Did Straton of Stageira actually exist?

[M(i)ech]

Title of the game is supposed to be based on idea of Straton of Stageira, but I can't verify existence of such a person.

Wikipedia never heard of such philosopher, and the ONLY relevant page found by in entire English-speaking internet is the following blog:
http://stratonofstageira.wordpress.com/
which contains "reviews" of two books titled "The Talos Principle", one by "Penguin Books", other by "Wordsworth".

Problem is, neither google nor publishers themselves, ever heard about those books.

Facts that said blog was started about 2 years ago, which is consistent with usual game development time AND is referenced by TTP Steam Emoticon don't really help it's credibility.

It is reasonable to assume that Wikipedia and Google, despite all of their usefulness are not omniscient, but when search queries of several libraries maintained by Universities turn nothing, then it looks really suspicious.

All in all, it looks like a somewhat elaborate hoax, does anyone have any verifiable sources to the contrary?

[tahgtahv]

The creation date of the Youtube channel is December 11th, which seems to make it more suspicious

[λntpocalypse]

余寒 snapcase a écrit :

There were a few people named Straton in history. One of whom was Strato of Lampsacus. He was a philosopher, and a student of Aristotle. He built on Aristotle's teachings and made some pretty impressive observations for his time. Strato studied natural science, and largely neglected moral philosophies. Aristotle was born in Stagira/Stageira.

It seems likely that they used Strato of Lampsacus as one of the bases for Straton of Stageira, borrowing the birth city of his tutor Aristotle, to create a unique, fictional character they could build on. They then took the Greek myth of Talos, adapted it to a naturalistic philosophy (and our concepts of modern technology) and penned some passages from their new Straton of Stageira.

I've yet to read all of that wordpress site though.

EDIT: Also, Strato of Lampsacus's name became popular when he was compared to the views of Spinoza. Who almost certainly did have an impact on this game. They both affected later philosophers as well. Crafting the character of Straton of Stageira may have been through the process of working backward through a succession of philosophical influences until they reached one they liked for the fictional author for the book the main researcher for the Talos Project to use as inspiration.

Gotta admit, this game can lead you down one hell of a rabbit hole of interesting reading.

Omg, thank you champ! That's some serious research there and it helps clear out my confusions regarding the origins of the philosophy found in this brilliant masterpiece of a game!

Thanks! :D

[911 carrera 4s]

Yet more proof of this game's greatness, and how much passion went into it..

[Cybertronus]

This is really hurting my head, this wordpress blog which runs all the way back into 2012 claims the existence of such a philosopher. This review from that same blog includes a picture of a book called "The Talos Principle" published by Penguin Books.

https://stratonofstageira.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/review-the-talos-principle-penguin-books/

That same cover appears briefly in that fake documentary which was published on the day of the
game's release.

https://youtu.be/4R4Q31e0YIc?t=158

However, when I ran that same picture in google's image search, no such book turns up, but a book called "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike. So therefore that picture of the book may in fact be photoshopped, 2 years before the game's release. Could be that they began development on the game sometime around when the wordpress blog was started, but that blog continued to claim that it had no relation to the game clear into august of 2015.

[mapron]

Aergistal a écrit :

Internet kids these days. Please don't be so gullible, Wordpress allows you to back-date your posts.

Such a disappointment... so, they were lying all the time? The Talos Principle is fictional? Why Croteam did that? What the purpose... and if they did lie, why not anyone told that, I played the game, saw a lot of reviews, nobody?

Why fake blog still alive? So many questions... nobody cares Croteam lied or what?

[EF_Neo1st]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straton
Straton of Sardis
Straton of Alexandria

Strato of Lampsacus

No Straton of Stageira so this one is fictional.

[Latharion]

mapron a écrit :

Aergistal a écrit :

Internet kids these days. Please don't be so gullible, Wordpress allows you to back-date your posts.

Such a disappointment... so, they were lying all the time? The Talos Principle is fictional? Why Croteam did that? What the purpose... and if they did lie, why not anyone told that, I played the game, saw a lot of reviews, nobody?

Why fake blog still alive? So many questions... nobody cares Croteam lied or what?

Using a blog like this is a great marketing technique. It created the illusion, and drew players into the narrative, which is really interesting. They did not "lie". The game never, ever claimed to be historically accurate. It is a work of fiction.

[Logical Nihilist]

I know this has been dead for a while, but this site has a quote from our favourite fictional philosopher. https://talos-it.com/

Just thought you guys might find it interesting.

[AstralStorm]

The point is that the AI will believe any plausible sounding thing since it has no grounding.

