germanic or Latin to the root, this is putting a lot of stock into the intervening nodes. Also, we could have had a situation like graph 4, where a node we've got no record of ever existing actually makes the distances slightly off (if we just go by the number of nodes). </div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, positing an intermediate node <i>if in order to make an assertion regarding distances of some set of languages</i> violates Occam's razor - we can't just willy nilly insert a Pre-Germanic node without evidence, and then assert that Spanish, Italian and French are closer to Indo-European than German, English and Dutch are. What we can do, however, is use this example to show why the number of nodes between our proto-Language and the descendants isn't particularly informative: it only tells us about how well we know the number of languages to have split from a branch and in what order - it does not tell us anything about how great the changes between the nodes are, and thus nothing about which particular branches' nodes are closer to the root.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, now we do have a hierarchical way of comparing whether (language a, language b) or (language a, language c) are the closer pair of relatives. This is only really meaningful as long as one of the languages is held constant - when we're comparing (language a, language b) with (language c, language d), our measurement gets somewhat less meaningful. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the next post, I will present what linguistic content is most often used for finding out things about relations between languages - but also point out how ignoring other content makes the idea of any kind of 'objective measure' of relatedness beyond hierarchies along the lines presented above. (Although one could imagine improvements in method that would fix that problem as well.) </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I will also present some considerations as to why Occam's razor makes the conclusions those methods reach rather likely, and why we can consider families such as Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic, Afro-Asiatic and a number of other families overwhelmingly likely accurately to represent how these groups of languages are internally related.</div>
</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-71935896799047029002015-04-19T06:42:00.002-07:002015-04-21T05:04:58.257-07:00An Observation on Antisemitism, Judaism and Blaming the Victim<div style="text-align: justify;">
A certain <i>blame the victim</i> attitude regarding anti-semitism can be found among several participants in various parts of online atheistdom. The idea is that the Jews should not have resisted conversion (into other religions that are just as wrong), and their adamant refusal to convert is evidence of what terrible people they must be - their disregard for assimilation must be evidence of bigotry and ethnic exceptionalism. In essence, by being racist, they have brought calamities on themselves.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This requires quite a flawed assumption: that the Christians would have welcomed the Jews among them on roughly equal terms in case the Jews had converted, and that it's all the Jews own fault.</div>
<ul>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We will see that very seldom was this the case. In fact, although I point out particular problems Jews historically have run into, similar problems - albeit sometimes in less strictly formalized ways - happen to pretty much every minority. Apparently, ethnologists think assimilation takes at least three generations in most societies. If the society puts up additional hurdles along the way, the first two generations may very well decide to revert their attempt to assimilate. If the society <i>both </i>puts up hurdles <i>and </i>stresses the need for assimilation, the minority is between Schylla and Charybdis, and Christianity very much has put the Jews between a rock and a hard place as far as this goes.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
I have decided to present quite a bit of quotes here, instead of summarizing material from my sources; in part because the phrasing often catches, quite well, the attitude and behaviors of the time. The quotes are only examples, and should not be taken as an exhaustive survey of the relevant literature. In fact, these are but representative examples of what historians have found with regards to how medieval Christendom treated its Jewish neighbours.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Simply put, the assumption that Jews were welcome as converts widely does not hold. Sure, a Jew who converted was prized by the church, and often even paraded around and forced to participate in regular evangelization to his former coreligionists (or offered such a profession as a way of proving his sincerity) – and of course, some honest converts probably also wanted to convert their former coreligionists – so yes, the convert was welcomed, but into a rather particular kind of life where he was forced to interact with his former coreligionists on rather bad terms or entirely forbidden from doing so. Some converts obviously saw on which side the bread was buttered, and played this role very well - including making things up about Judaism that would make the Church even more happy. Further, the church viewed the converted Jew as evidence of its own validity and authority. However, even then it carefully kept its eyes on their converted Jews, never quite believing that they were honest about their conversion. The Christian population, by and large, was less accomodating, however.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In fact, widespread doubt existed about the honesty of Jewish converts in the minds of the Christian population in general:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
Yet, despite the welcome extended by generations of popes, skepticism concerning the efficacy of conversion of Jews persisted among Christians. No official statement could allay the abiding popular belief that Jewishness inhered so deeply that it could never be effaced by baptism. Why did the pervasive suspicion that baptism by water could not overpower ‘‘baptism by the knife’’ persist, despite formal declarations to the contrary by the church elite? Medieval Jews were often courted for conversion by the clerical elite and well-intentioned missionaries, only to be rejected and distrusted as converts by just about everyone else. [Divided Souls, p. 34-35]</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Examples from medieval times are listed in the same book, this being a fairly illustrative one:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One popular broadsheet dubbed the baptismal font Judenbad, the Jewish bath; one who sprang out of it remained the same person as the one who jumped in, now armed with new methods of deceiving Christians.[DS, p 35]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Certainly some Jews converted for the sake of material gains - but certainly many Christians did not adhere to Christianity due to any heart-felt love for God either, but due to the material benefits of being part of mainstream society and the steep cost of rejecting the relative safety of remaining a Christian - thus different demands were applied to converts than to born Christians – converts had to explicitly go an extra mile, whereas born Christians were okay as long as they did not raise a fuss. (Compare what happened to Christians who did raise such a fuss, though, Jan Hus or Martin Luther for instance, when they rejected the authority of the Church!). If Jews had converted in order to fit in and assimilate, they would only have confirmed the suspicions Christians had, viz. that Jews were less than honest about their conversion.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The formal-legalistic, and informal designations for baptized Jews reflected and sustained the belief in the converts' inherent Jewishness. Regardless of whether intended for the benefit or the denigration of converts, such labels served as constant reminders to baptized former Jews, as well as to those around them, of their exceptional status. Victor von Carben complained that even after his baptism people would point at him saying, "See, there goes a baptized Jew"; or concerning his advanced age, "An old Jew seldom becomes a good Christian."[DS, 36]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, apparently Christians did not tolerate former Jews as "real" Christians - why should Jews then convert, in the hopes of assimilating? Conversely, Jewish law forbids pointing out to a convert that he is a convert - Christianity should have been as magnanimous with its converts as Judaism was! Jewish conversion was more frequent to Islam in the Muslim world, despite (or as a result of?) Jews generally being more tolerated in the Muslim world, and Muslims not assigning any particular significance to the background of a convert.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
More examples of this behavior from Christians can be found:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The designations for converted Jews became badges that identified and distinguished them from other Christians and complicated their entry into Christian society. [DS, 36]</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Jewish converts to Christianity were often reminded of their Jewish origins for the rest of their lives. Unlike pagans who converted to Christianity en masse in the early Christian centuries, medieval Jews converted to Christianity as individuals. Pagan society experienced Christianization as a gradual collective transformation. Individual Jews who converted to Christianity left one highly defined religious, ethnic, and social structure to enter another faith community whose self-image derived in large measure from a very negative view of the community of origin of the convert. Thus, converts from Judaism could not blend casually into Christian society. Their progress was monitored with all the suspicion and wariness engendered by an enemy who had suddenly switched sides.[DS, p. 38]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With regards to the situation in the Muslim world, we find quite a different situation:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The lack of any expectation that Jewish converts to Islam serve a special theological purpose stands in greatest contrast to the experience of Jewish converts to Christianity. While converts from Judaism in Christian lands were employed as particularly effective and knowledgeable missionizers, no similar expectation existed for Jewish converts to Islam. In the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church reaffirmed its commitment to train new converts, ‘‘so that from those [who have lately converted] shall come forth workers suitable for the work of the Gospel, who will be able to preach the mysteries of the Christian faith in every land where Jews and other infidels dwell.’’ Conversely, when Christians began to reconquer Spain and large numbers of Muslims converted to Christianity, the ‘‘Christians did not, by and large, experience the Muslims as jurists, theologians, philosophers, and political theorists. They experienced them as a social community, . . . with whom they had to deal.’’ 11 Only the relationship between Judaism and Christianity produced the expectation that converts from Judaism would play a special role. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Converts from Judaism occupied a preeminent place in the imaginations of both Jews and Christians, and their singular status made the smooth integration of first-generation converts an impossibility. Converts served the Jewish–Christian confrontation not only in discrete practical capacities, but as a trope, a figure of the imagination onto which beliefs and fears concerning Jews were projected.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[DS, pp. 6, 7]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, converts converted for a variety of reasons, and we do have some indications that conversions were not uncommon at all - in which case Jewish racism can't so much be the cause for Jews not converting - however, the reception of these converts may be the reason why a large segment of Judaism did not do so.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
While there are no firm overall numbers for any land, the lists and records that do survive suggest that the rate of Jewish conversion to Christianity from the second half of the sixteenth century in Italy was relatively high. [DS, 8], </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Renata Segre suggests that the combined pressures of secular and ecclesiastical authorities, relentless harassment in the form of forced preaching, abduction of children, and other threats tended to induce the most vulnerable individuals to convert. This may explain why most converts in Italy did not rise to positions of power or prestige. Apart from service in the church itself, they did not follow an easy path toward integration into Catholic society. After expending an extraordinary amount of resources to achieve conversions, Italian Catholic society did remarkably little with the converts. Even in cases of noble or wealthy Jewish origins, and prestigious godparents, Italian converts from Judaism could not marry into good society.It is unclear whether this was a cause or an effect of Christian attitudes toward the converts. The suspicion that converts emerged from the lower classes of Jewish society may have influenced Christian attitudes toward them; continuing discrimination even after baptism may have prevented more well-born Jews from being enticed by conversion. [DS, 8-9] The sheer number of conversions in Iberia, along with the naked use of coercion, are unparalleled in scale for any other Jewish community at any other time or place. [DS, 7], ‘‘The number of Jews who converted to Christianity in that time [the eleventh century] is far greater than has generally been accepted by scholars.’’ These include Jews who converted because they were persuaded by Christian missionary activity or because they were attracted to Christian society for the whole gamut of reasons that inspired such crossing of boundaries. Grossman argues that, far from being a peripheral problem, conversion to Christianity was one of the most significant issues to face Jewish communities in pre Crusade Northern Europe.[DS, 14]</div>
</blockquote>
