[HN Gopher] All that glitters is not gold - emulating luxury in ...
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All that glitters is not gold - emulating luxury in the ancient
Greek world
Author : diodorus
Score : 73 points
Date : 2023-08-08 04:40 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.britishmuseum.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.britishmuseum.org)
| blitz_skull wrote:
| It's a testament to his prolific writing that without questioning
| I had assumed this was an acoup.blog article.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| If anyone is ever in Santorini in Greece, check out the Museum of
| Prehistoric Thera. They have some stuff from around 2,000 BC.
| Just mindblowing to think how different things were when those
| pieces were manufactured.
| alanmbyrne wrote:
| [dead]
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| "all that glitters is not gold" != "not all that glitters is
| gold".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan%27s_laws#Extension_t...
|
| I feel like one ever present takeaway from logic courses is that
| universal quantifiers and negation don't commute, DeMorgan's
| various rules, and so on.
| pxc wrote:
| In natural language, usage is prior to grammar, and in this
| case, actual usage doesn't reflect the apparent rule.
|
| If you want to look up research on this particular rule and its
| observance (or not) the term is 'scopal isomorphism', where the
| isomorphism is between the scopes of the quantifiers in the
| surface structure and those in the logical form.
|
| That said, this is a pet peeve for me, too. Strikes my ear as
| wrong every single time I hear it, and drives me nuts.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i'd never seen the term "scopal isomorphism" : thanks! and
| yeah, i hear it all the time and it is like fingernails on a
| chalkboard.
| pxc wrote:
| I found the terms when I went on an angry research binge in
| search of a name for my preference and frustration. What I
| discovered, in addition to the name, was an interesting
| twist:
|
| Scopal ambiguity and isomorphic readings have played an
| interesting role in research on linguistic development for
| a long time. It turns out that little, little kids _also_
| strongly prefer isomorphic readings of statements involving
| quantifiers like this. But as they grow up, the 'inverse
| scope reading becomes accessible' to them-- they gain the
| ability to correctly interpret the common way of phrasing
| these things which strikes you and me as 'wrong'.
|
| I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I've never really
| followed up on that initial research or asked a linguist
| what they think all that's about. I think for me, my
| preference for isomorphic readings and phrasings definitely
| relates to at least these two things:
|
| 1. I'm neurodivergent and part of what that means for me is
| that context is difficult, and I tend to prefer explicit
| syntax over reliance on context.
|
| 2. I work in a profession where (a) I deal with
| machines/languages that (obviously) always expect scopal
| isomorphism and (b) we often care about a quantification
| (all X are not Y) that is rarely actually intended in
| natural language.
|
| The more I revisit it, the more curious I get about this
| difference in handling 'ambiguity' (it doesn't feel
| ambiguous to me at all! lol) and where it comes from. :)
|
| If you wanna crawl into this rabbit hole, have at it: https
| ://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C3&q=scop...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's a poetry reference:
|
| All that is gold does not glitter,
|
| Not all those who wander are lost;
|
| The old that is strong does not wither,
|
| Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
|
| From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
|
| A light from the shadows shall spring;
|
| Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
|
| The crownless again shall be king.
|
| https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Riddle_of_Strider
| shard wrote:
| Is that poem where the saying is from? It seems to be a 3rd
| category, separate from the two in the parent comment.
|
| Saying: For the set of all things that glitter, none of it is
| gold.
|
| Implied meaning: For the set of all things that glitter, not
| all of it is gold.
|
| Poem: For the set of all gold, none of it glitters.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| https://nosweatshakespeare.com/merchant-venice-play/text-
| act...
|
| but supposedly the original said glistens rather than
| glitters.
|
| It's interesting that Shakespeare also got DeMorgan's
| predicate logic and quantifiers mixed up, if Shakespeare is
| still conjectured to be Francis Bacon.
|
| I don't remember if this pattern like "All that X is not Y"
| for "Not all X is Y" sounded wrong to me before i had seen
| predicate calculus/logic and the quantifiers and DeMorgan.
| pxc wrote:
| > I don't remember if this pattern like "All that X is
| not Y" for "Not all X is Y" sounded wrong to me before i
| had seen predicate calculus/logic and the quantifiers and
| DeMorgan.
|
| FWIW: By the time I was in high school, I know I
| understood DeMorgan's laws because I used them in
| programming. (I don't remember ever struggling with
| distribution of Boolean operators, or being taught those
| rules.) But I didn't actually learn the name 'DeMorgan'
| until college.
|
| But that still kinda leaves the real question open! Was I
| primed to care about this distinction by my atypical
| engagement with contexts where it really matters? Or was
| I drawn to those contexts because distinctions like that
| one are naturally highly salient for me?
|
| I suspect it's a mix of both, and that they're mutually
| reinforcing.
|
| Maybe some day a linguist will happen upon this thread
| and start looking at scopal ambiguity and isomorphism
| among adults in specific professions, and turn up
| something interesting. :)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| (same here i'm pretty sure regarding high school and
| programming but not knowing the name till college, and i
| can't remember thinking it was wrong because of non
| commuting negation with quantifiers in that terminology.
| i bet there are many of us.)
| rwmj wrote:
| Remarkable that a ceramic pot could have survived for 2,500
| years. I break cups all the time.
|
| There's a permanent display of Eastern ceramics at the
| Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (UK) which has some incredibly
| old pieces. Worth visiting even if you know nothing about
| pottery. https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/about-us/collections/arts-
| of-as...
| dan-robertson wrote:
| That museum as a whole is great. It's got a bit of loads of
| different things but it is a much more manageable size than the
| big museums in capital cities / New York.
| marktani wrote:
| That a specific ceramic pot survives is very unlikely, but some
| surviving it of a huge group less so. I guess you also have
| some cups left in your cupboard!
|
| This of course is the statistical view point. On another level,
| seeing artifacts survive for thousands of years is fascinating
| and awe-inspiring.
| goeiedaggoeie wrote:
| This is the statistical long tail indeed. I would also expect
| that a lot of these vases were buried in soil or on the sea
| floor where they were undisturbed for many years.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I was fighting with someone about this exact concept for
| hours.
|
| They kept exclaiming how amazing it was that we (as specific
| people) were born and how infinitesimal the odds were.
| gilleain wrote:
| Interesting quote:
|
| > Athens' prolific potters looked for new ways of manufacturing
| vessels in affordable clay to imitate metal wares - a process
| known as skeuomorphism ... [ jugs] even has discs on the handle
| to mimic rivets necessary for metal attachments but serving no
| purpose in clay.
|
| Not just icons on applications, then.
| kemayo wrote:
| Yeah, I'm so used to seeing skeuomorphism used in terms of UI
| design that this felt a bit jarring to read.
|
| Makes perfect sense, of course. The word just means imitating
| the design of something made of a different material.
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