Posts by Don

I'm still of the opinion that ataraxia has to do specifically with rooting the fundamental causes of fear and anxiety, ie, death, divine punishment, etc. I don't see one who has ataraxia as never ever being afraid of anything, never ever being anxious about some aspect of life. But the root causes of existential dread, fear, anxiety, once those are torn out - root and branch - they don't return and one has an unshakable foundation upon which to build one's life.

Something similar could be going on with aponia. How that works, I'm not exactly sure - Epicurus definitely uses it to refer to physical and mental pain, but I drop this here as a prompt for discussion.

Quote from Patrikios

You may find this article on Claude of interest.

Ditto

Richard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion

The great skeptic gets taken in

open.substack.com

Quote from Matteng

Is/Can Aponia be part of Eudaimonia ?

FWIW Here's an extensive thread on aponia's meaning:

Thread

The Meaning of the Greek Word "Aponia"

"Aponia" is a key term in Epicurean philosophy. What exactly does it mean? There seems to be a consensus that it translates to "absence of pain," but is this a reference to bodily pain, to mental pain, to both, or with other connotations? This thread is for discussion of the meaning of "Aponia," including citations to reference where the term appears in Epicurean texts.

https://lsj.gr/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%AF%CE%B1



ἡ, (ἄπονος)
A non-exertion, laziness, X.Cyr.2.2.25, Arist.Rh.…

Cassius

December 3, 2023 at 11:05 AM

Quote from Eikadistes

I was personally blown away by this video. I'm sharing this without any commentary on the figure reciting the verse.

However, I also recommend watching it with the auto-generated captioning. It is hilarious!! (More wonders of AI )

I'm intrigued, but anything that starts out...

Possibly a protreptic vade mecum...

Is a bit daunting to say the least.

Yikes

Quote from Eikadistes

Imagine being more impressed by psychics than physics.

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I've seen numerous commercials for these charlatans on TV, and it makes me cringe and laugh every time.

Quote

When you connect with one of our psychics you are speaking – or chatting – with someone that has been tested and proven to possess the highest qualities in their field. ...

Over the years we’ve developed a rigorous system for choosing, evaluating, and cultivating psychic excellence so that each advisor brings unmatched accuracy, experience and skill to your readings.

....

Our gifted psychics undergo constant reevaluation. They need to maintain a high level of performance and consistent demonstration of psychic abilities to remain an advisor with California Psychics.

😂🤣😂 Egads. The TV commercials tout that their "psychics" have been "vetted." By Zeus, where's The Amazing Randi when you need him?!

Saw this in my morning scrolling and it seemed appropriate for here:

OH GODS! The "interview" is from PRAGER U?? Please don't bother engaging with Prager U propaganda!

And the "film" is one of those propaganda films that will end up getting shown in megachurches and fawned over by the faithful. The Story of Everything seems to be one of those "Case for Christ" "documentaries" it appears to me.

https://sypher.studio/ evidently also has a "film" entitled "After Death" as in "a captivating and thought-provoking documentary that delves into the enigmatic question that has fascinated humanity for centuries: What happens when we die? Through a combination of personal accounts, scientific research, philosophical discussions, and exploration of best-selling stories of near-death experiences, the film takes viewers on a profound journey of discovery. " Will you want to forcefully engage with that one, too?

The never-ending slop out there that could potentially be countered and engaged with is infinite!

From my perspective, putting out pro-Epicurean quality materials is better than trying to engage with this kind of propaganda.

Engaging in the public debate, unfortunately, nowadays, probably means engaging on social media: posting rebuttal links, etc. The BIG/HUGE/GINORMOUS problem with engaging in that forum is that the majority of commenters and social media posts are from chatbots or worse. One is arguing against a machine trying to get people to become engaged for clicks and eyeballs.

I was literally engaging with the "intelligent design" debate as far back as high school when I wrote a scathing (to my teenage mind) rebuttal to a pro-intelligent design speaker who came to our high school and spoke to an auditorium full of us impressionable youths. I don't think their arguments have gotten any better, only slicker.

I don't have a good answer to all this, but the Prager U tag on that interview video makes my head explode. They are dangerous and trying to inculcate young students and school in conservative areas are using THEIR materials to teach history, economics, science, etc. THAT'S where the real danger lies in my opinion:

‘Masquerading as a university’: inside the brazen rightwing plan to conquer American schools

As teachers eagerly adopt its free lesson plans and the White House boosts its videos, PragerU is intent on one goal: attracting young people to conservatism

www.theguardian.com

Why critics are alarmed about the influence of PragerU's educational videos

The rise of edutainment, the integration of entertainment with educational content, has become a billion-dollar industry. The conservative PragerU has…

www.pbs.org

Inside PragerU’s conservative push into American classrooms

PragerU is a conservative video giant. It’s produced more than 2,000 videos that it says promote American and Judeo-Christian values. Now its content is…

www.wbur.org

...and not some film that will have a short shelf life other than for Christian congregations film night.

