It's not really that straightforward though, is it? Firstly is it a mean or a median average? What counts as an empire? When do we date the rise and fall of specific empires? These are not questions with straightforwards answers. Would Hitler's Germany count as an empire? How many Roman empires were there?
silasmariner
Actually wait this is glib as fuck and probably wrong, I retract it. You could have the capability to understand, given specific allocation of resources but only do it rarely, without violating any information theory fundamentals
But then you just have the same paradox writ large. Maybe we, as a collective, can entertain understanding of a single mind - but the generalisation of us as 'the mind' rather than 'a mind' includes all of us, and must therefore be left wanting
Fair. Braid is, in some ways, the video game i consider most worthy of the status of 'art' so I couldn't not say it, although it's certainly not like LotR in that respect. OoT OTOH, feels like it fully fits
Braid and Ocarina of Time are the two that come to my mind...
It's a pretty trivial informational paradox for a mind to comprehend itself -- comprehension of its comprehension of itself then needs further comprehension... So yeah. Only a much more complex mind can understand a given mind
It largely won't happen. We're near a ceiling on what predictive models can do, and it's still painfully obvious when something's bot-generated. Porn is one where I can actually see that changing because people have never minded absolutely trash porn, but the arts as they currently exist are not gonna vanish
Not gonna double my response - OP deserved it more - I will say another 'fair enough', give you an upvote, and leave it at that
Good response, happy with that. Sorry about the implications, I think I just found it a fusty conservative choice. Had it been Infinite Jest and Chaucer I probably wouldn't have bothered responding. Sometimes the idea of 'classics' can seem... narrow and dull. Just wanted to mitigate the notion it was all brown bread (not that I don't love your suggestions tho')
Why start there with British and US authors? Why not 100 years of solitude, Disgrace, and dream of red mansions?
Mark Knopfler had a good song about that - Boom Like That
What bit did you worry I hadn't read? Was it an answer you posted in another thread, perhaps, that you're talking about? I don't believe there was anything in my reply that suggested I hadn't comprehended anything relevant up to that point...