<span style="text-align: justify;">So, by making the lowermost classes especially prone to conversion, you also create a popular suspicion of converts being low-class, thus making the higher classes unwilling to convert. Clever, no? What a way of making conversion a desirable career move!</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Typically, converts remained within a tightly confined social circle, often marrying other converts. The first female convert from Judaism recorded in Nuremberg married another convert; other converts both in Nuremberg and beyond followed this pattern. Converts to Protestantism tended to marry children of Christian clergymen. Both patterns of spousal choice indicate a poor record of reception as social equals in Christian society.[DS, p. 124]</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Jewish conversion to the <i>mainstream </i>religion was in fact more common in the Muslim world - yet in the Muslim world, no particular theological significance was ascribed to the convert's religious background. Integration in the Muslim world therefore went more smoothly. (Also, cultural similarities between Judaism and Islam may have explained this as well - many of the rules of Judaism, such as kosher, benedictions uttered at a variety of times in the day, etc, align closely with similar rules in Islam. However, the Jewish convert to Islam was not forced to denounce his former religion in very explicit terms.)</div>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In 1555, a papal decree (Cumnimis absurdum) presented by Pope Paul IV called for the confinement of the Jews to a particular street or quarter within a town or city. Although Jewish ghettoes had a prior existence in Europe, they had never before received a Pope’s public stamp of approval. Thereafter, Jewish ghettos sprang up throughout Europe. Segregation of the Jews was seen as a means to curb social contact with Christians and to punish Jews for rejecting Christ and for their stubborn resistance to baptism. Efforts to segregate Jews from Christians preceded the institutionalization of ghettos. [RoH, p. 55]</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Orthodox Church. A Wallachian code of 1652 threatened excommunication to Romanian Christians who failed to abide by strict segregation vis-` a-vis the Jews, and the church admonished its faithful that sexual contact with Jews would call down the wrath of God. [RoH, p. 66]</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Assimilation through professional relations was also not possible:</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Andres Berndldez, a parish priest of Los Palacios near Sevilla, de-</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
nounced Jews for being merchants, tailors, shoemakers, smiths, jewelers,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
weavers, and tanners as well as tax-gatherers and officials. None tilled</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
the soil as a farmer (this was not strictly true) or became a mason or</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
carpenter, the implication being that Jews preferred occupations that</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
made money but preferred not to dirty their hands with hard work. The</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
fact that the Jews in the ghettos were cut off from the soil and other</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
trades because guilds would not accept them seemed to escape the</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
priest's notice.[DL, p. 91 </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This was even prolonged for generations in Iberia:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Guilds had regulations concerning access to their trades: for example, technical expertise and social acceptability. The carpenters, for example, wanted their members to be married or at best have a house of their own. This was no doubt partly due to the fact that the guilds felt responsible for their members and helped them through hard times such as sickness or accident. But money that could have been better spent, some members complained, was wasted on festive events celebrating the patron saint of the trade and other fiestas, instead of on charity and pensions. Many guilds ostracized minorities such as Jews and Muslims and insisted on purity of blood.[DL, p. 145]</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
LIMPIEZA DE SANGRE, OR PURITY OF BLOOD </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Old Christians (those people whose families had always been Christian and hence supposedly of pure blood with no taint of Jewish or Muslim ancestry) <b>enacted laws to restrict opportunities for minorities, especially Conversos and Moriscos (Jews and Muslims converted to Christianity, also called New Christians)</b>. ... </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Catholic Kings issued decrees in 1501 forbidding the offspring of those condemned by the Inquisition, which were mostly Conversos, to hold any important posts or to become physicians, surgeons, or notaries. <b>Later came the practice of exhibiting in cathedrals and churches placards bearing the names of those punished in order to distinguish their descendants of impure blood. The Inquisition maintained records of family bloodlines, and before a person could marry or seek office, registers were checked back as far as possible to see if any Jewish or Moorish names appeared in the family tree.</b></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[DL, p. 35 (my bolding)]</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The same book details how Christian Spaniards persecuted Jews <i><b>who had converted to Christianity, even murdering some among them:</b></i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While a statue of the Virgin Mary was being carried through the streets of a predominantly Converso neighborhood in Cordoba, a young girl, probably accidentally, dropped some liquid that may have been water from her balcony onto the statue. It was immediately taken as a grave insult by those below, who went on a rampage looting, wrecking, and burning Converso houses and murdering the occupants. Many Conversos fled the city for safer country towns, whereas others left the country by ship for foreign lands. Tension ran high and rumors were rife. [DL, p. 96]</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A Jew who had not converted to Christianity was not under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition (unless he could be found to have enticed Christians to Judaism ). However, if you converted with your family, you put your wife and your children under their jurisdiction as well. This opened up scenarios like this:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Age was not a factor. According to inquisitional records, girls and boys as young as eleven and twelve were sentenced to life in prison for observing Jewish rites.[DL, p. 102]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As Jeremy Cohen observes, the jurisdiction of the inquisitions could even be extended to an entire community by converts:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Second, both Christian converts to Judaism and Jewish converts to Christianity who "relapsed" into their former religion came under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, as did by extension those Jews who consorted with the converts and <i>relapsi </i>in their practice of Judaism. As I shall demonstrate in a subsequent chapter, such an extension of inquisitorial jurisdiction to any who aided heretics could easily be exploited by friars to harass entire Jewish communities. [FJ, p. 48]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, if you had taught your child to observe some rites, and they happened to observe those rites and were observed to do so by, say, a Christian servant - too bad, off to prison with them. Given that even slight suspicion of Judaizing could lead to torture, conversion was not a good plan even if you by happenstance had come to believe in the Christian doctrine.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Slender was the proof needed by the Inquisition to convict a Converso of being a Crypto-Jew. Avoidance of pork (in keeping with Jewish dietary laws), observance of the Sabbath on Saturday, killing of fowl according to Jewish rituals, keeping of fasts on Jewish fast days, eating meat during Lent—all such lapses were eagerly reported to the tribunals by Old Christians who kept careful watch on their neighbors.[DL, p. 101]</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course not all converts were thus punished, but bad news spreads faster than good news, and Jews of the time were not fully isolated from other communities – rumours would spread around the Jewish world, and people considering converting would see what bad things befell </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Meanwhile, the church had significant movements teaching hatred for the Jews, which of course strengthened the disdain mentioned previously:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As inquisitors, missionaries, disputants, polemicists, scholars, and itinerants preachers, mendicants engaged in a concerted effort to undermine the religious freedom and physical security of the medieval Jewish community. It was they who developed and manned the papal Inquisition, who intervened in the Maimonidean controversy, who directed the burnings of the Talmud, who compelled the Jews to listen and respond to their inflammatory sermons, and who actively promoted anti-Jewish hatred among the laity of Western Christendom. [FJ, 13]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In more detail, Cohen says:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Prior to the thirteenth century, Catholic theology had demanded that the Jew be tolerated in Christendom. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), whose teachings provided the foundation for medieval Christian thought in the West, instructed that God had ordained the survival of the Jews, in order that their presence and continued observance of Mosaic Law might aid the Church in its mission to the Gentiles, and so they might convert at the end of days. By the early fourteenth century, however, friars openly advocated that Latin Christendom rid itself of its Jewish population, whether through missionizing, forced expulsions, or physical harassment that would induce conversion or flight.[FJ, 14]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The church in fact saw it as its mandate to ensure Jews were treated somewhat badly, as the Agustinian position explicitly stated:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>The dispersion and degradation of the Jews, if insured by the regnant Church, would both alleviate the problem of the Jewish encroachments upon Christianity and enhance the value of their survival</b>– by emphasizing the deplorable wretchedness of their error. [...] Augustine saw a definite need and place for the Jews within Christian society. God had preserved them to play a specific role, and they consequently could not be killed or otherwise purged from Christendom. To be sure, the rights of the Jews in the society were carefully delimited and restricted: <b>the Church endeavored to prohibit fraternization between Christians and Jews</b>; Christians could not legally own Christian slaves, nor were they supposed to hold positions of authority over Christians in any way whatsoever. [FJ, p. 20-21. My bolding] </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In conclusion, much like any population, Christians have historically been very suspicious of the demographic changes; both Muslim and Jewish populations that have changed to Christianity have been met with doubt, relegation to second-class status, undue scrutiny and suspicion. Especially under the inquisitions, punishment was meted out even for the slightest hint at having returned to one's previous faith. Racism and "faithism" among the previous members of the religion made conversion a gambit that often only brought any benefits several generations down the line.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since <b>both communities</b> favoured avoiding contact with the other side, a convert further had to cut a significant part of his social ties – the addition of the risk of being accused of <i>relapsing </i>and thus putting the whole community at risk was of course a further concern. In addition, skills he had learned in his life as a Jew might not be permissible to him any longer (kosher slaughter, scribal duties, joint business ventures with Jewish friends), and the suspicion with which he was eyed in his new life often prevented him from advancing into comparable status in his new community. Since Jews also were not permitted to own land in most of medieval Europe, it was not just a question of converting and just remaining on the farm - the farm seldom existed.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Given these facts, there's no need to posit that Jewish reticence was particularly a result of Jewish racism against others.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bibliography:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[DL] James Anderson, Daily Life During the Spanish Inquisition, 2002</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[DS] Carlebach, Elisheva., Divided Souls Converts from Judaism to Christianity in Germany 1500-1570, 2001</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[FJ] Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews, the evolution of medieval anti-judaism, 1983</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[RoH] Brustein, William I., Roots of Hate - Anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust, 2003</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-66600676583531155772015-04-08T07:09:00.000-07:002015-04-08T07:09:20.625-07:00Pseudoscience and Food<a href="http://gawker.com/the-food-babe-blogger-is-full-of-shit-1694902226">An important article</a> about pseudoscientific claims about food, this time with regards to Vani Hari, the "Food Babe".Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-72788314471463863092015-04-05T07:27:00.005-07:002016-10-28T02:06:17.967-07:00A List of Allegedly Racist Statements in the Talmud, pt 2<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;">Going on with <a href="http://truthbeknown.com/judaismquotes.htm">the same list of mainly fabricated Talmud quotes</a>, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: black;">That the Jewish nation is the only nation selected by God, while all the remaining ones are contemptible and hateful. </span><span style="color: black;">That all property of other nations belongs to the Jewish nation, which consequently is entitled to seize upon it without any scruples.</span> An orthodox Jew is not bound to observe principles of morality towards people of other tribes. He may act contrary to morality, if profitable to himself or to Jews in general. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: black;">A Jew may rob a Goy, he may cheat him over a bill, which should not be perceived by him, otherwise the name of God would become dishonoured.</span><span style="color: black;"><i>Schulchan Aruch, Choszen Hamiszpat, 348</i></span></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;">For reference, <a href="http://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9F_%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9A_%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%9F_%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98_%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%97">chosen hamishpat 348</a>. No such sentiments expressed whatsoever, but ... I won't go and translate the whole thing for you, although I might at some point later on give an overview of the vocabulary in it.</span></div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0000a0;">R. Hanina said: If a heathen smites a Jew, he is worthy of death; for it is written, And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian. [Ex. 2:12] R. Hanina also said: He who smites an Israelite on the jaw, is as though he had thus assaulted the Divine Presence; for it is written, one who smiteth man [i.e. an Israelite] attacketh the Holy One.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: right;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="color: #0000a0;">Sanhedrin 58b</i></div>
<span style="color: #0000a0;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0000a0;"><span style="color: #0000a0;"><i><span style="color: black;">[In other words, if a non-Jew kills a Jew, the non-Jew can be killed. Punching an Israelite is akin to assaulting God. (But</span></i></span> <span style="color: black;">killing <i>a non-Jew is NOT like assaulting God.]</i></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #0000a0;"></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div>
