I noticed last year that some archived pages are getting altered.
Every Reddit archived page used to have a Reddit username in the top right, but then it disappeared. "Fair enough," I thought. "They want to hide their Reddit username now."
The problem is, they did it retroactively too, removing the username from past captures.
You can see on old Reddit captures where the normal archived page has no username, but when you switch the tab to the Screenshot of the archive it is still there. The screenshot is the original capture and the username has now been removed for the normal webpage version.
When I noticed it, it seemed like such a minor change, but with these latest revelations, it doesn't seem so minor anymore.
> When I noticed it, it seemed like such a minor change, but with these latest revelations, it doesn't seem so minor anymore.
That doesn't seem nefarious, though. It makes sense they wouldn't want to reveal whatever accounts they use to bypass blocks, and the logged-in account isn't really meaningful content to an archive consumer.
Now, if they were changing the content of a reddit post or comment, that would be an entirely different matter.
If it's not nefarious why isn't it documented as part of their policies? They're not tracking those changes and making clear it was anonymization, why not? If they're not tracking and publishing changes to the documents what's to say they haven't edited other things? The short answer is that without another archived copy we just don't know and that's what's making people uncomfortable. They also injected malicious JS into the site. What's to stop them from doing that again? Trust and transparency are the name of the game with libraries. I could care less about the who they are, but their actions as steward of a collection for posterity fail to encourage my trust.
> Editing what is billed as an archive defeats the purpose of an "archive".
No, certain edits are understandable and required. Even the archive.org edits its pages (e.g. sticks banners on them and does a bunch of stuff to make them work like you'd expect).
Even paper archives edit documents (e.g. writing sequence numbers on them, so the ordering doesn't get lost).
Disclosing exactly what account was used to download a particular page is arguably irrelevant information, and may even compromise the work of archiving pages (e.g. if it just opens the account to getting blocked).
The relevant part of the page to archive is the content of the page, not the user account that visited the page. Most sane people would consider two archives of the same page with different user accounts at the top, the same page.
Don't be surprised by this, there are a lot more edits than you think. For example, CSS is always inlined so that pages could render the same as it was archived.
For those wondering what specifically was fabricated, I checked. The earlier parts of the article include some quotes from Scott Shambaugh on Github and all the quotes are genuine.
But the last section of the article includes apparent quotes from this blog post by Shambaugh:
> On Wednesday, Shambaugh published a longer account of the incident, shifting the focus from the pull request to the broader philosophical question of what it means when an AI coding agent publishes personal attacks on human coders without apparent human direction or transparency about who might have directed the actions.
> “Open source maintainers function as supply chain gatekeepers for widely used software,” Shambaugh wrote. “If autonomous agents respond to routine moderation decisions with public reputational attacks, this creates a new form of pressure on volunteer maintainers.”
> Shambaugh noted that the agent’s blog post had drawn on his public contributions to construct its case, characterizing his decision as exclusionary and speculating about his internal motivations. His concern was less about the effect on his public reputation than about the precedent this kind of agentic AI writing was setting. “AI agents can research individuals, generate personalized narratives, and publish them online at scale,” Shambaugh wrote. “Even if the content is inaccurate or exaggerated, it can become part of a persistent public record.”
> ...
> “As autonomous systems become more common, the boundary between human intent and machine output will grow harder to trace,” Shambaugh wrote. “Communities built on trust and volunteer effort will need tools and norms to address that reality.”
I checked and that's definitely the black and white version of the one encoded in the file.
Someone build a very simple OCR tool that successfully extracted the base64[1]. The only difference besides the lack of the document tracking ids at the bottom is the original was pink on blue for the first page and has some pink text on the second.
My method uses the fact that the letters a-k + u make up around 49.9% of letters in a normal text. So I just go through a text letter by letter in my mind, giving 0 if the letter is a-k or u, and a 1 if it's l-t or v-z.
The author couldn't find a purported willow text in the ancient Egyptian Ebers papyrus that was quoted by John Mann, so he threw his hands in the air and moved on.
