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gwern comments on Special Status Needs Special Support - Less Wrong
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re: 'Special...'
I like Sagan's "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" formulation better.
And on a somewhat irrelevant note - Tolkien is great poetry? He's recitable, certainly, and his translations of 'The Pearl' or 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' are justly lauded; but his own poetry isn't too great.
('Sing hey! For the bath at close of day \ that washes the weary mud away...')
I agree, but you can say the same thing about the Bible. Neither are going to survive comparison with, say, Auden.
Yup. I'm not comparing Tolkien to any of the legendary professional poets, I'm comparing Tolkien's fiction to the Book of Job.
Try reciting "Troll sat alone on his seat of stone" with a rap beat to it... (Up came Tom/with his big boots on/and said to Troll,/Pray what is yon?!)
If that's not great, what is? ;-)
Myself, I'm slightly obsessed with "Earendil was a Mariner".
I think Aragorn and Legolas's eulogy for Boromir (at the beginning of The Two Towers) is great.