Actually, the phrasing 'worthy of death' does not mean 'can be killed'. Compare:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
R. Hiyya b. Abba said in R. Johanan's name: It is a disgrace for a scholar to go out with patched shoes into the market place. But R. Aha b. Hanina did go out [thus]? — Said R. Aha son of R. Nahman: The reference is to patches upon patches. R. Hiyya b. Abba also said in R. Johanan's name: Any scholar upon whose garment a [grease] stain is found is <b>worthy of death</b>,<a href="http://halakhah.com/shabbath/shabbath_114.html#114a_4">4</a> for it is said, All they that hate me [mesanne'ai] love [merit] death:<a href="http://halakhah.com/shabbath/shabbath_114.html#114a_5">5</a> read not mesanne'ai but masni'ai [that make me hated, i.e., despised].<a href="http://halakhah.com/shabbath/shabbath_114.html#114a_6">6</a> Rabina said: This was stated about a thick patch.<a href="http://halakhah.com/shabbath/shabbath_114.html#114a_7">7</a> Yet they do not differ: one refers to the upper garment [coat], the other to a shirt. [Shabbath, 114A]</blockquote>
Clearly, the rabbis used 'worthy of death' as a rhetorical device at times! Whenever they discuss actual capital offenses, they are much more technical in terminology used.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;">If a goy killed a goy or a Jew he is responsible, but if a Jew killed a goy he is not responsible.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><i>Tosefta, Aboda Zara, VIII, 5</i></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I give you Tosefta, Aboda Zara, VIII:5</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
עובד כוכבים שהיה חייב מעות לישראל אע"פ שמכר יין נסך והביא לו עבודת כוכבים והביא לו מותר אבל אם אמר לו המתן עד שאמכור יין נסך ואביא לך עבודת כוכבים ואביא לך אסור המוכר יינו לעובד כוכבים ופסק עמו אע"פ שעתיד למחות את המחצלאות ואת המדות מותר וחנוני בין כך ובין כך אסור מפני שראשון ראשון זקוף עליו עובד כוכבים ששלח לגינה אצל ישראל ומקצת עכבת יין לתוכו הרי זה ממלא לו הלגין ונועל ונוטל ממנו דמי כולן ואינו חושש.[Tosefta, Aboda Zara, VIII:5]</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is a technical discussion about permissibility of wine under certain circumstances. I am not sure of the exact meaning of all the terms used, because ... <i>technical discussion about permissibility of wine in Hebrew. </i>As I work through some dictionaries I might post a translation later on. However, given that I do have some familiarity with the relevant vocabulary, I can tell that most terms you would expect in something corresponding to "if a goy killed a goy or a Jew he is responsible etc" are missing.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nothing about killing goyim.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Everyone who sheds the blood of the impious [non-Jews] is as acceptable to God as he who offers a sacrifice to God.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: right;">
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Yalkut 245c</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There is no single work by the name 'yalkut'<i>. </i>There are, however, works such as Yalkut Shimoni, Yalkut Yoshef, Yalkut Makiri, Yalkut Reuven, Yalkut Chadash. Pray tell, which one of these is it in? Further, even the quote itself admits to 'correcting' - impiety is sometimes attributed to a variety of Jews in Jewish writings, thus the insertion of "[non-Jews]" is not entirely justified. And finally, what's with the C? There are two folios of any work. <b>Two. </b>To illustrate the ridiculousness of 245c given that there at most could be 245A and 245B, let us observe the following diagram:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>A</b> ← 1<br />
<b>B</b> ← 2<br />
<b>C</b> ← ???!?<br />
S<i>ure, that's a worthless diagram. Point is: so is a claim about a page that can't exist.</i></blockquote>
On to the next claim, which is a bit of a lie by omission as well as a lie by fabrication:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Tob shebbe goyyim harog</i> - Even the best of the Goyim (Gentiles) should be killed.<br />
<i style="text-align: justify;">Soferim 15, Rule 10</i></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The particular article that I am writing this in response to has the following little comment:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>NB: Hoffman says, "This passage is not from the Soncino edition but is from the original Hebrew of the Babylonian Talmud as quoted by the 1907 Jewish Encyclopedia, published by Funk and Wagnalls and compiled by Isidore Singer, under the entry, 'Gentile,' (p. 617)." Another source says this passage is at Avodah Zara 26b. We have not been able to verify any of these references. It does not seem to be at Avodah Zara 26b of the Soncino edition.</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Tractate Soferim deals with the rules of scribes. Let's repeat this: Tractate Soferim deals with the rules of scribes. That's what a sofer is - a scribe. A very likely ruling to appear in such a book, no?</i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, this particular statement<i> does exist</i> in an important book in the talmudic 'genre': Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael [Lauterbach & Stern, p. 135] . However, it leaves out a significant part of the quote. As it is presented here, it seems to be a ruling - especially as it is given in a list where many statements of similar forms pose as rulings. The wider quote is 'On this matter, Rabbi Simon bar Yoḥai said: ...', which does not necessarily qualify as a ruling.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is thus not a rule - unlike the claim presented ("Soferim 15, rule 10"), but records the rather disturbing statement of one particular rabbi. A further observation is necessary - rabbi Simon bar Yoḥai had seen some pretty disturbing stuff at the hands of the Romans, which probably made him somewhat bitter. Understandable, but not commendable nor right.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, leaving out that this was said by one rabbi and presenting it as a commandment to kill the gentiles - that's neither understandable, commendable nor right.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One or two more installments on this list of claims will be posted during incoming months. Researching these particular types of claims takes quite some time, as Jewish literature isn't exactly all that available and medieval Hebrew is not exactly a thing it's easy to find sources about.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-15065203162582567652015-03-19T12:50:00.000-07:002015-07-08T08:33:34.809-07:00Next Up: David Icke<div style="text-align: justify;">
I decided, after running into people who seem to respect David Icke as a relevant, intelligent and important author, that maybe I should write down why I find reading David Icke's stuff a waste of time, why he's <i>wrong</i>, and why this is so obvious already from miles away that actually going to the effort of doing it in detail really is wasteful.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I will, of course, not be as careful as with my D.M. Murdock debunking - Icke never even pretends to be scholarly, he rather pretends to be visionary all the way.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Firstly, I must admit I have a hard time understanding how someone can <i>pretend </i>to be a prophet for <b>good</b>, yet teach that some humans are born essentially as soul-less husks whose sole purpose in life is to host evil, scheming lizard-beings from another dimension.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
The rituals are designed to achieve many things, including the interbreeding I have described. I should stress that this does not have to happen only through physical sex between a human woman and a Reptilian entity. I have been told by women who have been raped in satanic rituals (several of them under the Mormon temple at Salt Lake City) that whilst a 'human' man was having sex with them he was overshadowed by a non-physical entity channelling energy through the rapist at the time of orgasm. These energies - frequencies - recode the DNA of the resulting child into the frequency pattern of the Reptilian or other entity so making the child compatible for 'possession'. [...]Just as electricity passes powerfully through water, so it is with the life essence energy carried in the blood. (By the way, Roman Polanski's 1968 movie, Rosemary's Baby, portrayed this interbreeding and involved a reptilian entity.) [1, p.32 ]</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He repeatedly names some families who, he claims to know for certain, form part of these hybrid blood-lines; they apparently prefer in-breeding so as to keep their lizardliness intact. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
This explains why the Illuminati families have obsessively interbred over thousands of years in our perspective of time. [...]DNA is a frequency field that carries the data for what we call our genetic nature and inheritance. The closer the frequencies are on the dial, the more interference there will be. In other words, the more connection between them there will be. The reason for the interbreeding, and why the upper levels of the Illuminati are the same bloodline, is because their DNA carries a frequency field extremely close to, and compatible with, the reptilian entities operating just beyond the range of the five senses. This sympathetic resonance allows the Reptilians and other entities to 'possess' - take over - these bodies (Illuminati families) far more effectively than the human population in general. [1, p. 26]</blockquote>
This is <i style="font-weight: bold;">central </i>to his thesis, mind you. Yet readers go 'David Icke sure is on to something (but I think he might be a bit off on his lizard theory)'. If he's off on his lizard theory, how is <b><i>anything else by him worth reading at all? If he's wrong on his lizard theory, he systematically and repeatedly slanders hundreds of people with a paranoid, delusional and frankly offensively accusatory hypothesis. If he's wrong on his lizard theory, a large part of his literary output is just mean-spirited calumny and dehumanizing rumour-mongering.</i></b><br />
<br />
<b><i>Admiring such a source for getting maybe a few things right seems to be demanding very little in ways of ethics of one's spiritual guides - which is a status he basically claims for himself repeatedly through his œuvre. How can anyone admire someone with such rotten ethics?</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
We will see throughout this project just how insane the ideas this idiot spouts are.<br />
<br />
[1] David Icke, Infinite Love is the only Truth - Everything Else is Illusion, 2005.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-85533194899622166442015-01-26T14:28:00.002-08:002016-04-21T03:58:06.413-07:00A List of Allegedly Racist Statements in the Talmud, pt 1<div style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">[Some updates to this list are upcoming]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are lists of offensive quotes from the Talmud that are making the rounds on the internet, and have done so for years. Some of these can be traced back to printed works of the early 20th century, and some of them probably have been passed around by fax during a few decades as well. I have taken as an example of this list one particular example that pretends to be scholarly, and gone to some extent in verifying the quotes. Lists such as this use quote-mining, fabrication and clever rhetorical deceptive approaches.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Many samples from this list appear in the comment sections of newspaper websites whenever Israel, banking or other topics that get anti-Semites' panties in a bunch appears. Some of these have been making the rounds <i>before </i>Internet. Some go back to the 19th century and even 18th centuries. </span><br />
<br />
This is only an investigation into <i><a href="http://www.truthbeknown.com/judaismquotes.htm">one particular list</a></i> of these quotes. The person who reposted that list claims to be a scholar of religion, yet treats the list with surprising gullibility. A really slight bit of criticism </div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sources given without angular parentheses are as given by the source text that I am analyzing. This is relevant, since the text pretends to be a compilation of quotes from actual works. </span></div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Judaism is not a religion but a Law religionized."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Moses Mendelssohn [1]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
How is this, per se, a problem? Rhetorically it is quite clever though - almost all protestants, at the very least, have heard how legalism in religion is a terrible thing. This is a very clever trick for priming your reader to have a negative mindset about the topic from the onset.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Caution: Some of these quotes from Judaism are quite harsh. The quotes from Jewish writings themselves are usually defended as being "taken out of context" or "removed" with apologies, and with the justification that such sentiments were warranted because the Jews were being persecuted. While the sentiment behind such apologies may be genuine, the fact is that Judaism itself is a plan for hegemony, as stated from the very beginning, well attested in the Tenach or Old Testament. [1]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, no one <i>would ever </i>ever really misrepresent any Talmudic (or other Judaic) quote out of context, now, <i>would they?</i> Brushing off the "taken out of context" argument like this is really cheap. Also, "quotes from Judaism" is a very nice way of guilting Jews by association.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Note: The disparaging comments regarding non-Jews are expurgated from various editions of the Talmud. They are, however, found in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1871055504/truthbeknownfounA/">Soncino</a> English translation of 1935. (Some of these pages have been reproduced in <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0939482452/truthbeknownfounA/" style="color: #900080; text-decoration: none;"><i>The Plot Against Christianity</i></a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span>) Where they have been expunged, one can find an "o" indicating "oral tradition," which means they are still taught. Like it or not, Orthodox Judaism fervently teaches ultimate supremacy over "the nations," i.e., Gentiles, whom it pronounces as inferior creatures. [1]</blockquote>
Which particular editions of the Talmud in particular have had the offending passages removed? This claim is often repeated, but no one ever mentions the particular editions that supposedly succumb to the temptation of omitting such material. Given the history of talmud printing, it seems more likely these expurgations are due to Christian censorship rather than Jewish guile.<br />
<br />
Of course, derivative works - for instance Cohen's Everyman's Talmud, Steinsaltz' Essential Talmud - are only small samples of the Talmudic text with chapters elucidating the history of the text, its significance in the different branches of Judaism, illustrative examples and some central parts of it. Such books could not be expected to be complete laundry lists - yet even then Cohen's Everyman's Talmud at the very least is quite clear about the troubling aspects of the Talmud. It's more than twelve years since I've read Steinsaltz' introductory work, and I do not recall whether he covered this issue in any great detail. Those editions of the Talmud from which these things have been removed are not issues any person trying to verify these things need to worry about - they are early prints in Aramaic (and Hebrew), by now properly antiquarian editions. Not things you will accidentally run into while researching the Talmud at your regular library.<br />
