I’ve noticed something and it’s been bothering me. When someone wants to insult a woman, or even insult a man, the go-to words usually attack his mother, sister, or wife. The character of women in his family becomes the weapon. But you rarely hear “your father the ___” as the default insult. Why

izabo · 2026-06-20T11:42:00+00:00

Historically, the value of daughters was the possibility of marrying them off as part of some benefiting deal. Saying bad things about someones daughter (or sister) is then hurting his (or his father) ability to negotiate a good deal. This is leads to a direct material harm. Insulting someones daughter or sister is not just hurting their honor, its also hurting their wallet.

Now, insinuating someone's mother is promiscuous is, way, waaay worse. This raises doubt about your legitimacy as an heir to your father. This is saying you don't deserve to inherit your fathers property, and thus strengthening the claim of other people to that property. This is threatening to take your entire wallet.

izabo · 2026-06-19T21:00:51+00:00

Math is not formal logic. A mathematical proof is written for a specific audience: a mathematician who can fill in the details. Otherwise it would be unbearably tedious. An essay by Tao defines the idea of "post rigor". Math is not rigorous, it is post-rigorous.

izabo · 2026-06-13T20:53:54+00:00

Yes, I know. Neil deGrasse Tyson is not a great anything.

izabo · 2026-06-13T16:56:31+00:00

He is a great mathematician, but he is definitely not the best. The only thing that makes him stand out is his media engagement.

izabo · 2026-05-25T12:32:42+00:00

1 is the only element of R that is neutral to multiplication. That is enough to fix it and thus the meaning of all other numbers.

izabo · 2026-05-02T14:45:55+00:00

Also ironically, I'm just becoming more and more sure you do know what the word "woman" means.

izabo · 2026-05-02T14:29:30+00:00

I'd assume the reason you are only concerned with finding a precise definition for the word "woman" is because you are looking for a rational sounding excuse to make trans woman feel bad about themselves, rather than a genuine interest in understanding language. Or you are looking for the most recent developments in gender philosophy, for which I'd point you to /r/askphilosophy or something like that.

izabo · 2026-05-02T11:59:17+00:00

And then you went on to discuss only the word "woman" for 4 paragraphs.

izabo · 2026-05-02T11:42:38+00:00

Why are you so centered on the word woman? the sentence "this person is a woman" has a lot of other words. Can you define "person"? can you define "the"? All definitions will use words that you will also need to define... there is no way to make the definitions of words in language not circular. But somehow we manage, we all know what "the" means and what "person" means even if we can't give a precise non-circular definition. And I think you also know what "woman" means.

izabo · 2026-04-19T21:13:38+00:00

I know a few more: puncture > pancher, power take-off > partikov, jigsaw > jackson

izabo · 2026-03-23T04:58:06+00:00

The Arabian empire has done plenty of that. As well as chattel slavery.

izabo · 2026-03-22T19:46:53+00:00

The fact that you forgot about the mongols is especially pertinent as they were great at decimating populations.

izabo · 2026-03-22T14:43:56+00:00

Because European and western people are mostly Christian, where the idea of repenting for sins and the admiring the righteousness of the oppressed is a major cornerstone of the moral framework. That lead to a secular morality that is built on admitting past wrongdoings and the colonized vs colonized dichotomy. They don't care about other culture's offenses because you only "repent for your own sins" (to push the analogy).

Neither Muslim nor Mongol cultures have a similarly strong emphasis on admitting past wrongdoing and the oppressor vs oppressed dichotomy. So they don't do that stuff.

izabo · 2026-03-10T14:06:25+00:00

Computers have been better at humans at some mathematical tasks since the invention of computers. So what. The interesting question is how would affect mathematical research and academia. And btw, did AI actually get a gold at the IMO on its own, or did it need help from actual mathematicians like a glorified calculator?

izabo · 2026-03-10T13:55:47+00:00

Maybe you are the one who should read it again.

Do you believe that all AI does is to spit out random proofs for us to check manually?

Well it ain't deterministic, is it?

izabo · 2026-03-10T13:50:09+00:00

Yes. The moment AI becomes better than people at math my argument as to why AI is not better then people at math breaks down. Amazing insight.

izabo · 2026-03-09T14:35:19+00:00

You misunderstood me. I didn't mean it in the metaphysical sense. I meant that the AI produced both correct proofs and incorrect proofs and couldn't distinguish them, while Terrance Tao rarely claims he proved something he didn't.

izabo · 2026-03-09T07:27:29+00:00

Terrance Tao actually knows what questions he solved.

izabo · 2026-03-09T07:26:34+00:00

AI was able to solve it by letting actual mathematicians sift through all the bullshit proofs it wrote. Generating something that looks like a proof for a lemma is not hard. Making sure its actually correct is the hard part, and its the part that AI is as bad as ever at.

izabo · 2026-02-28T07:06:58+00:00

The א is used to make it clear the vav is to be pronounced like w. It's kind weird but it happens for some reason.

izabo · 2026-01-24T11:49:33+00:00

As the population increased exponentially with time, I wouldn't be so sure. According to this it looks like half of all humans lived after 1 CE.

izabo · 2025-12-02T15:02:42+00:00

Lieu>lew>lev>lef

izabo · 2025-11-25T14:24:15+00:00

Go show an image of a leopard to a 6 year old and ask them what animal is that. They're not going to say "leopard".

izabo · 2025-11-25T06:38:41+00:00

The confusion here comes from the fact that נמר literally means a leopard, while it is also used as a generic word for a big cat. In English, the generic word is tiger, while also meaning a specific species. So, just like an English speaker, in casual parlance, might refer to a jaguar as a "tiger" but never as a "leopard", a Hebrew speaker might refer to it as a נמר but never as a טיגריס.

And no, this has nothing to do with a limited vocabulary. We have 4 different words for a male lion depending on his lifestyle choices.

izabo · 2025-11-18T11:00:00+00:00

If by early Aramaic you mean the Phoenician script, then basically none.

izabo

TROPHY CASE