PS If this post is too political feel free to delete. You've evidently hit a nerve in me.

The article is a long one; however, it's a good solid one, too. The length has deterred me from making it all the way through... yet. It seems to be you're almost on your way to book chapters with these lengthy articles. I also wish you'd open comments, BUT I realize those can easily/quickly get out of hand and I would not expect you to retort or respond to all of them, positive or negative (Lookin' at you, Stoics).

That said...

I really want to understand how you use AI for these, because I refuse to believe you type in a prompt and out comes a fully-fledged article. I realize this might be hashing through some materials already covered on the blog, but your last section intrigues me:

Quote

This article is one of a series written to explain Epicurus’ views to modern audiences. It has been prepared with the use of AI assistance by Cassius Amicus, drawing on sources such as Epicurus’ surviving texts and works by T.H.M. Gellar-Goad, Victor Stenger, A.A. Long, and David Sedley, as listed in the References at the end of this document.

Do you input those texts and papers and "query" that as it's training model? Do you ask it specific queries section by section? Do you simply use it for grammar and syntax or to come up with "turns of phrase"?

In any case, thanks for putting these out into the world. Now, we have to get people to read them!

Quote from Kalosyni

This gives you 40 seconds of the opening of the Letter to Menoeceus:

https://ancientgreek.eu/audiobooks/epi…-menoeceus.html

That one I actually bought. I need to get back to that at some point.

Just saw this recitation of the beginning of the Iliad on YouTube. Imagining this as an ancient rhapsode performing at a banquet is pretty easy. I found it intriguing.

Fair enough.

That said, I'm happy to leave the refutations to those inclined that direction.

ADMIN NOTE BY CASSIUS: We have set up this category for general observations on the merits and demerits of the "logic-based" arguments. All of them share fundamental erroneous presumptions about proof and evidence, and we can explore those commonalities here. There will be separate threads for the major named arguments so that people who want to ask "what about....?" can address the individual twists and turns of specific arguments.

To be honest, I find these kinds of "proofs" of God to be tiresome, overly complicated wordplay. I couldn't even get through the Wikipedia summary without rolling my eyes. The whole "ontological argument" (of which this appears to be an early variety) strikes me as ...I don't know... too clever by half? A speciously intellectual facade masquerading as deep? The fact that other Muslims found Ibn Sina's Proof unsatisfactory, and other Christians found Anselm's thought experiment lacking, I find outsiders like Epicureans taking the time to refute or counter these a waste of valuable time.

Ontological argument - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Quote from Eikadistes

(I caution anyone from directly translating kósmos as either "world" or "universe". These are ancient concepts that do not directly correspond to our own, technical definitions.)

Amen.

I think we're understandably butting up against a Greek vs English issue here.

Granted αρετη is translated as "excellence" in English; however, it's not an adjective like "excellent" as in "Our friendship is excellent."

αρετη can be variously translated into English: goodness, excellence, of any kind, in Hom. esp. of manly qualities; as well as goodness, excellence; manliness, prowess, rank, valour; (not countable): virtue; (countable): a virtue, the virtues

It's like trying to shoehorn "eudaimonia" into "happiness."

Think of "arete" as the "full realization of potential or inherent function."

My take on this, from looking at various sources, is that - if we're taking the manuscript at face value - Epicurus saw friendship as one of the most important instrumental virtues leading to a happy life. I may even go so far as to his using the similarity of αρετη (virtue/excellence) and αιρετη (choiceworthy) as part of his wordplay that I find so endearing about some of his writing. Friendship is "choiceworthy" exactly because it is a key component of living to one's full potential, of achieving "arete."

For a way deeper dive than any of us want likely, here's an open access book: Arete in Plato and Aristotle: Selected Essays from the 6th Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Hellenic Heritage of Sicily and Southern Italy

The word in question in the manuscript is this above.

To my eye, it is clearly αρετη with a soft breathing mark at the α and an accent over the η at the end with a punctuation mark following.

πᾶσα φιλία διʼ ἑαυτὴν ἀρετή· ἀρχὴν δὲ εἴληφεν ἀπὸ τῆς ὠφελείας.

Every friendship is an excellence (virtue) in itself, even though it begins in mutual advantage.

The scholars want “Every friendship is
choiceworthy in itself; for it has its origins in benefit” (πᾶσα φιλία δι᾽ ἑαυτὴν αἱρετή· ἀρχὴν δὲ εἴληφε ἀπὸ τῆς ὠφελείας).

I'm still convinced the manuscript reading should be kept.