<br />
Further, 'The Plot Against Christianity', linked above, is known to be an antisemitic smear campaign by one Elizabeth Dilling, a famed paranoid anti-semitic writer. I will later give a more detailed review of Dilling's works.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is true that some of these quotes have been taken out of context. We are attempting here to find them and put them within their context. Also, a number of these contentious remarks are followed by mitigating commentary from another rabbi (such as the quote about heathens studying the Torah at Sanhedrin 59a). Some of these quotes are translated quite differently from version to version, apparently at times softened. According to Prof. Israel Shahak, the original Hebrew passages possess greater vitriol than do the translations. Because of the translation discrepancies, it is difficult to verify these quotes. [1]</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"We are attempting here to find them and put them within their context" is a funny way of putting it, since next to none of that kind is actually done, as we will see below - they are just quoted, verbatim from whichever source previously made them up or distorted them – many of them are fabrications in the first place. Why does the author present repetition of mostly slanderous texts as a critical assessment? What kind of ignorant stupidity is this? Alas, the translation discrepancy isn't the big problem in verifying (or debunking) these, the big culprit in that is the way antisemitic sources use distorted names in order to game search engines. If you search for libbre david, it is likely lists similar to this will cover the first several pages of findings - only way down come a few scholars who point out that no such book exists. </div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The verses in dark blue are confirmed to be in the Soncino Talmud. We have removed some particularly incendiary remarks because they cannot easily be verified. For more information regarding apparently erroneous Talmudic quotes please see the writings of <a href="http://www.judyandreas.com/" style="background-color: white; color: #900080; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="" title="Judy Andreas">Judy Andreas</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">. [1]</span></blockquote>
<div>
Funnily enough, quite a few particularly incendiary remarks have not been removed despite being demonstrably false. This kind of pretend-carefulness reeks. As for '<i>more information regarding apparently erroneous Talmudic quotes, please see the writings of Judy Andreas</i>' – Judy Andreas does not provide particularly much in ways of information regarding apparently erroneous Talmudic quotes, but maybe she has removed that content from her site since the author wrote this? Alas, the author does not give the name of the article or anything, so it is difficult to trace it.<br />
<br />
I have retained<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>dark blue verses </b></span>unaltered in quoted material so as to illustrate the quality of the quality assurance that the person who posted this list assures us has been done. (<span style="font-size: x-small;">NB. Yes, I mean 'the quality of the quality assurance', this blog operates on that level of analysis.</span>)</div>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Further, it should be noted that some of these texts, such as the Zohar, Aruch, Yalkut, Tosefta and Soferim, may not be contained within the Talmud proper but are referenced therein, as "commentaries" and "tractates" also considered "sacred texts." While the Soncino Talmud quotes are represented verbatim where possible, at least some of the statements purportedly from these other texts represent paraphrases. The text is frequently deliberately difficult to follow, in Hebrew as well, such that it needs to be simplified.[1]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Except this is also misleading. Zohar and the (Schulchan) Aruch are medieval texts, the Talmud is from late antiquity. The phrasing makes it unclear how the Zohar and the Talmud 'belong together'. Neither the Zohar or the Schulchan Aruch can be 'referenced therein' - although references may appear in the later scholarly apparatus that now comes with many Talmud editions, but these are not part of the Talmud proper. The description of the relation between these texts is confused at best, confusing at worst in the article that I am reviewing.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
(Such as concerns the use of terms for non-Jews/Gentiles: "Cutheans," "Samaritans," "Egyptians," "Canaanites," "Karaites" and "Minim," which refers to the "Judeo-Christian heretics," also considered the "Sadducees." "Heathens," of course, and "Goyim," are well-known terms used in the Talmud. "Goyim," referring to Gentiles, is said to mean "unclean.")[1]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"Karaites" are quite explicitly not just a code-word for gentiles or Christians or anything; they were the main schism within medieval Judaism, at time accounting for about 30% of all Jews. The Karaites rejected the non-Biblical parts of Rabbinic Judaism. Regionally, the relations between Rabbinic and Karaite Jews were very bad. Since the Jewish population has been relatively small through history, no huge armed conflicts have erupted between Karaites and Rabbinic Jews (unlike between protestants and catholics). However, the rabbinic Jews of Spain did arrange for the Muslim authorities to come down hard on the Karaites, while the Karaites of Russia schemed in similar fashions to arrange a czarist campaign against the Rabbinic Jews – Abraham Firkovich, for instance, produced fabricated tombstones to demonstrate that the Karaite presence in Crimea predated the crucifixion of Jesus, and thus got the Karaites absolved for the accusation of killing Jesus, <i>unlike the rabbinic Jews</i>. In Greece and parts of Byzans, relations between Karaites and Rabbinical Jews were more cordial, however. "Goyim" further does not mean "unclean", although I am sure it is <i>"said"</i> to do so by some people who are all about misrepresentation. Compare, for instance, genesis 12:2,</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-family: "blbhebrew"; font-size: 27px; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: small;"> וְאֶֽעֶשְׂךָ לְ</span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>גֹוי</b></span> <span style="font-size: small;">גָּדֹול וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָֽה׃</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
wə'a`esokha lə<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "blbhebrew";"><span style="background-color: #fffff9; font-size: large;"><b>goy</b></span></span> gadol wa'avarekkha wə'agadlah šəmkha wehye bərakha</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And I will make you into a great</span> <b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;">people</b> <span style="font-family: inherit;">and bless you and and make your name great and make you a blessing.</span></i> ('Goy' and its transliteration and translation have been emphasized</span>).</span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The author, who elsewhere pretends to know basically all the relevant languages for biblical studies failed to notice this? How the hell? <b>How the everfucking fucking hell would a scholar of these languages fail to notice this?</b></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: -webkit-right;">
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Further, some instances of Cuthean and Samaritan certainly are results of later substitutions, but while researching this I came across very many where it's clearly not a result of substitutions - i.e. the Cutheans/Samaritans are contrasted with the Gentiles due to the Cutheans having the same religious obligations as the Jews, whereas the Gentiles do not - however, the Cutheans, according to the rabbinic view of things, do not live up to all their obligations.</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It should be also kept in mind that much of the Talmud was orally taught and/or written down long before pogroms and persecution of Jews were common. Thus, the notion that these anti-Gentile statements are a reaction to such persecution is untrue. Indeed, it has been suggested that the persecution was in large part on account of such anti-Gentile sentiments and behavior. For a rebuttal or apology of these quotes, see below.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although victim-blaming has gotten a bad reputation these days, the author seems to think there's still much to recommend it. The Jews, of course, were the only people in antiquity and medieval times to look down on other nations [hint: no, they were not].</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Regarding what is actually in the Talmud, Rabbi Lewis Browne says in Stranger Than Fiction:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"There are in it myths and vagaries, idiotic superstitions and unhappy thoughts, things that are not merely irrational but sometimes even quite offensive. But there is also much profound wisdom buried in it, and much lofty and generous thinking. Not all the rabbis were bitter and hateful -- though, Heaven knows, they all had reason to be. And not all of them were small-minded and bigoted.... Granted there is much chaff in the work, there are also kernels of richest wheat."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Unfortunately, those kernels could take forever to find, by which time many people would starve. Why look for seeds in manure when you can go buy a bag of seeds? There are MANY writings in the world much better than this neurotic nonsense. </div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I would like to voice a similar remark regarding the quality of anti-semitic slander lists right now; there are kernels of richest wheat in it (viz. one can learn from it that 'people who are driven by hate are eager to fabricate shit'), but alas, it can take quite a bit of work to figure that out.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="font-size: 13px;"></span>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You must not make your brother pay interest, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything on which one may claim interest. You may make a foreigner [Gentile] pay interest but your brother [fellow Jew] you must not make pay interest.Deuteronomy 23: 19-20</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although an accurate biblical quote, this needs to be seen in a context where <b>every other legal system in existence permitted every lender to demand interest from any debtor</b>. What this does is not to make Jewish money-lenders better-off - it puts more restrictions on Jewish money-lenders operating in the countries surrounding Israel than it puts on gentile money-lenders. Roman money-lenders loaned at interest to everyone - Roman, Greek and Jew alike. Thus, the Jewish lender was at a disadvantage. Until Christianity and Islam forbade loans at interest (something the Christians have reneged on, <b><i>and how!</i></b>), Jewish lenders were not at an advantage. Jewish debtors to Jewish lenders were at an advantage compared to other debtors (to Jewish or gentile lenders), however. This is a complex topic, but one where it's easy to make soundbites that come off as very damning evidence regarding Judaism, whereas if you actually take a closer look at the issue, it turns out to be much less clear-cut.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To this day, most legal systems permit the taking of interest. The Islamic system is exceptional in forbidding it, and the Jewish system is exceptional in having such a particular restricted weakening of the creditor's rights. But of course, we can still moan and gripe about Jewish bankers and their interest. It is not like any Christian ever has been a banker, nor is it like the stereotype of the Jewish banker still infuriates lots of conspiracy theorists.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For sources regarding interest in the economic system of antiquity, see</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Fenus.html">A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.monetary.org/a-brief-history-of-interest/2010/12">A Brief History of Interest, Stephen Zarlenga</a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The decisions of the Talmud are words of the living God. Jehovah himself asks the opinions of earthly rabbis when there are difficult affairs in heaven.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Rabbi Menachen, Comments for the Fifth Book</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The source sounds pretty spurious, although I have come across comparable ideas in the Talmud. However, is it really all that problematic an idea? Looking at the name of the book and the rabbi does not help much - Menachem is a very common name for rabbis, and there's any number of books that can be considered 'the fifth book'. (Nowhere is it specified out of how many, or fifth book of what?) Posting such a thing without digging deeper into it is irresponsible.</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Jehovah himself in heaven studies the Talmud, standing: he has such respect for that book. <i>Tractate Mechilla/Me'ilah</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">This is not in tractate Me'ilah. Neither is it in tractate Megillah, in case someone's gotten the spelling totally wrong. Since about a thousand websites tell me it is in Megillah (<span style="font-family: inherit;">and about as many claim it<span style="font-family: inherit;"> i</span>s <span style="font-family: inherit;">in</span></span> Me'ilah) (but the Soncino edition, which as per the author's claim is less censored, does not contain this at all), it's fairly difficult to find where it actually is, due to the <i>sheer amount of misinformation online.</i> There are a few indications that it might be a fabrication: talmud is not "a book", secondarily, only the really final generations of talmudists would have called the written work 'the talmud', and finally, the tetragrammaton does not appear particularly often in phrases of this style in the Talmud.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">And in addition, since there actually is in existence a standard pagination of the entirety of the Talmud <b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and a standard way of referring to<span style="font-family: inherit;"> pages in it</span></span></i></b>, one should get suspicious whenever the folio is not given. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #0000a0;">R. Johanan said: A heathen who studies the Torah deserves death, for it is written, Moses commanded us a law for an inheritance; it is our inheritance, not theirs. Then why is this not included in the Noachian laws? -- On the reading morasha [an inheritance] he steals it; on the reading me'orasah [betrothed], he is guilty as one who violates a betrothed maiden, who is stoned. An objection is raised: R. Meir used to say. Whence do we know that even a heathen who studies the Torah is as a High Priest? From the verse, [Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments:] which, if man do, he shall live in them. Priests, Levites, and Israelites are not mentioned, but men: hence thou mayest learn that even a heathen who studies the Torah is as a High Priest! -- That refers to their own seven laws.