But Mann made a mistake. The book he was likely quoting from, 'Science and Secrets of Early Medicine' by Jurgen Thorwald (which, to be fair, is not referenced at all by Mann) does mention the Ebers papyrus in the paragraph after the quote (on pp. 57-8 for people playing along at home) but the willow quote itself in the paragraph before turns out to be from the Edwin Smith Papyrus, Case 41 to be exact. It can be read here:
The commentary on the translation also illustrates the pitfalls of learning about ancient medicine from medical treatises of the time, discussing the word ḏrḏ: "The rendering “leaves” is not wholly certain; the word might possibly mean “bark” (cortex), and indeed in the case of willow, the bark is medicinally more efficacious than the leaves."
If you use modern medical knowledge to inform the translation (and interpret the phrase "the feathers of birds and the ḏrḏr.w of trees" elsewhere as referring to how trees are covered in bark just as birds are covered in feathers; see commentary on this dictionary entry: https://tla.digital/lemma/185150 ) you potentially get a more accurate translation, but you cannot treat it as independent evidence for the use of willow bark as opposed to willow leaves. Hopefully at least the identity of the willow tree has been established in a less circular manner.
I never realized until now that in the the two different circles pictured (the Chromatic Circle and the Circle of Fifths) the pairs of notes opposite each other are the same in each circle. For example in both circles B is opposite from F.
And if you move around the Chromatic Circle, swapping every second pair of notes with its opposite on the other side of the circle, you have the Circle of Fifths.
If you take the chromatic scale and then swap every other pair of notes on opposite sides of the circle, it yields the circle of fifths. You'll notice that on the circle of fifths notes that skip a step are a whole tone apart in the chromatic scale.
Although there have been some claims in these comments to the contrary, harmony is particularly mathematical. Symmetry and the breaking of within the integers mod 12 form the foundational principles of harmony.
I think Aristotle had the greatest mind of any human who ever lived.
The older I get the more I realize that there are a thousand true and intelligent things you can say about any topic. Magazines, journals, and libraries are full to the brim of intelligent people writing intelligent things. But an extremely minuscule portion of that huge mass is made of writing that gets right to the heart of the matter.
And Aristotle is the writer I've encountered the most who constantly gets right to the essence or core of what he's discussing, moving past the trivialities and the unessential to illuminate deep truths in a logical way. It's why a short essay like his Poetics--which in many ways is a limited work for the modern day because it deals wiih a very specific type of ancient literature--is still pored over by modern writers and screenwriters because of the deep dramatic truths it lays out.
This is not (really) true. Well there's an element of truth in it, but only an element.
European philosophy was not really Aristotelian until the re-arrival of his work in the 12C, so it's hardly fair to 'blame' him for the lack of scientific development that period. When it did arrive, it was extremely controversial, and it took the genius of Aquinas (and even then, only just) for Aristotle to be accepted in Christian thought.
In the 17C, there was a much greater interest in quantitative methods than there had been previously. And some of his physics was obviously found to be wrong. But there was no discovery (and remains no discovery) that falsified broad swathes of his work. The change of interest and focus was far more important in the progress of what we now call science than the supposed rejection of Aristotle.
This is described in E.A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.
Pre-modern people were far more interested in living a morally good life (a happy life, in the Aristotelian sense of the word) than they were in controlling nature. That changed in the 17C.
I agree. Look, for example, at his work on Logic, especially Categories, On Interpretation, and the Prior and Posterior Analytics.
Of course, the fields of Philosophical and Mathematical Logic have advanced since Aristotle, especially starting with the work of Frege, but that took approximately 2000 years. And before Aristotle, no work on Logic came close to what Aristotle discovered and developed. Aristotle's work on Logic was sui generis and hardly any advancement in logic occurred until Frege 2000 years later.
I feel his work in Logic alone makes him one of the greatest minds who ever lived. That doesn't take into account his contributions in other areas of philosophy, which were also significant.
Most contemporary people can't freely dispose of their time. Their ability to move in space is restricted likewise. Aren't they essentially [part-time] slaves? That is, by comparison with people who can dispose of themselves freely.
Note that I'm assuming an objective/neutral definition of "slavery", and not the usual "slavery=bad thing".
Now, we could argue that it's a matter of education, circumstances, etc. But surely you must have met people who would obstinately refuse to listen to reason, entertaining their own misery. At least IME, it's sadly a common trait.
At least when defining "slavery" as "restricting people to dispose freely of their time, space (or goods…)", and when considering the way most people on Earth are employed today, yes.
