Fascinating question. I have to admit, I never think about the Roman Empire unless it's in relation to Monty Python's Life of Brian. Reading your article, I paused and thought, about how our daydreaming is formed and influenced by various factors and which of those factors are inherently dependent on gender to various degrees, if any. Root cause analysis, if you will.
From your results we get a moderate association, would that indicate that with a larger sample size V would increase? You could add a poll here, too, and leave it open. I guess, me not thinking about the Romans makes me an outlier.
Haha I think this would be a good time to mention the limitations of such a poll, particularly that it polled American Twitter users. I can imagine there may be environmental factors that make the American male fixate more on Rome than the European male. However, there are plenty of men who don't think about it at all (=
I would expect the moderate association to increase with a larger sample size. Interesting idea, I'll consider adding it, but I feel like the question is becoming contaminated by the trend itself, i.e., the trend is making more people think about it, therefore disrupting our ability to know if men (or women) were naturally thinking about it.
Ah yes, of course, location, surroundings. Being in immediate proximity to Roman history most likely makes you think less of it on average, seeing it every day. Come to think of it, I lived in Nuremberg for years, which was one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire in the 1490s, not Ancient Rome, though. And since your question, I remembered Rome, the series, very good series, Spartacus, even the Roman ruins we passed on our bicycles near Alcudia on Mallorca a few weeks back. Romans... you can find traces of them everywhere around here.
It's pretty amazing how ubiquitous ancient Roman architecture is throughout Europe. When I was traveling through Lyon, I was absolutely blown away by the Roman ruins. Moreover, it doesn't even seem like there is much of an interest in performing the excavation. Any fraction of that would be an enormous tourist attraction in the US. Maybe things become less interesting when you're already saturated with ancient history. Those are all fantastic shows, I agree.
I think so. Of course, it remains interesting in itself it's readily available if one wanted to, so naturally one is less inclined to do so, I guess. Although, I have been to Rome and the queues at the Colosseum are insane...
Rome has biblical significance in ways very few places have. The world being predominately Christian and the history of the location pretty much means, so many things on a daily basis can be tied back to Rome in some way. Hell, their invention of aqueducts paved way for massive expansion of civilization. Both architecturally and engineering wise, we wouldn't be what we are today without the Romans.
Hehe, this is such a seemingly random question! For me, almost never. I don't even remember the last time I thought about the Roman empire. Whilst watching Gladiator many years ago, past?
We went on holiday and went through Pompeii last year, so I guess I probably thought about the Roman Empire then. But 🤷♂️ other than that ... almost never.
I can't speak for the experience in other countries, but Roman history, stories, and expressions certainly have a strong place in American Culture. If you don't mind my asking, where are you from (or at least where did you grow up)? I'm curious if for some reason this is more of an American phenomena.
I spent a lot of time in research (academia like yourself) but pivoted to industry after my postdoc. I've had a fairly diverse background ranging from tissue engineering and microfluidics to pain research. Most recently I've been in embryology. I moved out to Dallas, TX earlier this year to work with the de-extinction team at Colossal Biosciences. Since the Thylacine is part of our program there's quite a bit of collab with unimelb.
I have similar questions for you! Are you faculty now? What's your research area?
Oh wow, that's amazing. Congrats. What a cool project.
Immunology/biochemistry/virology is my background. Teach a lot of undergraduate courses, but also have a small research group and am part of a much larger/broader research team in biochem/immunology.
Sorry, but I was distracted from never ever thinking about the Roman Empire by wondering where I can go to get AI to generate scenes out of my novel that are as cool as that Coliseum image.
Thank you very much. Immediately after I left that question I found that very post. In stumbling around the web after that I found ChatGPT. Just to see what would happen I asked it to generate a crime novel plot. I didn't really need one, but I also shied away from trying to feed it anything specific about the one I already have. It felt way too public; I guess I'm the modern equivalent of those jungle natives who feared cameras would steal their souls. Is using these AI sites confidential in any sense at all?
I don't think you are being paranoid! The conversations and interactions with AI and users are kept and used for training data. There is an enterprise version that is being slowly rolled out that does maintain privacy. Feel free to share the art you make!!
If they're producing a version with privacy protection I'll wait for that. And if it can make something that matches or exceeds what's in my brain I'll definitely let you know. Thanks!
Fascinating question. I have to admit, I never think about the Roman Empire unless it's in relation to Monty Python's Life of Brian. Reading your article, I paused and thought, about how our daydreaming is formed and influenced by various factors and which of those factors are inherently dependent on gender to various degrees, if any. Root cause analysis, if you will.