</span><span style="color: #0000a0;"><i>Sanhedrin 59a</i></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here, the author actually has looked the quote up. One may find today that even orthodox Jews permit gentiles to study the Torah, and clearly then it's not just the seven laws that are included in the later understanding of this. Bear in mind that the Talmud records many opinions that never were accepted as valid rulings. However, orthodox authorities are of the opinion that the non-Jew would benefit the most from studying the seven laws that God gave humanity according to orthodox Judaism. (These 'seven laws' are really 'headings' for about 70 or so more particular laws.)</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To communicate anything to a Goy about our religious relations would be equal to the killing of all Jews, for if the Goyim knew what we teach about them, they would kill us openly.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Libbre David 37</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;">Libbre David does not exist, except in lists like these. I have searched for it for a few </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;">years</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: x-small;"> ever since first coming across this in a similar list, whenever I have the opportunity. Its non-existence is fortunate for whoever made this shit up, since it means when you google it you'll find a lot of reposts of the same antisemitic smear campaign, and no actual substance. (My guess is that Libbre is taken from Latin - some doofus who has not realized Hebrew isn't closely related to Latin has guessed that 'libbre' probably sounds Hebrew-like and probably means book, and then went and attempted to back-translate 'Book of David' in a highly haphazard way.)</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A Jew should and must make a false oath when the Goyim asks if our books contain anything against them.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Szaaloth-Utszabot, The Book of Jore Dia 17</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Szaaloth-Utszabot does not exist, Jore Dia is the Yoreh Diah of Schulchan Aruch, and nowhere in it is a commandment like this. (Further, 'Sz' as a sequence appears in two languages in Europe - Polish and Hungarian. Both of these have been spoken by large numbers of Jews, but very little literature of this kind has been written in either one of them. Furthermore, the letter sequence 'aa' is uncommon in Hungarian, where it normally would be written á. The sequence 'aa' is also very uncommon in Polish. In neither of the languages does '-th' really occur all that often at the end of words. The book name 'Szaaloth-Utszabot' is with great likelihood a complete fabrication. Some guesses as to why those who fabricate these names (and distort the names of more standard works) use such names will be presented later (in part two or three of this article).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you can read Hebrew, <a href="http://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9F_%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9A_%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94_%D7%93%D7%A2%D7%94_%D7%99%D7%96">Yoreh Deah 17 can be found here.</a> It is a bunch of laws relating to kashrut, i.e. the laws on what foods are okay.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We beg Thee, O Lord, indict Thy wrath on the nations not believing in Thee, and not calling on Thy name. Let down Thy wrath on them and inflict them with Thy wrath. Drive them away in Thy wrath and crush them into pieces. Take away, O Lord, all bone from them. In a moment indict all disbelievers. Destroy in a moment all foes of Thy nation. Draw out with the root, disperse and ruin unworthy nations. Destroy them! Destroy them immediately, in this very moment!Prayer said on the eve of Passover (Pranajtis: Christianus in Talmudae Judeorum, quotations from: Synagoga Judaica)[1]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Regarding Pranaitis, it is well worth reading up on his activities. Wikipedia actually gives <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinas_Pranaitis">a good summary</a>. Pranaitis was an ignorant 19th century antisemite, who made shit up even to get Jews executed on blood libel charges. This knowledge should prompt the author to verify any claims along these lines. If the author lacks this knowledge, that's quite a compelling argument not to listen to the author at all – no one should listen to ignoramuses.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When the Messiah comes every Jew will have 2800 slaves. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Simeon Haddarsen, fol. 56-D</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;">Again,
a work that does not appear to exist! Further, folio numbering
generally goes to B - there are only two pages to a folio (since a folio
is the designation of the two pages you see when you have a book opened
in front of you). Whoever made up this claim is ignorant of how folio
numbering works. Some antisemitic retards of course attribute the
non-existence of the book to a Jewish conspiracy - Simeon Haddarsen, in
their view, has been made to vanish by Jews [</span><a href="http://biblestudysite.com/answers38.htm" style="font-size: medium;">2</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;">]. Nonfalsifiability is a great trick if people are dumb enough to be convinced by it.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A similar statement is indeed made by Simeon Lakish (also known as Resh Lakish) in the Talmud - and the article I am reviewing does get that reference right. However, the quote seems metaphorical: whoever observes the commandments of tzitzis (fringes) gets boons! A direct quote:</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Resh Lakish said: He who is observant of fringes will be privileged to be served by two thousand eight hundred slaves, for it is said, Thus saith the Lord of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, etc. [Talmud, Shabbat 32B]</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The arithmetic is simple: the talmudists considered there to be seventy languages, the fringes are four, so 10x70x4 = 2800. This does sound more like an exhortation for observance in regard to the commandment of fringes rather than a promise, as weird exaggerations along these lines are often given in order to emphasize the importance of carrying out the commandments - who in their right mind thinks the rabbis meant it literally when they said that whosoever saves a single human life is as though he has saved the entire world – clearly that too is an exaggeration, given that the world has millions upon millions of people in it? Observance of any number of commandments is exhorted by promise of all kinds of rewards – on the other hand, one is also commanded to observe commandments not for the sake of rewards, but for the love of their giver.</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On the house of the Goy [Goy means unclean, and is the disparaging term for a non-Jew] one looks as on the fold of cattle.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><i>Tosefta, Tractate Erubin VIII</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<span style="color: black;">
</span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Nope, not in Eruvin 8. It does not even fit into the context all that much. </i>[<a href="http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/f/f22.htm" style="font-style: italic;">Tosefta, tractate Erubin</a>]<i> </i>Also, again, goy does not mean 'unclean', goy means 'nation', and has come to signify 'gentiles' in Hebrew, Aramaic and other Jewish jargons, dialects and languages. It has disparaging significance now and probably had so back then as well, but its use is certainly not disparaging in every context as previously illustrated in this post. The author could have edited this quote so as to exclude the clear fabrication, but clearly the author elected not to do so - is this perhaps because it feels good to accuse the Jews of this kind of shit?</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Happy will be the lost of Israel, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has chosen from amongst the Goyim, of whom the Scriptures say: "Their work is but vanity, it is an illusion at which we must laugh; they will all perish when God visits them in His wrath." At the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, will exterminate all the Goyim of the world, Israel alone will subsist, even as it is written: "The Lord alone will appear great on that day!...<br />
Zohar, Vayshlah 177b</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;">
<i><br /></i>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although I am not entirely certain that whoever wrote this got the references right, compare Vayshlah 177 (the 'b' is a nice touch that does not belong there, but whoever compiles these lists seems to think references to Judaica are incomplete unless they also have a superfluous letter).</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
THE REVERSE IS TRUE FOR THE IDOLATROUS PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. In the future, the Holy One, blessed be He, will deal with them gently at first, but afterward with severe Judgment. This is the meaning of the verse: "Hashem shall go forth as a mighty man, He shall stir up ardor like a man of war." First comes "Hashem," the Merciful; then He comes "as a mighty man," not a REAL mighty man; and later, "like a man of war," not a REAL man of war. Finally, Judgment will be given against them, and He will destroy them, as it is written: "He shall cry, indeed, roar, He shall show Himself mighty against His foes" (Yeshayah 42:13), and "Then shall Hashem go out, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle" (Zecharyah 14:3), and "Who is this that comes from Edom, with crimsoned garments from Bozra..." (Yeshayah 63:1)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
These are not kind words, nor are they particularly tolerant. Notice, however, that this specifies 'the idolatrous people of the world', and not 'all the goyim' (the Hebrew versions I've been able to find all use that wording). That is a significant difference. The text no longer hates on gentiles per se, but idolatrous such. Certainly this is religious intolerance, but no worse than comparable statements that can be found in Christianity or Islam. The Hebrew text itself is clear on the idolatry - it uses the term 'akum', which is used for practitioners of idolatry.</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[1] Almost all quotes from http://www.truthbeknown.com/judaismquotes.htm</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
[2] Other sources are generally named in the text.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-61227029175086305952015-01-19T13:58:00.001-08:002015-01-19T13:58:57.000-08:00A recommended read<a href="https://moniyawlinguist.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/linguistic-correlates-of-fundamentalism-context-and-meaning/#more-2031">This is a great post.</a><br />
<br />
I don't think the author fully has managed to give an exhaustive description of fundamentalism, but he has identified an important component that seldom is discussed, and that needs discussion.Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-53526030502514561402015-01-14T09:52:00.000-08:002015-01-16T07:57:43.934-08:00Bullshit Oscillating at 432hz: Pythagoras and Numerological NonsenseQuite a few A432hz enthusiasts claim that only in A432hz are all the tones of the scale integers.<br />
<br />
This is a truth with quite a bit of modification. Some of the advocates of this claim also claim that you can make your music A432hz by tuning it down using software. There are instructions all around the internet, especially on how to use Audacity to achieve such a detuning.<br />
<br />
However, what will happen if you use Audacity to those ends is the following set of pitches:<br />
A = 432<br />
Bb = 457.688056763<br />
B = 484.90360487<br />
C = 513.737473681<br />
<div>
etc</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Of course, the actual pitches will vary a bit from these idealized values, as singers deviate from their exact pitch both intentionally (to make their melody or harmony bit more expressive or more 'in tune' in quite a different sense from the one proposed by the A432hz enthusiasts) or by mistake. The same goes for free pitch instruments such as trombones or violins. Guitarists often have badly intonated guitars, so their pitches may also deviate quite a bit, and intentional and unintentional string bends add to the deviation there. Hammond organs have a peculiar tuning of their own that approximates regular tuning but is ever so slightly off, etc. The organ-builder may have missed by a hundredth of a millimetre the exact length a certain pipe should have been, and thus the tuning may be ever so slightly off, thus making the A:WHATEVER come out as A:WHATEVER±a bit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thus, the table of tunings for a small bunch of pitches provided there is only a sort of idealized average. Electronic music might get pretty close, though.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why do the A432hz people believe that tuning to A432hz gives integer frequencies to most of or indeed to the whole scale? Many of them favor Pythagorean tuning, which is not just a question of readjusting the tuning of the reference pitch, it is a question of calculating the other pitches in other ways relative to the reference pitch. (Which requires tuning every pitch on your instrument differently, individually.)</div>
<div>
Tuning down a song with audacity does not achieve that result. However, if you were to build your own instrument in such a way that it does have Pythagorean tuning, the idea regarding the integers will be slightly true, and I will explain why in a bit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why they believe that this is <i>only </i>achievable<i> </i>with A432hz is a bit less easy to understand. I have no idea, to be honest. I guess they just don't understand evidence-based thinking?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, why does A432hz give integer frequencies with Pythagorean tuning? It's not <i>entirely true</i>, but it is true for the keys of C major/A minor<sup>A</sup>. Pythagorean tuning consists of tuning a bunch of new intervals by repeatedly tuning a new one up a perfect fifth, and a new one on top of that down a perfect fourth, and repeating that pair of operations (at some points, two perfect fourths will need to be added in sequence for this formulation to work, however). The <i>untempered </i>perfect fifth is a ratio between two frequencies, exactly 3/2. So, 100hz and 150hz are a perfect fifth apart. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We start by C256, and we immediately obtain G384. We now multiply that by 3/4 (the perfect fourth is 3/4 downwards, 4/3 upwards. Notice that 3/2 * 4/3 = 2) and get 288. We go on to obtain 432 hz, and from there we still add 324hz, 486hz, and 364<b>.5. </b>So, in the [256, 512]-range we have one non-integer, but since octaves correspond to doubling a frequency, that problem does disappear in the 512-1024 range, as well as even in the 432-864 range (which is of interest if we focus on A).<br />
<br />
However, why should we construct scales using this method? This method was indeed known to the ancient Greeks but so were other methods, such as those described by <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/archytas/">Archytas</a>, for instance. It does give very nice fifths, but it sacrifices the consonance of the major and minor thirds significantly. Unlike equal temperament, you either end up with infinitely many pitches or a wolf interval.<br />
