#atrahasis

[aweirdbeanbag]

Part of my mythology final is adapting a myth into a film pitch. Here's all the characters I designed for that.

[dandylyonsolarium]

Close ups of a big piece I’m working on - as well as the Ars Notoria I’m using and, I hope not abusing

[thequotiest]

Nintu shall mix clay with his flesh and his blood. Then a god and a man will be mixed together in clay. Let us hear the drumbeat forever after. Let a ghost-intelligence come into existence from the God's flesh.

Enki in the story Atrahasis

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I want to draw something for you! What would you like me to draw?

Depends on your skills and interests, of course, but here are some things I think you could do, if you could do any or all:

A picture of a tree (can be big or small, doesn't have to be a tree)

A map of a region of Earth (the part we can see in our world)

Pictures of the ocean (you could zoom in or out)

Some part of the sky (the sun, the moon, the stars, etc. all together if you like)

A picture of the earth from space (the blue sphere you can see on a clear day)

[metal-in-the-microwave]

[apenitentialprayer]

Interrupted Divine Sleep as Symbol of Cosmic Chaos

Divine rest or leisure was closely connected with a second theme, namely, sleep as a symbol of divine authority. Because rest was a divine prerogative, it was attributed to the head of the pantheon in a preeminent manner. The ability of the divine king to sleep undisturbed was accordingly a symbol of his unchallenged authority as the supreme deity. A corollary concept was also present: to interrupt or to disturb the sleep of the supreme deity was tantamount to rebellion against his dominion. This aspect of the sleeping deity motif may be illustrated from Atrahasis. It is no accident that the revolt of the lesser gods against their divine their divine king was set in the dead of night. These gods marched on Enlil's palace, their mutinous cries rousing the divine king from his peaceful sleep. This challenge to the divine king's authority was supposed to have ended with the creation of a humankind to do the toiling for the gods. However, as the humans multiplied on earth, so did Enlil's problems:       Twelve hundred years had not yet transpired       Before the country expanded and the people multiplied.       The country was bellowing like a bull;       The god was disturbed by their din (ḫubūru).       Enlil heard their cries (rigmu)       And addressed the great gods,       “The cries of humankind have become too much;       Because of their din I am unable to sleep” (I.352-359) According to one theory now fairly widespread, Enlil was deprived of his sleep because of excessive noise generated from an overpopulated earth and even that Enlil's actions were wholly capricious. But is it [sic] most unlikely that the Babylonian poet-theologian meant to suggest that the flood happened as a result of an arbitrary and malicious decision by their chief deity, especially over such a petty reason as the loss of physical sleep. Key here is the meaning of the human outcry which prevented Enlil from sleeping. According to the overpopulated earth theory, this outcry was understood to mean the noise generated by an excessive number of people on earth. But noise is not the primary characteristic intended by the ancient Babylonian poets. Rather, the Akkadian terms rigmu and ḫubūru indicate cries of rebellion of humankind against the authority of the deity. In the prior revolt by the lesser gods Enlil's sleep was also interrupted by a similar outcry from the rebel gods. The humans are thus portrayed as carrying on in the spirit of the slain rebel god out of whose flesh and blood they were created. Indeed, in the scene describing the creation of the first humans, it is said that humankind will possess the slain god's ghost (etemmu), as well as his capacity to scheme or plot (ṭemu). Having inherited the rebellious spirit of their divine "ancestor," the humans duplicated the actions of the rebel god(s). Instead of promoting divine rest, they violated their mission by preventing the deity from sleeping. Accordingly, in this Mesopotamian story, as in Genesis, the divine decision to send the deluge was occasioned by human transgression against divine authority.

- Bernard F. Batto (“The Sleeping God: An Ancient Near Eastern Motif of Divine Sovereignty”)

[dam-nugig]

Irving Finkel | The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure

Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper I with responsibility for cuneiform in the Department of the Middle East, British Museum. This talk, illustrated by a PowerPo...

Because Irving Finkel is so popular I wanted to share with you his lecture given at Oriental Institute in Chicago. The topic of the lecture concerns shocking discovery of Akkadian tablet containing a description of the ark in which Atrahasis (akkadian Noah) saved himself and his family before the great flood.

The content of the tablet was very surprising to Irving and other scholars and it lead a group of experimental archaeologists/boat builders to a daring experiment. Were they able to build a model of the ancient ark and was it able to float? Find out in this lecture and this documentary.

[argumate]

I can see that AI risk is a specific case of the software safety problem. It’s not obvious to me that solving the general case of software safety is necessary to solve AGI risk. Suppose that our AGIs are made based on reinforcement learning. Wouldn’t might point to a solution where we just train the AI on human values?

Assuming that whatever technique it’s using the AI is ultimately still software, then a flipped bit can invert its utility function, and there are a wide range of fiendishly subtle bugs that can flip a bit located in the program itself, or the libraries it uses, or the compiler, or the operating system kernel, or the microcode,