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  1. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    The former I'd go system-reply to the literal Chinese Room and say the system of the person with the translator has learned all tongues and the person without the translator isn't speaking them. In the latter, we were discussing the difference between simulation and actuality (of being a god)...
  2. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    Basically, it boils down to: "up until the Late Bronze Age collapse (about 1100-800 BC), people (at least in the Ecumene) understood the higher mental functions not as internal processes of their minds but as gods literally telling them what to do". It sounds crazy, of course, but...
  3. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    Most of those are quite doable for an alien with nanotech, and some we can do today. The only ones that actually sound impossible are "speaking in tongues without learning them" (logically forbidden) and "creation ex nihilo" (depends on your definition of "ex nihilo"; if pair production doesn't...
  4. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    What is a miracle? And, well, any scientist will tell you that physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive; if a law can be "broken", it actually had exceptions all along. (Is the weak nuclear force a god? It breaks conservation of quark flavour and CP symmetry, which are otherwise...
  5. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    Not a huge fan of that phrasing, because it implicitly assumes there's a non-delusional difference to tell and I don't think that's obvious.
  6. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    The Jaynesian theory of the ancient pantheons is quite compelling IMO. The problem with ancient-aliens theories in terms of RL is "okay, so where the hell did they go?". Historically, people don't generally just pack up and leave a place where they were living like gods - not all of them, at...
  7. magic9mushroom

    Modern "re-imaginings" of myths and the like that your really dislike?

    And in how many of those stories does the devil (Satan isn't the devil) make any significant headway by the end of the story? People thinking the devil has a chance has plenty of Biblical support. Gods and (realistic) aliens are just different ways of looking at the same thing. Revelations...
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