<br />
Pythagoras* allegedly discovered that having two things that differ by simple ratios - 2/1 or 3/2 and such - produces consonant intervals. Examples given in Pythagorean literature consist of anvils whose masses differ by such a ratio, strings of the same dimensions weighted down by weights differing by such a ratio, etc. Weird enough, the examples given in the early Pythagorean descriptions don't work - they simply do not produce results that correspond to the perfect fifth.<br />
<br />
The piece here below that is indented might not interest all readers. It has to do with number theory and pythagorean tuning.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
3/2 does produce a very consonant interval. The method I gave above is basically the same as stacking 3/2s on top of each other, and sometimes reducing them by octaves (dividing by powers of two) to keep them in the same octave - 1/1 - 3/2 - 9/4 (9/8) - 27/8 (27/16) - 81/16 (81/64) - 243/32 (243/128), etc.<br />
Now, we need to look a bit at factorization to understand why A432 / C256 have these results.<br />
432 factors to 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 3. 256 factors to 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2. When multiplying, we simply concatenate the strings of factors. When dividing, we remove some shared factors:<br />
555 / 27 = (3 * 5 * 37) / (3 * 3 * 3) = (5 * 37) / (3 * 3). 55 * 231 = (5 * 11) * (3 * 7 * 11) = (3 * 5 * 7 * 11 * 11)</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This does not give us beautiful and easily comprehensible numbers, but this way of illustrating multiplication and divsion may illustrate why certain things work the way they do.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 3 can obviously be divided by 3 exactly three times without yielding a non-integer. Multiplying 256 by 3/2 will be doable up to eight times until we've depleted the twos from the factorization. Since we basically alternate between adding a 3 and removing a 2 (by multiplying by 3/2), and adding a 3 and removing two 2s (when multiplying by 3/4), we can basically calculate how long it'll take to deplete the 2s - we're removing an average of one and a half per iteration, and thus we run out on the sixth iteration, which explains why the seventh tone is off by half from an integer.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By 432, we have already depleted a few 2s - we have four left. Thus, if we want to build an A major scale (which is a sequence of five leaps of fifths and one leap of 3/4 down from the starting point, including the notes at both ends, this giving us seven notes) we will deplete our 2s before getting all the way:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A: 432, E: 648, B: 486, F#: 729, C#: 546.75, G#: 820.125, D: 576</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /></blockquote>
Pythagorean tuning takes one very consonant interval, and reiterates it to build a full scale. It is a useful musical scale, and probably the tuning that most medieval European music was composed in. However, it has certain issues that make almost all music composed since the renaissance fit less well with it:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>its thirds give rather dissonant chords.</li>
<li>it does not form a 'cycle', it forms a 'spiral', alternatively 'it requires an infinite number of notes (or it breaks somewhere)</li>
</ul>
<div>
The first problem is the result of <a href="http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2015/01/an-appendix-dissonance-and-consonance.html">how dissonance works.</a> We recall that the C major chord consists of C,E and G. We know that G is very consonant and therefore ignore that for now. We instead look at E, which is 648hz. This E is at 81/64 the frequency of C. We notice that a very nearby ratio, 80/64 = 5/4 looks fairly simple in comparison. We produce tables of overtones of the relevant notes:</div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<table>
<tbody>
<tr><td><b>512</b></td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>1024</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>1536</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>2048</td><td><b>2560</b></td><td></td><td><br /></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>3072</td><td></td><td></td><td><br /></td><td></td><td>3584</td></tr>
<tr><td>E'</td><td>640</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>1280</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>1920</td><td></td><td><br /></td><td><b>2560</b></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>3200</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>E</td><td><br /></td><td>648</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>1296</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td>1944</td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>2592</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>3240</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</blockquote>
The slightly lower E at 5/4 in fact has less dissonance, due to the overtones coinciding perfectly every fourth/fifth overtone for the pair C+E' , whereas the 81/64 overtones nearly never coincide and slightly more often also reach into the dissonant 'critical bandwidth'. This is actually entirely audible as well, we can compare the effect of these chords:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://yourlisten.com/miekko/pythagorean-vs-just-intonation-sunvox" id="yl17268718">Listen Music Files - Embed Audio Files - Pythagorean vs Just Intonati...</a><iframe frameborder="0" src="//yourlisten.com/embed/html5?17268718" style="width: 100%;"></iframe></blockquote>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
Since music is fundamentally a subjective thing, some may prefer the first chord, some may prefer the second. Personally, I find them useful for different purposes - however, the chord you get on your average guitar is a good enough approximation of both for <i>most</i> purposes.<br />
<br />
Turns out the first chord type does not really 'resolve' as well as the second - if you end a song on it, there'll be the kind of feeling lingering that 'hey, this song (or part of a song) hasn't come to a halt yet'. That might be a nice effect at times - but it's not what most classical or even pop music goes for. In medieval music, this kind of chord was not used as a consonance, but a dissonance that had to be resolved, either to a perfect fifth or a perfect fifth and an octave (so, in the key of C, C+G, or C+G+c). For more information on this, see <a href="http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/pyth.html">Margo Schulter's monumental website on Pythagorean tuning and medieval harmony</a>.<br />
<br />
Thus, if you were to somehow magically retune all the works from basically the renaissance onwards up to this day to a Pythagorean tuning, you'd end up with a lot of songs whose chord progressions do not really work as their composers have intended any longer. But who cares for the intent the composers expressed in their compositions when you have a bunch of new age gurus telling you what to do?<br />
<br />
As for the cycle thing, we need to look at the concept of modulation and the circle of fifths. In European music, the ideas of chord progressions and of modulation both have been of quite some importance for some time now. A chord progression is a sequence of chords, and chords are sets of three (or more) notes. Most musicians do not think of the progression Am Dm Am E as fundamentally different from the progression Abm Dbm Abm Eb. They may differ in how easy or difficult they are to play on a given instrument, but essentially they have the same internal structure - in isolation, they sound very similar. This can be achieved in both equal temperament and Pythagorean tuning. But, whereas this is possible when using any note as a starting point in equal temperament, it only is possible for a limited number of starting points in Pythagorean temperament (or, you end up with an infinite number of tones you have to work with). We want a system where if a chord is the Nth chord in one key, it has the same function relative to its key as the Nth chord of the other keys. (Of course, we could probably tolerate just a few keys for which it does not hold true, but it adds complications.)<br />
<br />
In more modern European music, it happens that the key is changed during the work. Sometimes, this even happens repeatedly. Thus, we want a large set of workable keys between which we can switch.<br />
<br />
Further, sometimes, performers' ranges are sufficiently wide for a given work, but the absolute reach does not go sufficiently high or low. In those cases, it is convenient for musicians to adjust the piece of music so that the range of the singer (or other performer) now corresponds to the adjusted piece's demands. Our voices aren't all created the same, so flexibility in this way is very useful.<br />
<br />
As I mentioned, Pythagorean temperament does, to some extent, satisfy these demands. However.<br />
It necessarily contains some breaking point. We've built our scale by adding new tones that are perfect fifths apart, and we notice that the distance to the tone from which we started never is an interval we have seen before. Either we stop somewhere, or we go on forever. If we go on forever, we end up with notes whose names would be monstrosities along the lines of C######## (which would be about a fifth of a semitone sharper than G).<br />
<br />
The twelfth tone we add is 3<sup>12</sup>/2<sup>(19)</sup>. As it happens, this is fairly close to 1/1. So we ignore it altogether and close our cycle there, letting the error fall on the last tone. (We could go on, and let the error fall elsewhere, but this is as convenient an ending point as we get - we don't end up with dozen<b style="font-style: italic;">s </b>of named notes, nor do we end up with a bunch of notes that are very close to each other.) Thus, the last fifth we have is of the form (3/2) / (531441/524288) - which is a very ugly interval - the first note is a perfect fifth, the other is the wolf as it would be if it were tuned to C:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<iframe frameborder="0" src="//yourlisten.com/embed/html5?17268742" style="width: 100%;"></iframe>
</blockquote>
This error will also be present in any interval that "spans" this fifth. Different chords will sound drastically different, and transposing a song from one key to another may turn a chord in the song from consonant to dissonant or vice versa, ruining the song's structure altogether. (A given chord, say, 'G', will constantly be the same, of course, but what we're interesting in is retaining the structure of the scale such that, say, the chord built from the second tone of any given major key will sound sufficiently similar to every other such chord, so that we can say that it has the same 'function' relative to its key as the other 'second chords'.)<br />
<br />
Equal temperament solves this by distributing the error given previously over each fifth, having each fifth just slightly off. The difference is barely perceivable.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<iframe frameborder="0" src="//yourlisten.com/embed/html5?17268747" style="width: 100%;"></iframe>
</blockquote>
Further, the fact that we've now reduced the fifth ever so slightly, adds up to four times more of a reduction of the major third - which nudges it closer to the very consonant major third in the first sound clip. And we end up with a system where each key can be used. The sample compares a pythagorean and an equal temperament fifth C-G, C-G'; the second half leaves out the lower part of the intervals so we can just compare the pitch of the two Gs. The difference is tiny.<br />
<br />
Now, I've gone on for quite a bit here about tuning. I don't particularly believe that equal temperament is superior in any musical sense than other tunings, but it has many advantages that explain why it is used. I am fairly convinced, however, that most repertoire since the renaissance on to this day would not work very well in Pythagorean renditions.<br />
<br />
Because of a thing in arithmetics - viz. the n:th root of an integer will always be irrational unless that integer is another integer to the n:th power - all the frequencies we obtain, except at most one, will be irrational. Regardless if we tune to A432hz or A440hz (or any other hz whatsoever).<br />
<br />
However, our dear A432hz enthusiasts have of course done their maths and picked their tuning system so as to have integers all the way. Yet, they do it wrong. Let's compare some different A432hz tuning tables:<br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td><b> </b></td><td><a href="http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,16976.msg148495.html#msg148495">1</a>, **<a href="http://markbrewerharpist.com/blog/2013/03/tuning-vs-temperament/">2</a></td><td></td><td><a href="http://earthmatrix.com/piano/octave.htm">3</a></td><td></td><td></td><td><a href="http://earthmatrix.com/piano/octave.htm">4</a>*</td><td><a href="http://www.sacred-geometry.es/?q=en/content/concert-pitch-a432-and-c128">5</a></td><td><a href="http://www.projects8.com/sedona/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40&">6</a></td><td>A440/12tet</td><td>A432/12tet</td></tr>
<tr><td>a</td><td>432</td><td></td><td>432</td><td></td><td></td><td>432</td><td>432</td><td>432</td><td>440</td><td>432</td></tr>
<tr><td>a#</td><td><i>**461.3</i></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>464</td><td>458.21</td><td></td><td>466.163761518</td><td>457.688056763</td></tr>
<tr><td>b</td><td><b>486</b></td><td></td><td><b>484</b></td><td></td><td></td><td><b>480</b></td><td>486</td><td></td><td>493.883301256</td><td>484.90360487</td></tr>
<tr><td><br /></td><td><i>**518</i></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>c</td><td>512</td><td></td><td><b>514</b></td><td></td><td></td><td>512</td><td>512</td><td><b>518.2</b></td><td>523.251130601</td><td>513.737473681</td></tr>
<tr><td>c#</td><td><i>**546.75</i></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td><b>544</b></td><td><b>543.06</b></td><td><b>540</b></td><td>554.365261954</td><td>544.285893555</td></tr>
<tr><td>d</td><td>576</td><td></td><td>576</td><td></td><td></td><td>576</td><td>576</td><td>576</td><td>587.329535835</td><td>576.650817001</td></tr>
<tr><td>d#</td><td><i>**615.1</i></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>608</td><td>610.94</td><td></td><td>622.253967444</td><td>610.940258945</td></tr>
<tr><td>e</td><td>648</td><td></td><td>648</td><td></td><td></td><td><b>640</b></td><td>648</td><td>648</td><td>659.255113826</td><td>647.268657211</td></tr>
<tr><td>f</td><td><i>**691.2</i></td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td><br /></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>f</td><td><b>704</b><sup>1</sup></td><td></td><td><b>688</b></td><td></td><td></td><td><b>672</b></td><td><b>682.66</b></td><td><b>691.2</b></td><td>698.456462866</td><td>685.75725445</td></tr>
<tr><td>f#</td><td>**729</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td><b>736</b></td><td><b>724.08</b></td><td></td><td>739.988845423</td><td>726.534502779</td></tr>
<tr><td>g</td><td>768</td><td></td><td>768</td><td></td><td></td><td>768</td><td>768</td><td></td><td>783.990871963</td><td>769.736492473</td></tr>
