This is what He wanted.

It’s certainly possible that sayings of other people were later attributed to him, but to really make this case you’d need to have quotations that were attributed to multiple sources, including him, if you see what I mean. Absent that, it could be true, but there’s no particular reason to believe it.

There are enough specific biographical details about Jesus of Nazareth to make it likely that there’s a specific, real central figure. For example, the fact that he was from Nazareth was a problem for his early followers (it didn’t match the Messianic prophecies), which is why they invented the odd story of the census, so that they could claim he’d been born in Bethlehem, the hometown of King David, from whom Jesus was supposedly descended. That seems unlikely to have happened if there hadn’t been a real, central historical figure.

Also, none of the early non-Christian sources claim he wasn’t real or that he was a composite, which they surely would have done if there was any doubt on the matter.

I agree with you that Jesus wasn’t God, who doesn’t exist, and that there were no miracles, which are impossible. However, this is not the same thing as saying that there’s no evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Jewish apocalyptic preacher.

The earliest documents about Jesus, such as the Pauline Epistles, were written by people who knew people who knew him. In a mostly illiterate society 2,000 years ago, this is about as good as evidence gets. It’s also the exact same kind of evidence as a journalist or researcher writing an account based on interviews with people. This was how, e.g, Herodotus wrote his histories. When Herodotus says ‘A guy rode a dolphin once’ we dismiss that. But we don’t say ‘The people in the Histories didn’t exist, except those for whom there’s physical evidence, which is about three of them, not including the author’. We do much the same with Jesus and the miracles.

If the Apostles had wanted, for some reason, to make up a guy, that would have been risky. Other people would have just said, ‘That guy didn’t exist’. If they had anyway decided to make up a guy, they’d have invented someone who actually fulfilled the Jewish propehcies of the Messiah, instead of inventing Jesus, who obviously didn’t. This suggests they didn’t invent him, which strengthens the plausibility of the evidence we do have.

A third way of looking at this is to ask if there are any comparable figures, religious founders from the historic era, who we now think were wholly made up in the way you’re suggesting. But there aren’t. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster - they all certainly existed. Indeed, I can’t think of any figures form the time period who were actually imaginary.

Dinosaurs aren’t people.

No. But physical proof is not the standard we use for determining someone’s historical existence.

You cannot achieve any good by hurting people.

People are so convinced that if we’re more cruel to criminals, they’ll stop committing crimes, or if we’re harsher to workers, we’ll work harder, or if you’re tough on border controls, immigrants will go away. It does not work and it cannot work.

Earthsea is very good. It’s kind of YA, but from before the term existed, so it should be good if you find your mind wandering when reading. Plus, it gets progressively darker and weirder as the series goes on.

It sounds like a dial tone to me, with a lot of fuzz. Could be a pager, as doctors used to use them a lot.

That is true, but I did find a lot of people on Twitter and Reddit who I could have productive and interesting disagreements with, even though I naturally mostly followed and subscribed to people and things I did agree with.

Not really interested in discussing things with fascists, but I’ve rarely seen anyone here who’s to the right of, like, a milquetoast social democrat.

I don’t think there is one, unfortunately. I agree that lack of ideological diversity is a problem with the Fediverse in general, but it’s a problem that likely won’t go away unless the Fediverse becomes mainstream.

The serious psychos are in and out of jail. The ones who were just kinda dicks sometimes (which to be honest probably includes me) are basically okay. And why shouldn’t we be? Being a dick when you’re still learning to be a person shouldn’t carry a life sentence of any kind.

It’s quite different from JS&MN, except in being about magic. If your library doesn’t have it, it’s worth buying a copy!

My top recommendation for ‘fantastical […] with amazing first person descriptive prose’ is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It’s beautiful and unlike anything you’ve ever read. I’ve bought it for three or four different people now and they’ve all loved it. Couldn’t recommend it more highly, a genuine five star read.

Other people have already said Ulysses and Mrs Dalloway, both modernist classics that take place in a single day. There are a couple of other examples of similar novels, but the only one that springs to mind right now is a deeply annoying experimental ‘novel’ called Fidget by Oliver Goldsmith, which I don’t recommend at all. He wore a tape recorder and spoke out loud describing everything he did that day, then transcribed it all and that’s the book. If you do decide to read it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I don’t know if this will count for you, but there’s a hypertext novel called 253 by Geoff Ryman which IIRC takes place over just a couple of minutes, with very short chapters describing the thoughts of each of the 253 passengers on board a train. He did later also publish a print version.

Not sure how accurate this is, but in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, some monks stay up all night chanting so that they can wake up the other monks for morning prayers. So, the night monks chant a Hail Mary X number of times, and that takes them Y amount of time.

I think you can simulate an infinite number, in a sense, but my issue is whether you can create infinite numbers, even hypothetically, in a simulation.

We simulate Pi all the time, for example. But that simulation of Pi is not Pi. A circle generated by simulated-Pi can only be described with Pi itself, i.e., outside the simulation in a space which does contain infinite numbers.

I have to admit that I don’t know much about fractals. I have two main questions about this:

1. Are fractals reaaly infinite? I’ve heard the coastline of Britain described as fractal, but I’m sure it’s not infinite in the sense I understand. As I say, I don’t know much about fractals so I may have misunderstood something here.

2. If fractals are or can be infinite, do computer simulations of fractals actually create fractals of the infinite kind or are they a type of approximation?

The existence of infinite numbers suggests that the power increase required to simulate our universe wouldn’t be a small step up in power usage, but an infinite one!

But no simulation within our Universe could be infinitely complex, which the Universe itself seems to be (e.g., as other people have pointed out, irrational numbers). If it is a simulation, then there must be another infinitely complex universe running it. Two infinitely complex universes seems like one too many.