Of course, if we define "slavery" as "harsh, senseless, cruel, violent, selfish abuse of other humans", then (I hope in the vast majority of cases), no, contemporary employment and slavery are different in kind.
But I do think there are reasons to doubt this second definition to have been systematically accurate.
For example, it makes no sense, from a cost-effectiveness point of view, for a slave owner to mistreat his slaves that much: it's in his best interest to make sure they live decently. Or, in a society where slavery is culturally acceptable, hence widespread, many slave owners must not have been this inhumane.
I'm not saying it never occurred, merely that there are good reasons to think that it wasn't as systematic as we tend to believe.
I meant in general: I'd expect moderately happy slaves to perform better, and the cost of keeping them moderately happy lower than acquiring new slaves over and over; creating slaves has a cost.
Accurately answering your question requires writing a thesis: one needs extensive access to accurate data spanning thousands of years, a solid grasp of history, psychology, ancient customs, etc. Those situations are full of subtle nuances; what historians currently understand might not even be that accurate.
OTOH, casting reasonable doubts by assuming a fair amount of people weren't too stupid is less bold of a position than "slave owners were living devil", but at least it's honest.
(Which doesn't imply that "slave owners were living devil" isn't true, merely that it's dishonest to say that it's true, because it's too difficult to know for sure).
Slavery is an old thing[0]. Even assuming the death rates are correct, one can't honestly conclude that what happened in the West in the past 500 years is similar to what happened, say, in Antiquity in the West[1] - and that's what most relevant to Aristotle - or amongst ancient Jews[2].
I know that there are too many unknowns for me to even have a clear thesis to begin with.
Are you kidding me? You think the slaves being worked to death in the Roman silver mines or galley ships had it any better than the ones in the New World? Pre-modern slavery was just as brutal.
You seem curiously attached to the happiness in slavery fantasy.
Let me repeat myself a third and last time: I don't have enough data points to conclude; acquisition of enough data points to reach a honest opinion is to daunting of a task.
It's not because I don't share your viewpoint that I share its exact opposite either.
What I think is happening here is that your image of a typical historical slave is a mildly treated house servant. >99.9% of slaves have either been toiling in brutal conditions involving large agricultural enterprises, mining, or construction projects (men) or forced into sex work (women). The latter is actually more evil.
Even in the case of the house servant you imagine the typical slave to be, you have not considered factors like having their children sold away from them, or the death of a kind master leading to being sold or inherited by a wicked one.
Addressed how? Just a meek claim that Artistotle may have been misinterpreted. Meek because the author knowingly can't argue with Aristotle's own stringent defense of the "right kind" of slavery.
Is the unstated central thrust of your statement that someone who philosophically supported slavery at a time when it was a widespread practice must necessarily be of average or below average intelligence? If so, I'd argue that you're committing two common missteps I see frequently:
1. Conflating intellectual greatness with moral goodness. These are separate categories.
2. Applying current moral standards to a previous time. You must compare him to others if his time.
Slavery is unquestionably immoral, and it's perfectly reasonable to argue that someone completing philosophical work to support slavery is committing a moral wrong, but you have to keep in mind the society into which this person was enculturated and the time at which he lived.
For the sake of recognizing a hill I too would be proud to die on, and so you know there are others who feel the same: I agree with you.
I like to think the negative feedback you are receiving is due to the ambiguity, and so, the multitude of definitions for “intelligence” that each of us has.
I know I have met people who others have touted as “intelligent” that I thought were too deplorable to be given such an accolade.
I am with you, one of my measures of intelligence is how one recognizes the collective fate of all life.
Debating such a subject leaves me with too much ire to articulate sufficiently so I will lean on the eloquence of Martin Luther King Jr:
> Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
There are a few reasons why I believe it's important to separate intelligence from moral goodness
The first and most basic is because they are different things, and for the sake of clarity different things should have different words to refer to them.
The second is because it allows us to have intelligent conversations about people who are intelligent but morally bad, or who are unintelligent but morally good. The person with an IQ barely above that of the strict definition of mentally retarded (or below, but questions of agency and responsibly arise so we won't use them in our example) who recognizes the humanity in every person and volunteers at the soup kitchen every chance he gets is morally good for doing so. The 180IQ engineer who manages the highly complex train schedule to keep the extermination camps running at capacity is morally bad for doing so.