<tr><td>g#</td><td><i>**820.15</i></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td><b>800</b></td><td><b>814.6</b></td><td></td><td>830.60939516</td><td>815.507406157<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Notice how the different sources do not agree on their pitches? Some of these intervals vary by as much as 22/21 (f=704 and f=672). In part this is because they use entirely different approaches to building their scale - the high 704 is not pythagorean at all despite the claims by the source, it's a way more esoteric interval (11/8). By arbitrarily picking our frequencies in such a manner, I can build an integer-only tuning based on A440, viz. A440, Bb466, B494, C523, C#554, D587, ... and this can be done for any arbitrary starting point in that region. The errors introduced for any interval by rounding the frequency to an integer number of hertz will be just slightly wider than the error of the perfect fifth in the 12-tone equal system. And that is of course an idealized error - singers, brass players, violinists, cellists, and even guitarists will regularly be further off.<br />
<br />
Of course, ultimately, the second's length has been arbitrarily decided; we could have divided the day into ten equal hours and each hour into 100 equal units and each of those into another 100 equal units, and a tone at 432hz would now be described as ~373.248alternahz. The division of the day into 24*60*60 is arbitrary. In a world with alternahz instead of hz, other frequencies would be integers. Integer hz frequencies have no <i>magical properties </i>despite the dumb beliefs A432hz enthusiasts have regarding this.<br />
<br />
But as I might have said before, if you don't like that priests, ministers, imams or rabbis tell you what music to listen to, you can always listen to new age gurus instead - they even have rituals that make your music 'spiritually permissible' (because what else does <i>reducing its audio quality by an ever so slight amount of resampling artefacts in Audacity</i> amount to, but a superstitious ritual - and unlike rituals by older, more well-established religions, this at least has the veneer of technology to it - but who am I kidding, it's really slightly worse than e-mailing a dozen 'hail Mary' into the digital void). Why turn to evidence-based reason when gurus make stuff so much easier? And the added anxiety from believing that Nazis have made the music you hear in the radio increase aggressiveness among your peers is certainly good for your health as well as well.<br />
<br />
By further telling you to prefer Pythagorean tuning over other tuning methods, they're essentially imposing a certain music theory on you - one in which modulation is limited, one in which chord resolutions are much more restrictive, one in which the useful keys are much fewer and you end up having to buy new, expensive guitars because your Gibson or Martin or Taylor or Fender simply cannot be tuned in a Pythagorean fashion*. You get less, but at such a steep expense, who can refuse?<br />
<br />
<br />
* Pythagorean guitars require complicated frets that are damn expensive to manufacture. You'll end up with one along the lines of the guitar neck pictured in <a href="http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/3023240-post6.html">this post</a>. Those are not cheap, I can tell you. But of course, if a new age guru tells us to buy them, who are we to refuse? Who are we, indeed, to refuse?<br />
<br />
A) A natural minor and C major contain the same seven notes. These are, when ordered as a series of fifths, F-C-G-D-A-E-B. Ordered as a regular scale they are C D E F G A B (c). (Or A B C D E F G). Think of F-C-... as though each "-" signifies "..., which equals 4/3 or 2/3 of ...", so F, which equals 4/3 of C, which equals 2/3 of G, ...</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-25455956645097491392015-01-05T12:51:00.001-08:002015-01-05T12:51:13.319-08:00An Appendix: Dissonance and ConsonanceConsonance and dissonance are traits we ascribe to sounds. Thus, our perception of sounds is somewhat important to this classification. Clearly, it's not a fully objective quality.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the main post, I note how Pythagoras contributed to the understanding of harmony. Although Pythagoras did not understand what sound was, he did understand that relating the sizes of the objects on which you play (say, different lengths of otherwise identical strings) by simple ratios produced appealing sounds. There have been a number of hypotheses as to why this would be the case. The most widely accepted one these days relates to the harmonics (overtones) described previously.<br />
<br />
If we add together two sine waves, a and b, of rather similar frequencies, the resulting wave will have a complication - its amplitude changes periodically in a wave-like way:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTksROE54KvDyeISBkhe6NJUC0bN2NumfW7u7Xo8t8ftnAfkNdlm6HDeQst0xUVL1V0tiWepJA8gO6L22bGB80sM7WO5IQvM-AE2F6oa6AmeuTjC_he6kreYoTr8wnsxrNYl48scwMyE/s1600/MSP61h2hh80cdg5164h20000500eh49119i93fhc.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTksROE54KvDyeISBkhe6NJUC0bN2NumfW7u7Xo8t8ftnAfkNdlm6HDeQst0xUVL1V0tiWepJA8gO6L22bGB80sM7WO5IQvM-AE2F6oa6AmeuTjC_he6kreYoTr8wnsxrNYl48scwMyE/s1600/MSP61h2hh80cdg5164h20000500eh49119i93fhc.gif" height="127" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sum of sin(tx) and sin(ytx), where y is a constant relatively close to 1, and t is an arbitrary constant.<br />
I have no idea what causes the graphical misshap close to the second through.<br />
Picture from wolframalpha.com, try out sin(x) + sin(yx), with y≃1 there for a variety of y.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /></blockquote>
The frequency of this "metawave" is the same as the difference between the two frequencies a and b. If the difference is small, it does not sound bad - just like a slight wavering volume, somewhat similar to a vibrato in sound, and if it is large we don't perceive it as dissonant either. The range in which we perceive dissonance is called the critical bandwidth. Empirical research has shown that it covers a range from about a handful hertz to 6/5 of the frequency. However, this might seem to fail to explain dissonances over wider ranges, such as the major seventh (which is roughly 15/8, which clearly is wider than 6/5) or the very dissonant tritone (which is sqrt(2), which is a bit less than (6/5)^2, and thus clearly wider than 6/5).<br />
<br />
I previously mentioned overtones. These provide us with the actual explanation! To calculate the dissonance for an interval, we should actually look at the amount of overtones for each of the tones in the interval that come within each others' critical bandwidths. The relative amplitudes of course also contribute, but in ways that is less easy to investigate by just eyeballing a graph.<br />
<br />
Let us compare two intervals. A440 and E660 vs. A440 and D#622. (Note: for ease of calculation, I have reduced the usual D# by an ever so slight bit.) These have the following overtone series:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<table>
<tbody>
<tr><td>A</td><td>440</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>D#</td><td></td><td><br /></td><td>622</td></tr>
<tr><td>E</td><td></td><td>660</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>A</td><td>880</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>d#</td><td></td><td></td><td>1244</td></tr>
<tr><td>e</td><td>1320</td><td>1320</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>a</td><td>1760</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>a#</td><td></td><td></td><td>1866</td></tr>
<tr><td>b</td><td></td><td>1980</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>c</td><td>2200</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>d#</td><td></td><td></td><td>2488</td></tr>
<tr><td>e</td><td>2640</td><td>2640</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>g*</td><td>3080</td><td></td><td>3110</td></tr>
<tr><td>g#</td><td></td><td>3300</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td></td><td>.</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td></td><td>.</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td></td><td>.</td><td></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</blockquote>
We can see that the A column (the one starting out with 440), and the E column (660) often coincide. Even if they didn't perfectly coincide (say, we replaced 660 with 659 or 661), the numbers would be close, and thus not reach the requisite width to enter into the critical bandwidth until several overtones down the line. However, 622 quickly enters it - 1320 is within the critical bandwidth of 1244 (or rather, they're within each other's range), 1866 is within the critical bandwidth of 1760, etc. Sure, 1980 is within the critical bandwidth of 2200 too, so E will cause some slight dissonance. However, the further up the overtone series we have to go to find critical bandwidth issues, the less dissonant an interval is. Of course, timbre may also affect the dissonance - clarinets and many woodwinds lack even-integer overtones (so, a tone sounding at a 100hz will only have overtones at 300hz, 500hz, etc), and for a good enough analysis, we would have to look into them as well.<br />
<br />
Relative amplitude of the overtones is relevant, but we're not going to look at that now. More detailed models for understanding dissonance exist (e.g. 'harmonic entropy'), but this post is mainly meant as an appendix to an upcoming piece of reasoning about scale construction (that is part of a greater piece of reasoning regarding claims made by A432hz enthusiasts). Harmonic entropy has been used by people interested in scale construction, and various predictions made by it seem to have been accurate.<br />
<br />
Anyways, this is a very short introduction to the issues of consonance and dissonance, and one where further complications can ensue - instruments where the overtones are not integer multiples of the fundamental, for instance, have their own complications with regards to what intervals are consonant and what intervals are dissonant.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-63402924470048556102014-12-26T06:33:00.001-08:002015-01-15T15:01:15.271-08:00Bullshit Oscillating at 432Hz: On ResonanceOne concept often referred to by the 432hz enthusiasts is 'resonance'. Apparently, things in the world resonate "at 432hz" in ways that ... I dunno. Magic. They're not all that clear on what resonance actually is, nor do they want to clarify exactly what they thing it does to things, except it's clearly good and magical.<br />
<br />
They think the 'universe' itself resonates at 432hz, but also that pretty much each of its component parts has that same magical resonance. Everything, of course, is vibrations, and so on. It's a cornucopia of vibrations, resonances and frequencies. What else is there to expect when new age kooks are involved? Sigh.<br />
<br />
I previously talked about the speed of sound. (Which confusingly enough also is called 'c'. Thanks, science, was that the best letter you got?) This is a somewhat relevant part of resonance. If a system resonates at a frequency, this means it reinforces that frequency. A system may resonate at several different frequencies, and even simultaneously so. A frequency is reinforced if its wavelength in that material (say, a string) corresponds to the length of that string or a half or third or n:th part of its length.<br />
<br />
A relevant example of just how dumb the A432hz claims are, is the claim that Stradivarius violins have exceptional resonance at A432hz. We will now look at why that claim is genuinely dumb.<br />
<br />
Resonance in a violin depends on the speed of sound in the relevant kind of wood, the shape of the wooden parts, and a variety of other things. However, there are interesting complications in how resonance in violins works with regards to actual musical use.<br />
<br />
Ever noticed how synth strings sound comparatively lifeless compared to the violin? In part, this is because violin resonance is not uniform. When you play a tone, say, A440, the string also produces harmonics. These are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency - you get something along the lines of A440, a880, e'1320, a'1760, c#''2200, e''2640, ... and each of these has its own amplitude. However, different frequencies resonate differently in the violin body. Thus, when you play A440 or you play B495 (with the harmonics b990, f#'1485, b'1980, d#'2475, ...) the relative amplitude of the harmonics will not be the same for B495 as they would have been for A440.<br />
<br />
If you are mathematically inclined, you could best imagine what happens as a function along these lines:<br />
a<sub>1</sub>sin(x) + a<sub>2</sub>sin(2x) + a<sub>3</sub>sin(3x) + ... + a<sub>h</sub>sin(hx), where all h are integers, and a<sub>h</sub> are values in the range [0, 1]. a<sub>h</sub> goes to zero as h goes to infinity. Essentially, the faster the oscillation of some overtone, the smaller the width that that oscillation imparts to the waveform. However, in the case of an acoustic instrument, this abstracts away the importance of the fact that a<sub>h</sub> is not the same for each hx! Thus, it'd be better to have<br />
f(x)sin(x) + f(2x)sin(2x) + f(3x)sin(3x) + ... + f(hx)sin(hx), where f(hx) gives the amplitude for that particular frequency, and f(x) is (most likely) a continuous function that goes to zero as x goes to infinity - but oscillates quite a bit on the way.<br />
<br />
For people for whom maths is difficult to keep up with: the timbre of an instrument is the result of lots of waves, that interrelate in this way: in the time the lowest wave goes /\, the next-lowest goes /\/\. There's even a further one that goes /\/\/\ in the same time, and so on. However, the faster they go, the less high they go.<br />
<br />
Some pictures! Let us pay no heed to the actual values along the x-axis now - the same "relative" situation will obtain for any note. We have several wave forms which if we were to separate them we'd obtain graphs like these describing them. The first few pictures below here are in the sequence sin(x), sin(2x), sin(3x), sin(4x), sin(5x):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<s ub=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIXRPXcNgUaHvFoeuVd39y8A0pqpj16GQ8TWoRlprCBKrO-Efx3dUKQTyRlwohs4m-Y7SJ3j-if0FMtVcOFg68aJ48PhZBX8mvaSC_oJbFxMNyW-zbyNarzRAVxF_p6CErjmMXPFGQu4I/s1600/B_1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIXRPXcNgUaHvFoeuVd39y8A0pqpj16GQ8TWoRlprCBKrO-Efx3dUKQTyRlwohs4m-Y7SJ3j-if0FMtVcOFg68aJ48PhZBX8mvaSC_oJbFxMNyW-zbyNarzRAVxF_p6CErjmMXPFGQu4I/s1600/B_1.gif" /></a></s></div>
<s ub="">
</s>
We call the lowest frequency in a tone its 'fundamental', and that frequency is generally the frequency we will say the tone 'has'.<span ub=""><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center; text-decoration: line-through;">
<span ub=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0LVCnPRa_LM4_1ZKQrGUqtFR9gz7IlvHIxpPk2ZiCq2ix0-eFbviFKjPwTPyIvtOsT-xquTHwcbCBZGLAQo3-qAEmZW6oUqzXTkvOg7jvXVboslJl0kXQjOTW1e4IZzr2w2rOc_VLTE/s1600/B_2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE0LVCnPRa_LM4_1ZKQrGUqtFR9gz7IlvHIxpPk2ZiCq2ix0-eFbviFKjPwTPyIvtOsT-xquTHwcbCBZGLAQo3-qAEmZW6oUqzXTkvOg7jvXVboslJl0kXQjOTW1e4IZzr2w2rOc_VLTE/s1600/B_2.gif" /></a></span></div>
<span ub="">
</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span ub="">The second frequency is an octave above the first - notice how the number of peaks or troughs is twice that of the previous waveform.</span></div>
<span ub="">
<br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span ub=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2rGlUcdCutMvsBjfAEsr_hlPnnbCT6neQieQ4IjtvsUDLiC4m6ZtF3D7BTIQmZRaP4-6BTPgIelP9dz_2rHKyOJD3xz45x5vjGPeN39fIrqhqNcOU6Veavzm9EA6KAjVuDdp2PYell8o/s1600/B_3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2rGlUcdCutMvsBjfAEsr_hlPnnbCT6neQieQ4IjtvsUDLiC4m6ZtF3D7BTIQmZRaP4-6BTPgIelP9dz_2rHKyOJD3xz45x5vjGPeN39fIrqhqNcOU6Veavzm9EA6KAjVuDdp2PYell8o/s1600/B_3.gif" /></a></span></div>
<span ub="">
</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span ub="">An octave and a fifth above the fundamental, we have the third frequency - its troughs and peaks number thrice that of the fundamental.</span></div>