From your results we get a moderate association, would that indicate that with a larger sample size V would increase? You could add a poll here, too, and leave it open. I guess, me not thinking about the Romans makes me an outlier.
Haha I think this would be a good time to mention the limitations of such a poll, particularly that it polled American Twitter users. I can imagine there may be environmental factors that make the American male fixate more on Rome than the European male. However, there are plenty of men who don't think about it at all (=
I would expect the moderate association to increase with a larger sample size. Interesting idea, I'll consider adding it, but I feel like the question is becoming contaminated by the trend itself, i.e., the trend is making more people think about it, therefore disrupting our ability to know if men (or women) were naturally thinking about it.
Ah yes, of course, location, surroundings. Being in immediate proximity to Roman history most likely makes you think less of it on average, seeing it every day. Come to think of it, I lived in Nuremberg for years, which was one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire in the 1490s, not Ancient Rome, though. And since your question, I remembered Rome, the series, very good series, Spartacus, even the Roman ruins we passed on our bicycles near Alcudia on Mallorca a few weeks back. Romans... you can find traces of them everywhere around here.
It's pretty amazing how ubiquitous ancient Roman architecture is throughout Europe. When I was traveling through Lyon, I was absolutely blown away by the Roman ruins. Moreover, it doesn't even seem like there is much of an interest in performing the excavation. Any fraction of that would be an enormous tourist attraction in the US. Maybe things become less interesting when you're already saturated with ancient history. Those are all fantastic shows, I agree.
I think so. Of course, it remains interesting in itself it's readily available if one wanted to, so naturally one is less inclined to do so, I guess. Although, I have been to Rome and the queues at the Colosseum are insane...
Rome has biblical significance in ways very few places have. The world being predominately Christian and the history of the location pretty much means, so many things on a daily basis can be tied back to Rome in some way. Hell, their invention of aqueducts paved way for massive expansion of civilization. Both architecturally and engineering wise, we wouldn't be what we are today without the Romans.
Hehe, this is such a seemingly random question! For me, almost never. I don't even remember the last time I thought about the Roman empire. Whilst watching Gladiator many years ago, past?
We went on holiday and went through Pompeii last year, so I guess I probably thought about the Roman Empire then. But 🤷♂️ other than that ... almost never.
Gladiator is quite the classic!
I can't speak for the experience in other countries, but Roman history, stories, and expressions certainly have a strong place in American Culture. If you don't mind my asking, where are you from (or at least where did you grow up)? I'm curious if for some reason this is more of an American phenomena.
Of course, no worries. Grew up in England. Moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2009.
Oh cool, we have a bunch of collaborators at University of Melbourne!
What a great place to live.
Ah nice, and yeah it's great here. I was at unimelb for a postdoc for a fair few years, but am at Monash now.
Where abouts are you? Are you in research? What's your direct area?
I spent a lot of time in research (academia like yourself) but pivoted to industry after my postdoc. I've had a fairly diverse background ranging from tissue engineering and microfluidics to pain research. Most recently I've been in embryology. I moved out to Dallas, TX earlier this year to work with the de-extinction team at Colossal Biosciences. Since the Thylacine is part of our program there's quite a bit of collab with unimelb.
I have similar questions for you! Are you faculty now? What's your research area?
Oh wow, that's amazing. Congrats. What a cool project.
Immunology/biochemistry/virology is my background. Teach a lot of undergraduate courses, but also have a small research group and am part of a much larger/broader research team in biochem/immunology.
Sorry, but I was distracted from never ever thinking about the Roman Empire by wondering where I can go to get AI to generate scenes out of my novel that are as cool as that Coliseum image.
Hi Fager! This image was generated with MidJourney. You can subscribe and generate art directly on their discord. However, my recommendation would be to use DALLE3! I give some examples in another post: https://davidkingsley.substack.com/p/dalle-3-is-incredible-and-a-little
Thank you very much. Immediately after I left that question I found that very post. In stumbling around the web after that I found ChatGPT. Just to see what would happen I asked it to generate a crime novel plot. I didn't really need one, but I also shied away from trying to feed it anything specific about the one I already have. It felt way too public; I guess I'm the modern equivalent of those jungle natives who feared cameras would steal their souls. Is using these AI sites confidential in any sense at all?
I don't think you are being paranoid! The conversations and interactions with AI and users are kept and used for training data. There is an enterprise version that is being slowly rolled out that does maintain privacy. Feel free to share the art you make!!
If they're producing a version with privacy protection I'll wait for that. And if it can make something that matches or exceeds what's in my brain I'll definitely let you know. Thanks!