#rhetoric

Isaios had a decisive influence on the student of Demosthenes, above all in the field of argumentation and judicial technique Following a course similar to that of Lysias, Isaios – and his own name is included in the list compiled by the Alexandrian philologists Rule of ten Attic orators– developed activity both as a rhetoric teacher and as a logographer. Son of Diagoras from Chalkida, fellow…

When you see an ant, what's the first action would you have taken? Most would kill it. Or they ignored it. Choosing to spare a small life in an act of mercy, or perhaps just seeing them crawling around like a bunch of insects that lived their small insignificant lives have numbed us to the idea, that we have much better, bigger things to do than take pleasure in seeing an ant squirm underneath our fingertips.

Still, in that millisecond, the small life that you have taken without a single thought, does it fill you with guilt? That like us humans, alive and breathing, gone in an instant, crushed by your own fingers. Sure, best case scenario, your body will be filled with guilt, but after that? You'll forget it soon enough.

Was it heartless of us? Does that made us monsters? That the difference between us and the predators on the screen that we judged and watched for entertainment, is that the law of the jungle of the animals feeds them to live, while we simply crush andcrushandcrush–

If we might have entered a ‘civil’ society where the law of the jungle only applies to animals and yet, I wonder did we really leave the mindset of the strong preying on the weak? Surely not, we always hope for a salvation that omnipotent beings could give us, the results vary, yet it is the freedom gifted on us in making our choices that doomed us all the same.

What makes us better than those predators you see on televisions where the law of the jungle is respected and through? Those where the questions I ask myself every midnight in my own company.

I wonder if this is how the beings far above us see us? That, in a small act of mercy, decides to let us live, go on with our miserable lives, grinding and grinding to find food, shelter, and still die at the end of the day.

I wonder, if those animals or insects see us like monsters? We, who destroy their home and kill their younglings, that they did everything they had but still powerless to stop us.

But whenever I think too much about it, I always arrive at the same conclusion, "We are a monster to someone else as others to ourself" and move on with my day.

Because of the way they are trained, large language models capture only a slice of human language. They’re trained on the written word, from textbooks to social media posts, and our speech as captured in movies and on television. These models have minimal access to the unscripted conversations we have face to face or voice to voice. This is the vast majority of speech, and a vital component of human culture.

There’s a risk to this. The increased use of large language models means we humans will encounter much more AI-generated text. We humans, in turn, will begin to adopt the linguistic patterns and behaviors of these models. This will affect not just how we communicate with one another, but also how we think about ourselves and what goes on around us. Our sense of the world may become distorted in ways we have barely begun to comprehend.

This will happen in many ways. One of the first effects we could see is in simple expression, much as texting and social media have resulted in us using shorter sentences, emojis instead of words, and much less punctuation. But with AI, the impacts may be more harmful, eroding courteousness and encouraging us to talk like bosses barking orders. A 2022 study found that children in households that used voice commands with tools like Siri and Alexa became curt when speaking with humans, often calling out “Hey, do X” and expecting obedience, especially from anyone whose voice resembled the default-female electronic voices. As we start to prompt chatbots and AI agents with more instructions, we may fall into the same habits.

It is commonly invoked in political discussions, and I won't say it doesn't have its place. But I feel like people invoke it too readily.

If all else fails, making someone care about Jews by arguing they'll be next once the regime finishes them off is good. Whatever works. But we really want people to care about the Jews for their own sake, and the trade unionists, and the socialists, and even the communists.

"You are wrong for being blessed. It is a moral failing and you must pay penance for it. You're not allowed to talk. You're not allowed to form your own opinions. Bow to the people with superior and oppressed class. Very woke. Very liberal. Much shame."

[Cue Stu Burgiere on the Glenn Beck Program being asked to acknowledge his privilege to which he replies tongue in cheek about how he has been very <privileged> to have had the meritocratic opportunities he has in the radio industry (the irony)]

My understanding of the term "privilege" now:

"You have been fortunate enough NOT to understand the experience of a specific type of oppression. You have blind spots. Because you can't relate, I need you to be open to the fact that there are things that fall outside of your experience. It will take some listening and learning. The world and life you grew up in was not the one I grew up in."

Lysias’ amazing narrative skill is made abundantly clear in his speech entitled “An Apology for the Murder of Eratosthenes” Scholars consider Lysias’s simplicity – fruit of his systematic effort to put himself in the shoes of the people he was writing about – and his amazing narrative ability to be the great, distinct advantages of Lysias’ judicial speeches. This last virtue is made abundantly…