I discovered a great article on JSTOR that addresses this exact issue:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1215547

Epicurus on the Value of Friendship ("Sententia Vaticana" 23) by Eric Brown: Classical Philology, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 68-80 (13 pages)

The author does a thorough job in laying out an arguments for and against the manuscript reading and the scholarly emendation. From those, I continue to prefer the reading transmitted in the manuscript itself. I recommend reading the paper.

Two short excerpts:

NOTE: One sticking point for the scholars' emendation is that their "correction" requires a rough breathing mark curved one way, the manuscript has a soft breathing mark curved the opposite way. So it's not just that the scribe forgot to copy an iota after the initial alpha. To be honest, I'll have to dig back into the manuscript to make sure they make that distinction, but just looking at this line, I wanted to mention it for future reference.

Quote from Cassius

I have tremendous respect for the effort that Eikadistes has put into Epicurean philosophy over the years.

Ditto! Eikadisteshas definitely earned ΚΥΔΟΣ ! Additionally Cassius has also earned respect for creating this little virtual Garden on the Internet without which I guarantee I would not have stuck with Epicurean philosophy as long as I have.

That said...

Cassius , I'm going to take a slight tangent but eventually keep AI in the mix.

From my reading of your posts in this thread, you are ready to use whatever tools are at your disposal to evangelize the Good News of Epicurus' Philosophy to a world that is in desperate need of it. You see AI as one of those tools, and you refuse to cede the field to those who would use AI to advance idealism, Platonism, et al.

If you like to use AI to enhance your writing or to provide visuals to your work, so be it. I've shared my personal feelings about AI and its use.

However, if you want to "strike a blow for Epicurus" or to challenge the prevailing dominance of idealism, Platonism, Skepticism, Stoicism, AI is a very small arrow in your quiver.

Breaking through to a larger audience is not going to happen by posting better articles on this forum or on Substack, no matter how enhanced by AI they are.

You have 34 subscribers on Substack. Granted, here on the form, the "Most Active Threads Of The Last Year " had from 10K to 20K views; but that's not near "going viral." Posting better articles on the forum or Substack are not going to strike that decisive blow you want to strike. We all do good work here, outstanding work, but this doesn't put a dent in increasing awareness of Epicurus to the wider world.

Emily Austin's book - arguably the best, most accessible intro to the philosophy - on Amazon has only 140 reviews and is #79 in Ancient Greek & Roman Philosophy and #135 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality. Ryan Holiday's most recent Stoic book from 2025, Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. (The Stoic Virtues Series), is #8 in Ancient Greek & Roman Philosophy and has 659 reviews. The 20 of the top 25 books on Amazon in Ancient Greek & Roman Philosophy are ALL Stoic! Not an Epicurean book until #48!!

For whatever the definition of "winning" is, the Stoics are winning in the wider modern world. Epicureans are a small fish in a VERY large pond, with most people not having any idea we exist... and those who do know, likely having an erroneous view. Ryan Holiday was just on Hasan Minhaj's YouTube show, and Holiday talks BRIEFLY about Epicureans just to say they advocated staying out of politics and "retreating to their Garden."

Even if you used generative AI to create bots to post a constant stream of content to social media platforms, the algorithm would likely bury them all under all the slop sloshing around and I doubt it would get the engagement we all want it to. Plus, if it's just one-off posts with no comments or reaction, it definitely dies on the vine.

So, what's my strategy for striking that blow?? I have no magic wand. The podcast is great, and I'm glad its on multiple platforms. But how many views does it get? Having a presence on Substack is fine if people find your articles randomly on a search of the platform or Google.

To really get the message out, there needs to be a movement, heck - a celebrity endorsement would be nice. There was a flurry of podcast appearances when Dr. Austin's book came out, but it wasn't sustained. There needs to be a constant drumbeat of new books, new interviews, new widely published content, engagement with Stoics on their platforms (That's why i would LOVE to see you go head to head with Pigliucci! but you didn't even have comments enabled on your Substack article/response about his article)

There's even a little rivalry (friendly?!) among the Epicurean communities and little to no organization or collaboration or coordination or mutual support. The Society of Epicurus goes its way. The Greek Epicurean groups go their ways. This forum is a bastion of fine work and enthusiasm. But The Stoics continue to outpace our school with books, interview appearances, regular Stoic Week events, merchandise that's widely available from notebooks to calendars to shirts to .... you name it.

Generative AI is a drop in the bucket and is really the least helpful of the tools in the toolbox.

How does our School make a dent in the popular Zeitgeist? How do we get talked about in the same circles - as a REAL alternative - to the Stoics??

I think we are ONLY on the very early curve of making a dent in this area but thinking AI is going to get us a statistically significant way down the road is a pipe dream.