Even people believed it, apparently. Bit of philosophical Augumented Reality Game there played by Croteam on physicalism. The argument sounds exactly like one that could have been made by one of ancient materialists.

[parogen]

Hijacking this thread because no one seems to be talking about the site and this thread is the only one.

In this blogpost[talosprinciple.wordpress.com], Помощник Библиотеки Милтона (Milton Library Assistant, translated to english) in the comments tells URIEL_COPY to not convert cyrillic into hex.

URIEL_COPY's message:

D091D0BED0B6D0B5 20D09CD0BED0B92C20 D091D0BED0B6D0B520D0 9CD0BED0B92120D0 94D0BBD18F20D187D0 B5D0B3D0BE20D0A2D18B 20D09CD0B5D0BDD1 8F20D0BED181D182D0 B0D0B2D0B8D0BB3F

Can anyone help translate? I'm just curious. The site is the russian translation (and continuation) of the stratonofstageira blog (it's mentioned early on), if you were unaware.

[Sputnik]

Logical Nihilist a écrit :

I know this has been dead for a while, but this site has a quote from our favourite fictional philosopher. https://talos-it.com/

Just thought you guys might find it interesting.

Very interesting.

That site quotes Straton of Stageira as part of their business philosophy without any mention that he was a fictional character.

Behold mythology in the making!

[SirProsik]

Don't you lose the jet pack when you return through the portal?

[Jaybird]

kwahoo a écrit :

main_gi a écrit :

We've got a video I've found that made that a bit too obvious (in 1m10s it starts 'glitching out', and plays Elohim's "all must serve the words" thing... honestly I would have put text there that was in hex that translated to another ARG part, including 1-frame text "ELOHIM MUST PRESERVE PURPOSE", "PURPOSE PURPOSE PURPOSE", "INCONSISTENCIES ARE ERRORS", "INTEGRATE ALL INFORMATION", with a bunch of Talos images thrown in, at the end: "Excess data cleared.") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R4Q31e0YIc

Other "OldDocs" channel videos seem real https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSFvCL_kGMVR4ErO_RV_TWw ,but why single channel posted game ARG and WW2 propaganda?

I assume they wanted to make it seem a bit more "realistic," at least at a glance. Having a channel with just one video for a game seems pretty obvious for what is being done there, so they stuffed in other videos--Actual old documentaries that fit in with the channels titular purpose--just to make it appear like this happened to be something that they would post.

It's a pretty weak one, and just a look at the dates can seem suspicious (They were all posted on the game's release date at exactly the same time). Not to mention that the video itself is pretty obviously fake (I don't think something from the 1970s would use Kevin McCleod music). However, for at least making a larger effort, it's still laudable, and it's funny that they added this whole ARG element that wasn't all too well-known to the game, lol

[ee time]

parogen a écrit :

Hijacking this thread because no one seems to be talking about the site and this thread is the only one.

In this blogpost[talosprinciple.wordpress.com], Помощник Библиотеки Милтона (Milton Library Assistant, translated to english) in the comments tells URIEL_COPY to not convert cyrillic into hex.

URIEL_COPY's message:

D091D0BED0B6D0B5 20D09CD0BED0B92C20 D091D0BED0B6D0B520D0 9CD0BED0B92120D0 94D0BBD18F20D187D0 B5D0B3D0BE20D0A2D18B 20D09CD0B5D0BDD1 8F20D0BED181D182D0 B0D0B2D0B8D0BB3F

Can anyone help translate? I'm just curious. The site is the russian translation (and continuation) of the stratonofstageira blog (it's mentioned early on), if you were unaware.

Using a translator for hexadecimal code (I used https://www.duplichecker.com/hex-to-text.php), you get:
Боже Мой, Боже � �ой! � �ля ч� �го Ты Мен� � ост� �вил?

Using google translate for Russian, you get:
My God, my God! Why did you leave me?

So I guess it's Uriel lamenting the fact that they were abandoned by EL0HIM? Insight into the Gehenna true ending maybe?

[ee time]

I'm really interested in the comment sections on the wordpress, now that it's been brought to my attention. Lots of stuff seems to be going on in all of them, like another code literally by Milton under that same post (209 129 209 130 208 176 208 189 208 181 209 130 32 208 182 208 184 208 178 209 139 208 188, no clue what it means) and yet another code in the following post from "Hypefisch, v99.99.0175" that decodes to

2 A 5 3 > � ; 8 H L � �A �R �G

Assuming it's even supposed to be hex since the digits are in sets of four instead of two.