Let's suppose this was even true, what would it matter?
There's this weird assumption in popular culture that somehow the moment near death contains more truth than other moments, as if right before passing we have some "ah!" moment. But the opposite seems far more reasonable: as we get closer to death our reasonings will become increasingly distorted.
For example, a common narrative is "on their death bed they had wished they had focused less on career and more on family." Of course that's what you'd think on your death bed! You're likely scared, feeling alone and wish there was someone with you. You also don't have to worry about rent, gaining the respect of your peers, what you're going to do with your free time, retirement etc.
The idea that the moment of death brings some sort of grand understanding only makes sense if you presuppose there is some grand sense behind it all. Otherwise it's just the final moment of a long process of physical, emotional and mental decline.
If you're Catholic, it's significant as one's last chance to turn away from sin, discard this life, and join Christ in an eternal life that isn't this one.
If you're not, then think of it like an actuary: at every moment in your life, you have to live with the sum of your past and future choices, adjusted as need be. At the last moment, you have no more uncertain future choices, so it's clear what the optimal path was, so naturally you have regret.
> Let's suppose this was even true, what would it matter?
Your analysis begs the question. It assumes the secular worldview, but that's precisely what a deathbed conversion repudiates. To a Catholic, deathbed conversions matter a great deal because Catholics don't conceptualize death (or life) in the same way as a secular person.
You're just reiterating my point. Even if this where true, it doesn't add any information. For a Catholic it simply affirms their Catholic worldview, however for someone with a secular worldview it is also perfectly inline with their existing views.
As such the statement "Surprisingly" make no sense, since this information is not "surprising" to anyone, even if it were true (which is it very likely not).
Of course is matters. Not because it indicates some "grand understanding" or "aha" just because it shows how we spend our entire lives trying to look life head-on without flinching but, in the end, we almost all flinch.
"Sinner actually going to heaven, not hell" priest declares to grieving family. I wonder how many so called 'deathbed conversions' actually happened, vs how many were completely fabricated.. and not in the sense of some one wearing robes tenting their fingers and laughing maniacally, but instead trying to 'offer salvation' and taking literally any movement or noise as confirmation.
I don't see where that article in any way engages with what GP says; it appears to use "confession" in a more metaphorical appeal to religiosity as a concept rather than to a specific spiritual ritual.
I plan on doing that - just in case the pearly gates are truly guarded by someone who requires you believe in a specific God.
It's called hedging your bets
If there are multiple possible gods, and you get punished more for believing in the wrong one than for not believing in one, you might be better off without it.
This is precisely the perpetual Catholic slander that Christopher Hitchens referred to regularly. A lie told by believers about several prominent freethinkers.
It goes both ways. On the one hand the religious want to claim eveyone as one of their own, especially in death-bed conversions. On the other hand, there are the rabidly anti-Catholic types who make up lies about people having been abused without evidence, as we see in this thread. Or the atheists who conveniently forget that quite a lot of "free thinkers" were religious.
Wittgenstein was not a Catholic because he had no faith, but he was respecful of Catholicism, had many Catholic friends, and asked for a priest to be present as he died. There's no evidence he formally converted.
What of it? What would Wittgenstein say to the syllogism, 'Some Catholic priests are child abusers, Wittgenstein was a Catholic in childhood, therefore Wittgenstein was abused by a priest'?
The only sources for the claim are evangelic Christian websites, and this specific thread. This thread is actually one of the top results for the search now. I've spent a lot of time reading Wittgenstein, and reading about Wittgenstein. This was never mentioned in any credible source I've come across.
Well, as mentioned in the article, at the time of writing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein was deeply moved by the kind of spirituality found in Leo Tolstoy's work. However, it's the explicit purpose of the Tractatus to draw a demarcation line between propositions of logic (and by this, meaningful sentences of philosophy) and any mystical or spiritual feelings, thoughts, or faith. So it really doesn't matter at all.
If anything, the fact that George RR Martin and this vlogger obsess about fictional governance, while Tolkien was more interested in myth and language says a lot about the change in times and what media-makers feel they should contribute to.
Exactly this - most of the libraries in my area have little if no technical books. I know exactly why too - I've frequently come across libraries in the UK that are selling off their technical books, because they're not receiving much attention. I've had multiple occasions where I've managed to buy dozens of books for the value of just one of them.
It's not easy to even ask for a book. I've asked librarians for books before, and I even have a friend currently working in a fairly large library request a book for me (with evidence from me of interest in it), and the request was refused.
The real books worth reading are those that make you a greater expert than the majority of the population. Libraries don't benefit much from storing books that will only be read by one or two people.
I gave away technical books at my local library as they had a "free books section". Some of them were older editions of industry standard text books (Real-time rendering and PBRT first edition), but the library refused to take donations because they were "technical books". Granted a lot of them were really outdated 90s technical game programming books like "Windows 95 Game SDK Strategy Guide" and "The Black Art of Windows Game Programming".
So all in all, only 3 of today's top 10 had good titles... Either the titles could have been better but the content was too interesting, or this tool has very low recall.
I think this is a prime example of where AI could go wrong. When people just talk about social media AI curation they don't really understand it. But I personally really wish social media would do less AI curation, who knows what gems we've missed, just because they're maximising for our instant satisfication.
Kinda spooky even, who knows, social media totally might have already killed companies that sounded too different or even just political ideas that differ from mainstream (or sponsored) views?
I think the problem is that the title is not a good indicator for current-event related submissions. "More Intel speculative execution vulnerabilities" may be a bad blogpost, but it's an important current event, so it still gets to the top regardless of the title selection.
Categorizing submissions to different types, and repeat the experiment, you'll find the program may predict blog/article and "Show HN" submissions with higher accuracy.
> This project is far from credible. All the things I did were to satisfy my own curiosity. With that being said, the bigger limitation I can see is that I only had access to a few stories. I also cannot validated the neural network prediction, cause in order for me to do that, I would have to write a content, come up with a title and then post it choosing words that triggers a good value on the neural network and post that history on a Friday noon, to see if my story succeed.
A great article and a lovely author - he helped me develop some ideas on my final year essay while I studied at the University of Sheffield, even though he wasn't lecturing me.