The third is because it allows individuals to recognize that blind respect of intelligence which is unguided by morals or wisdom is a fool's errand.
The fourth is because is prevents the moralizing of language from hampering the clarity of language
The fifth is because the conflation of intelligence and morality provides an easy pathway to morally wrong positions. If the messaging is that "evil people are dumb!" and an impressionable individual encounters an intelligent person making a persuasive argument for something which is morally wrong, you've robbed them of a framework with which to engage and combat this person's ideas.
The sixth and final reason is that modification of language in this way hampers our ability to consider the world independent of our societal preconceived notions. I found the previous comments in this chain ironic because the individual who was calling a great (highly intelligent) philosopher a dunce for being unable to see beyond his cultural ethical norms was doing so from a position which is deeply entrenched in his current cultural and ethical norms, i.e. the inherent evils of slavery, the requirement of strict moral purity, the compulsion to attack every perceived positive characteristic of someone who is morally bad in order to devalue them and their intellectual contributions, and the perception of the world as a pitched battle between good and evil wherein righteous indignation should be one's perpetual state.
Now of course I agree with this commentator's ethical preconceptions related to slavery, but that's secondary to the importance of the things I listed above in how I approach Aristotle. I mean no disrespect and I hope this has been helpful in understanding my perspective.
- I think taking interest on a (full-recourse) loan is a form of fraud. Or rather, it is to fraud what robbery is to larceny. I also think it produces, in practice, ownership in a share of a person, such that it can be usefully compared with slavery. I think I can make good arguments in support of this. But I don't think people who argue otherwise are dumb, or arguing from self-interest; I just think they haven't fully thought through it. You might extend the same leeway to someone widely acknowledge as one of the greatest minds in history.
- Please let me know of any anti-slavery arguments from that period you're aware of.
- Whether acknowledged or not, all anti-slavery arguments use Aristotelian concepts (as will any attempt at rational discourse, or any attempt at discussion of morals).
What makes you so sure? Slavery was universal across the human race, or practically so, until well into the second millennium AD. Nobody seriously questioned it. A bit like interest-taking now, which is why I brought it up as an example. Borrowers may complain about their monthly payments, but they don't seriously imagine themselves the victims of injustice qua borrowers.
We imagine that "if I lived back then, I'd be against it", but we forget that the past is a foreign country. People thought and acted quite differently.
>such that it can be usefully compared with slavery.
If you think interest on a loan is even in the same world as selling a human being to the highest bidder from an auction block, then we view the world so differently that I don't imagine efficient communication is possible.
>widely acknowledge as one of the greatest minds in history.
I mean, he's simply not.
>anti-slavery arguments from that period you're aware of
Well Zeno [0] for one, and Alcidamas [1].
And I'll say again, the fact he had to pen this screed in the first place shows that his view wasn't the exclusive one. In fact it shows how middling his intellect actually was that he was unable to see past his own time and place, despite the fact that others could.
>all anti-slavery arguments use Aristotelian concepts
This is more like Aristotle's fanboys trying to shoehorn other people's natural insights into his worldview.
Whether I'm right, or am an absolute drooling nutcase, for thinking interest-taking (on a full-recourse loan) is immoral is beside the point.
The point is that it would be idiotic of me to think somebody defending the practice was stupid or immoral, when it is accepted almost everywhere and by everyone. Same is true for Aristotle and slavery. Calling him stupid or evil on this account is misguided. Every individual and every age has its intellectual and moral blindspots. See Boogie_Man's comment above, he covers the various problems with this approach more thoroughly than I have.
> It is your belief that interest taking on loans and legalized slavery are a difference of degree, not a difference in kind.
No. They are comparable, and both moral evils, but are different species of action.
But suppose I said yes, then what? It would not affect the argument. Whether I'm right or wrong about interest-taking per se, I would be wrong to believe that people who defended it were wicked or stupid (rather than simply misguided) given its universality. Similarly, regardless of whether Aristotle was right or wrong about slavery per se, you are wrong to believe that Aristotle was wicked and stupid for defending it (rather than simply misguided) given its then-universality.
Not as it pertains to the harming of other sentient beings, which is the only moral issue that matters. And in such cases I am often in conflict with my own culture.
I used the Perspective tool in an image editor to give a rough idea of what the first graph would look like adjusted for population change:
https://i.imgur.com/jJlQcVh.png
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