<span ub="">
<br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span ub=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB-5TmpMq1bg1DZ9dLwkCllSBpFW8-fbWAqhpfIJR74WhnqkAvfNtmE6M1MOa5xBrZjG288R9XJG_TvpFDQSoJofOomnEn24QDX77WuYhoCHOVON7qrJu8S2-rSKHSXesPK_fisYn30ec/s1600/B_4.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB-5TmpMq1bg1DZ9dLwkCllSBpFW8-fbWAqhpfIJR74WhnqkAvfNtmE6M1MOa5xBrZjG288R9XJG_TvpFDQSoJofOomnEn24QDX77WuYhoCHOVON7qrJu8S2-rSKHSXesPK_fisYn30ec/s1600/B_4.gif" /></a></span></div>
<span ub="">
</span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span ub="">Double octave, followed by major third over double octave:</span></div>
<span ub="">
<br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span ub=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Z7t61mCmCB578cF0rVw9ttjuqG50LuxJuk05ZbT0xLAIKYEtb1lQHYLILbz2YAoqDOJSe-C3NQgCOVhJmihRSJCB0-T9QyCLRfgpPispt61ZNLHVE8tKsxQ7hkCyUeda98SXWHgLnzY/s1600/B_5.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Z7t61mCmCB578cF0rVw9ttjuqG50LuxJuk05ZbT0xLAIKYEtb1lQHYLILbz2YAoqDOJSe-C3NQgCOVhJmihRSJCB0-T9QyCLRfgpPispt61ZNLHVE8tKsxQ7hkCyUeda98SXWHgLnzY/s1600/B_5.gif" /></a></span></div>
<span ub="">
<br />
<br />
These waves happen together, but their amplitudes are different. If we were to plot them all on the same curve, we'd get something like this (amplitudes subject to variation):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV5lrq2oYa7Dwx1pVO9nftGQIugd8KBXGjL7CdJ1Nz24SESkZwQtVgD4ZHtX789C7v32uBhKNFIJmC1qUe_qgciwt89jBgWLxjf07toMtvPzEKwbPdVmghEigFgg1zrcvH1nWO_cKu4vc/s1600/lotsofwaves.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV5lrq2oYa7Dwx1pVO9nftGQIugd8KBXGjL7CdJ1Nz24SESkZwQtVgD4ZHtX789C7v32uBhKNFIJmC1qUe_qgciwt89jBgWLxjf07toMtvPzEKwbPdVmghEigFgg1zrcvH1nWO_cKu4vc/s1600/lotsofwaves.gif" height="148" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
How high (and low) each wave goes is determined by the factor I previously labelled a<sub>h</sub>, so in this case a<sub>3</sub> is 0.7, a<sub>4</sub> is 0.5, etc. If we were to add together (sin(x) + sin(2x) + ... + sin(4x), we would obtain something like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKF_pTcfS6V2MezBQD2stiDlXnDuk3ug6uVNYOPpp1-AobK0NFmwVaUoCaJBQveUsdwtCI_v13jYNz9oSZazOvl1Y60ujkHyk2R3kcxGKig6ohc7dZ1-5wM-X-4XxbdaBlGlMSFP3SkDs/s1600/SUM.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKF_pTcfS6V2MezBQD2stiDlXnDuk3ug6uVNYOPpp1-AobK0NFmwVaUoCaJBQveUsdwtCI_v13jYNz9oSZazOvl1Y60ujkHyk2R3kcxGKig6ohc7dZ1-5wM-X-4XxbdaBlGlMSFP3SkDs/s1600/SUM.gif" height="139" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
If, however, we were to add together those given in the multiwave graph I just posted, we would obtain this:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMhb2suHce22pYc0WVr5HBNPhpuhc-afNhyphenhyphenQSWzriubd8zTa2aOWJ1RHCre2Fp5O7nSPtUZb_4EV6WyNZMDKnTV3TR9AMh0vHqhqHf3ZeNW082lPrKkxW6JE18k28AtIaUxdyTc4Cu-ME/s1600/vagor.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMhb2suHce22pYc0WVr5HBNPhpuhc-afNhyphenhyphenQSWzriubd8zTa2aOWJ1RHCre2Fp5O7nSPtUZb_4EV6WyNZMDKnTV3TR9AMh0vHqhqHf3ZeNW082lPrKkxW6JE18k28AtIaUxdyTc4Cu-ME/s1600/vagor.gif" height="139" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
If you keep adding more 'partials' to it or just alter the amplitude of any one partial wave, the wave form will slightly change but the pattern we have here will be recognizable there. However, in reality the faster waves will more often not reach 'as high' and 'as low' as the slower waves. The graph below illustrates another similar pattern:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipImk-N3FcJ0JnqoXgXuMl3f1o-EkfzaLHfPQElBXOIGeDjj6kgvedU5YcKdcfBDXDZUQSybAKof_gp8nIGKAmdGvYakrf0KRgf2bm-pkPzZ1FI0IxLCAObc9P7_2u49K-rL7FPeSk-KI/s1600/SUMsin1to4x_m_amplituder.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipImk-N3FcJ0JnqoXgXuMl3f1o-EkfzaLHfPQElBXOIGeDjj6kgvedU5YcKdcfBDXDZUQSybAKof_gp8nIGKAmdGvYakrf0KRgf2bm-pkPzZ1FI0IxLCAObc9P7_2u49K-rL7FPeSk-KI/s1600/SUMsin1to4x_m_amplituder.gif" height="143" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The ear is surprisingly good at recognizing differences between different-shaped waves of these kinds - that is in part how we recognize trumpets from clarinets from violins from guitars, or even how we distinguish different vowels. Of course, if the difference is subtle enough, it will not necessarily be recognized at all.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, our ear-brain interface is so used to waves being related by integer factors that if you were to hear a wave of this form: a<sub>2</sub> * sin(2x) + a<sub>3</sub> * sin(3x) + a<sub>4</sub> * sin(4x) + ... your brain would fill in the missing sin(x) for you!<br />
<br />
Now, when a violinist plays, he will often impart a vibrato - he will repeatedly continuously alter the frequency slightly over a certain range of frequencies. The resonances will also change, due to the aforementioned phenomenon – resonances differing for different frequencies and thus the shape will change. This is what makes the violin sound comparably more 'alive' than a synth tone. It seems good quality violins even have drastic changes in timbre over short ranges, and thus the shape of the wave that is produced at different fundamental frequencies. So, how does the physics of that work out?<br />
<br />
Resonance is the result of standing waves and other similar things, and standing waves occur when the wave length of a tone is the same - or a divisor - of the length of the thing in which the vibration happens. Since the violin contains many lengths, a line in the violin body that happens to have such a length will start vibrating at such a frequency (and lines with approximately the same frequency may start vibrating too).<br />
<br />
Look at the shape of the violin body. You may notice that it is not a circle or a sphere, but rather a shape with some complications to it. This means that depending on where in the wood or where in the air inside of the resonance chamber you draw a straight line, you'll have a different length - thus also a different set of frequencies resonating along that line. Since the wood does not have a perfectly identical density throughout, this may affect the resonance slightly at different frequencies.<br />
<br />
So what if a Stradivarius violin resonates well at A432? It resonates well - and in different ways - throughout its entire range! And the variations in resonance <i>are intentional! </i>What of course makes the use of this pretend evidence even more interesting is that Stradivariuses have been proven not to sound 'superior' in double-blind tests: high quality modern violins, as well as high-quality antique violins of other skilled luthiers have been ranked the same in such tests. Simply put: if we believe that a musician is playing a Stradivarius, we trick our brain into thinking it sounds better than we would think if we knew he was playing a modern high-end violin. Certainly the Stradivarius violins are not bad, they're quite great instruments - but there is nothing <i>magically </i>perfect about them. It's interesting indeed that the A432hz enthusiasts are willing to use irrelevant, debunked and disproved reasoning, as well as name-dropping to bolster their case.<br />
<br />Furthermore, it is well known that violinists tend to use vibrato, a method wherein the pitch of the tone they are playing is periodically altered - basically it glides audibly between an upper and a lower pitch slightly off from the tone they are playing. The above variety in resonance makes this effect not only produce an alteration in pitch level, but also a slight alteration in timbre. This even further makes violins sound appealing to us, in a way that a single frequency's magical resonance properties wouldn't have any relevance to whatsoever.<br /><br />What is more, there is a problem when the whole instrument resonates very well at some frequency. This is one of two phenomena that go by the name 'wolf tones'. Due to strong resonances when the whole instrument resonates, even nearby tones may cause an awkward, ugly sound. Jamie Buturff says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We're stuck to 440Hz and are the whole day covered in this "not related" music! It is clear that we must return to the natural vote of 432 Hertz. A Stradivarius violin resonance is at 432Hz, it's built to do so. [<a href="http://www.projects8.com/sedona/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40&">Jamie Buturff, The Frequency of the Universe</a>]</blockquote>
If Jamie Buturff were correct, <b>A432 would sound like shit on that violin, </b>since you'd end up having a lot of unwanted resonances and a strong spike in volume for that exact frequency<b>! </b>The A432 community are idiots who don't know the first thing about acoustics, yet pontificate about it as though they were experts.<br /><br />Chances are, however, that they just claim that A432 is the main resonance of the Stradivarius violins, since this is a nice soundbite. I would even bet they just <b>made it up.</b><br /><br />
Violins sound good not <b>because a certain frequency resonates</b>, but because of the complex interaction of resonance strengths for different overtones. A432-enthusiasts will never care about the actual physics of music, though, so can be dismissed as ignorant woo-peddlers.</span><br />
<div>
<span ub=""><br /></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-45442364944501109402014-12-22T08:46:00.002-08:002014-12-22T08:52:32.268-08:00Bullshit Oscillating at 432 Hz: A Primer on Acoustics<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is some prerequisite material to understand some of the relevant ideas which the A432-community utterly fail to grasp or account for.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">
Bullshit Oscillating at 432 Hz: A Primer on Acoustics</h2>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Sound consists of fast, relatively small oscillating changes in pressure (and for most hearing-related purposes, air is the medium in which these changes take place and travel). Air is rarefied and compressed due to the interaction of atoms - basically, they push each other out, and are pushed back in return. You have probably seen spectral diagrams of songs and sounds. These basically map relative pressure at some spatial point at any given moment onto the vertical axis, and time onto the horizontal axis.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Amplitude correlates with volume, and basically measures how greatly the atoms are offset.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Tones are a special kind of sounds – they are the subset that have regularly recurring peaks and troughs. That is, if the time it takes for the wave to go from one top to the next is the same for a lot of peaks, you are dealing with a tone. A complication exists, though: most things that produce regular waveforms of this kind, also produce other waveforms simultaneously! A string or organ pipe or glass of water that is agitated to produce a frequency f, also produces a set of other frequencies, called overtones or harmonics. In most musical instruments, these are integer multiples of f, where f signifies the frequency of whichever tone we are discussing at the time: 2f, 3f, 4f, ... The amplitude generally is lesser with each new note as we ascend this series, but exceptions exist. A simple example of that is the clarinet, where even frequency multiples are entirely omitted, thus leading to the situation where amp(odd number * f) > amp(even number * f), even if the odd number is way greater than the even number. Some instruments also may have other exceptions. One final set of exceptions is that not all instruments have exclusively integer multiples - most pianos have near-integer multipes, and bells can have really complicated multiples. Many percussive instruments are exceptions as well.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This will be relevant when looking at the misconceptions about scales and harmony that the A432-community labours under.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Sound travels at roughly 344 meters per second in air (subject to changes due to changes in temperature, dryness, etc). Inversely, the length between the peaks of the waveform for a tone at frequency x is 344./x meters. So, 344 hz in air would have the wave length of approximately one meter. However, assuming no wind, if the speaker were travelling along a straight line at 10 meters per second, a stationary listener in front of the speaker would hear 354 hz. The speed of the speaker is not added to the speed of sound – the speed of sound is entirely relative to the medium in which it travels. So, the number of wavepeaks that reach the listener will increase, as the distance between the wave peaks is reduced (or the opposite, if he is travelling the other way). This is known as the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect is nice in that it conserves intervals - if the speaker switched to playing a frequency that is y times 344hz, the listener would hear y times 354hz.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The formula is f' = f * (c + v)/c, where c = the speed of sound in the relevant medium, and v = velocity of the speaker. More generally, it is f' = f * (c + v<sub>s</sub>)/(c + v<sub>l</sub>), where v<sub>s</sub> and v<sub>l </sub>are the speed of the speaker and the listener along the line. Calculating it if the movement vectors are not on a line is more complicated, but we will ignore that for now. Since we are dealing with a factor, overtones will be affected proportionally - ((f * (c + v<sub>s</sub>))/c) / ((f * 2(c + v<sub>s</sub>))/c)) = (f)/(f * 2) = <i>r</i> – overtones or sets of frequencies will be related by the same factor <i>r </i>(not by the same difference in exact number of hertz).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It turns out our hearing is mostly logarithmic – we do not hear an absolute difference in hertz as a meaningful way of classifying how tones relate. 400hz and 450hz simultaneously sounds different from 300hz and 350hz simultaneously - but not just because the latter pair is lower! 400hz and 450hz simultaneously sounds as though the two notes relate in the same way that 300hz and 337.5hz do – the pairs share the same ratio, and therefore we hear these pairs as similar. This is also relevant when looking at the misconceptions and misinformation the A432 community spread about scales.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In other gasses, liquids or solids, sound travels at other speeds (and in solids, there evens exist two 'different kinds' of sound, travelling at different speeds - sheer waves and compression waves). Sound travelling in your body travels at another speed than sound travelling in the surrounding air – and this may further differ between your bones, your muscles, your skin, your intestines, etc.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If an orchestra is playing outdoors in A432 upwind from you, and the wind is six meters per second, you will hear it play in A440. If it is downwind from you, you will hear it play in roughly A424. We find this by dividing 440/432, then solving (c + v<sub>s</sub>)/c = 440/432, where c = 344, thus (344 + v<sub>s</sub>)/344 = 440/432. This is equivalent to 1 + v<sub>s</sub>/344 = 1 + 8/432 <span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;">≡</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;"> </span> v<sub>s</sub>/344 = 8/432 ≡ v<sub>s</sub>/43 = 4/27 ≡ v<sub>s </sub>= 162/27 = 6.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This will be relevant later on when looking into cymatics, a scientific method thoroughly misunderstood by the A432 community.</div>
Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.com0