ALL this would take time, energy, money, coordination, etc. I'm not saying this to be pessimistic, I'm not. I'm trying to take this conversation in a constructive direction, and this thread on AI seemed like it was getting bogged down. I may have more to say later, but it's getting late, I have to get up for my regular job tomorrow (well, later "today" now). I agree with you that striking a blow for Epicurus is a truly worthy goal, but there are only so many minutes in the day and so many days in one's life.

I leave this here as food for thought and responses.

Quote from Cassius

Suppose a human in 1965 who is creative but not a musician decides that he can use AI to produce a song that is as beautiful and catchy as anything produced by the Beatles, and also specifically brings to the listeners' attention genuine Epicurean arguments as to no life after death and no supernatural gods. It would make Epicurus's name and genuine teaching as famous as any name used as the title of any famous love song.

Your scenario is still just positing an imitation of a Beatles song, and the "musician" didn't create it. The algorithm did, admittedly using a training data set of Epicurean texts, I suppose. Is it really Epicurus' "genuine teaching" if it's an algorithmic summary? We've seen that gone awry in tests on this forum.

Quote from Cassius

if I could "change the world" overnight and bring consciousness of Epicurean ideas to millions of real humans at essentially no cost."

Could you really change the world overnight? That seems like AI hype and hyperbole. Again, what does the AI tool bring that seeking out a partnership with an actual musician and working with them to write a catchy song doesn't? Is it harder and more expensive to work with a human being and working on rhymes and rhythms with them than plugging in a prompt to ChatGPT? Of course! But the end is a human creative work with REAL meaning and intentionality behind the words. If you want a song, work to create a song.

There IS a real cost to using AI: socially, creatively, economically, environmentally. "At essentially no cost" is a figment of the collective imagination surrounding AI. I'm curious if you'd be as enthusiastic about generative AI if everyone had to pay what it actually cost to run the queries and prompts. It would not be cheap, and right now the hyperscalers and generative AI companies subsidize the technology to shoehorn it into everything. They want to get people hooked, like a drug dealer giving the first hit or two for free.

Quote from Cassius

if indeed we use generative AI to actually and in fact reach people with genuine Epicurean presentations that would not otherwise be available to them,

Okay, so with that context, what's the selling point of generative AI over just creating content the "old fashioned" way and putting it out there?

Using your articles specifically, what did the generative AI application give you that you couldn't have brought to the work by composing them without the AI tool?

What does a generative AI tool do to "reach people" that is not available without that tool?

Quote from Cassius

And would that necessarily be a bad thing? Once again the considerations of PD10 apply - if there are methods by which we actually succeed in establishing and preserving an actual community of living Epicureans.

And therein lies the rub. In my scenario of bots posting and responding algorithmically, there is no "actual community of living Epicureans." There may be unlimited "Epicurean" content online in this scenario, but there is no community, no real Epicureans, just AI bots posting, responding, commenting. One person could program a bot or bots to do all this. A community can't be one person sitting in a Garden with a laptop.

If one wants an "actual community of living Epicureans," you need actual living humans interacting with each other, online and in-person. Increasing content posted everywhere created by generative AI doesn't get humans to have meaningful interactions with other humans.

Quote from Cassius

the hypothetical of the "experience machine" and the issues involved in PD10.

LOL That's a whole other kettle of fish for (yet) another thread. Come at me, bro! I'll throw down on PD10, dude! (I'm doing my best to channel some trash-talking WWE wrestler here. I'll take my Oscar now )

Quote from Cassius

it doesn't "remove" the human element - it's a tool. And as for practicality, the forces arrayed against "us" - meaning against those who support living according to Epicurean philosophy - are too great to unilaterally disarm and give up this tool, which at the moment I see likely to become necessary forself-preservation.

Sure, I'll concede generative AI is a tool. And I'm consciously using generative AI to get away from using "AI" as some generic acronym. Tools are great. The Internet is a tool. A wrench is a tool. One can use the Internet to post misinformation and harassment. One can use a wrench to change your car battery or to bludgeon someone. If one uses an AI application to analyze a huge dataset to help research cancer cures, that's a great use of a tool. If an AI application is used to model weather data to predict severe weather and to save lives, . If someone uses generative AI to create computer code and something goes wrong, you can't ask the coder "Why did you write this line this way instead of that way?" Software engineers can be asked. Generative AI has no idea, that was just the prediction of what came next in their LLM modeling data. I use this same analogy about articles. If an AI-generated article has a turn of phrase or a point is made, and someone asks "That's clever. Could you tell me where that came from? Could you expand on that point?" there's no there there. Generative AI is a black box. If a human writes an article, we can ask the human to expand on a point. We can disagree with a human. We can have a discussion with a human. There is NO opportunity to "have a discussion" with an AI bot. There's the verisimilitude of a conversation, but conversations happen between people.

So, how we use any tool - or use the right tool for the right job - needs to be a conscious human decision. Does the tool enhance human abilities or does it replace uniquely human abilities.