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Another trope that bothers me, along similar lines, also appears in this article: that people have always had anxieties about the changing ways and attitudes of the youth, and so we should dismiss such fears.

In fact, ancient civilizations did fall, sometimes because their people lost the will and confidence needed to maintain the institutions that they inherited. Because they became decadent in their abundance and abandoned the virtues that created their fortunes in the first place.

I think this view is more problematic than the one you're critiquing...

I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume more modern people (significantly more modern, even), are a bit more enlightened on some subjects. At least, we no longer consider things like slavery and sexism OK, yet ancient people did, which indicates some significant gaps in their philosophies and high influence from outside.

> Have you considered that this "primitive" idea comes up over and over again among great thinkers and writers throughout human history because there's something to it?

Well, there is something to it... it's often reflecting the natural order of things, or the Zeitgeist of that time. Generally, a great thinker does not transcend time and is somewhat locked into their time, in that only certain strains of thought seem to exist during a time period and others do not, which indicates that overall variety of thinking is just not very high, regardless of how much of a "great thinker" you are.

This, of course, it true for our time as well. Very likely many things we believe today are heavily influenced by whatever is, in a sense, "fashionable". Some ideas are best left unstated.

The age, or lack of thereof, won't really tell you how accurate or useful something is, you'll have to evaluate it on its own terms. I don't like terms like "primitive" because they don't mean anything on their own, but that's a different question.

On the other hand, we also live in a crazy extreme environment today compared to olde times. We have better sanitation and life expectancy, but also way more exposure to things like lead, diesel fumes, radiation, environmental pollutants magnified through the foodchain...

I mean, how many Greek cities had nuclear landfill fires smoldering underneath them? Fewer than modern America. And how much mercury and DDT was in the fish they ate? How many pharmaceuticals in their runoff water?

> I mean, how many Greek cities had nuclear landfill fires smoldering underneath them? Fewer than modern America.

How many modern American cities have smouldering nuclear landfill fires under them?

Only one that I know of, but that's still probably more than ancient Greece.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-do-you-put-out-a-su...

It's an interesting bit of trivia that St. Louis had one of the nation's first cyclotrons used for atomic research, but radiation is the gift that keeps on giving. We're more or less stuck with it now, though; too bad we aren't using more for energy. Why, my pops has stories of scrubbin' the hot room floor what'd raise your hairs...of course, that was back on the East coast. Grandpop always was fond of hands-on lessons.

Well. Hands-on lessons, ignoring the IRS, and losing his company's license to produce radioactive material. Still, he considered it a win when he was still cogent because 'those boys at oak ridge saved him from the draft.' Can't argue with that. Or at least, I sure as hell can't, especially since my other grandpop served in the Pacific theater and was very quiet about the whole thing besides using certain, uh, racial epithets to his death.

Let's all stop and appreciate the lack of serious global conflict around now, yeah?

> At least, we no longer consider things like slavery and sexism OK

No one has ever thought sexism is OK just like no one has ever thought murder is OK. The term contains within it the implicit value judgement.

So long as there is sexual dimorphism among humans there will be a fundamental nature to the relations between the sexes and gender roles. If you would like to keep your mind closed and not think about the possibility that what we have now is not necessarily in keeping with that nature, that is your prerogative.

> No one has ever thought sexism is OK...

They have. Aristotle:

> "[T]he relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled".

This is exactly what sexism is. It's perceiving women as inferior to men. Why one does so is beside the point. If one finds justifications for being OK with sexism, such as sexism reflecting nature, that doesn't change the fact that they're OK with sexism.

> just like no one has ever thought murder is OK.

Murder is definitely very OK in the natural world, so if that's your sticking philosophy, it's pretty much a necessary requirement.

> there will be a fundamental nature to the relations between the sexes and gender roles

I already addressed that this is one of the limiting factors on "great thinkers" and why often their thought patterns are so similar:

> Well, there is something to it... it's often reflecting the natural order of things...

> If you would like to keep your mind closed and not think about the possibility that what we have now is not necessarily in keeping with that nature, that is your prerogative.

Oh, I'm fully aware we're not fully keeping up with nature, and I consider that a very good thing.

> When you truly accept that we today are not smarter nor necessarily more 'enlightened' than the people that came before us

We're not necessarily smarter (native intellect) but we are a shitload more enlightened (educated, experienced). In Plato's time, only the absolute social elite could converse in this manner, whereas now we have much broader and deeper knowledge available (and discussed) on pretty much every aspect of life that is common between our times.

Don't fall into the trap of deifying past thinkers; they were humans too. Yes, we can learn lessons from them, but our populace as a whole is more enlightened than the populace as a whole in Plato's time. One simple example is egalitarianism; while not perfect now, Greek democracies were only democratic for elite men. Sucks to be you if you're a slave or a woman because... um... that's just the way it is? If you're going to be making theory, you should work from solid foundations - the ancient Greeks had some really wrong ideas about the role of the physical heart and brain of a human, and no-one today would talk about the left ventricle being the source of human heat, for example.

> they were humans too

Yes they were. However I'll put more stock in the ideas that have survived and been promulgated throughout the ages than I would, for example, some poorly thought out perspective from some random guy on HN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

> and no-one today would talk about the left ventricle being the source of human hea

No one today would seriously suggest that a low-fat high-carb diet was healthy and yet that's exactly what was advocated by the medical profession up until about 5 years ago.

Well, you're succumbing to survivorship bias there, because there were plenty of poorly thought-out perspectives from yesteryear that haven't survived. Claiming that the ancients were more enlightened than us moderns because a few of their ideas survived is simply not rational.

And it's certainly stacking the deck to compare the apex thinker of antiquity to a non-apex thinker today.

> survivorship bias

This term is a meme to you and you don't actually understand it. Tell me, what is the meaning of 'survivorship bias' when we're talking about things which have lasted for significant periods of time, over many cycles?

You keep arguing against a strawman. I never claimed that an idea is better just because it was held earlier.

> you don't actually understand it. Tell me, what is the meaning of 'survivorship bias'

If I don't understand the term, then what's the point of getting me to explain it? Explain it yourself if you think I have it wrong.

> Tell me, what is the meaning of 'survivorship bias' when we're talking about things which have lasted for significant periods of time, over many cycles?

O_o

My first comment was pointing out that the ancients believed in a lot of things that DIDN'T stand the test of time. If you're just limiting yourself to only those ideas which have survived and are making your conclusions from those, then you really are in no position to declare others ignorant of what survivorship bias means.

> I never claimed that an idea is better just because it was held earlier.

A strawman of your own, because I wasn't talking about individual ideas, but the concept that the ancients were more enlightened than today. I said in my original comment that some lessons come from them, but overall they weren't 'more enlightened'.

... When you truly accept that we today are not smarter nor necessarily more 'enlightened' than the people that came ...

The trouble is that we are more enlightened.

Scientific knowledge != enlightenment.

I would argue that ancient peoples were much more intelligent on average than people today. It is obvious to me that even in the past few generations, each subsequent generation has been less intelligent, more narrow minded, and overall less robust than previous generations. I personally knew many people who were born in the 19th century and I could not say that my generation is in any way superior to theirs. We may know more stuff, but we are far less wise. Reading ancient authors only reinforces how simple and unenlightened we are compared to them.

It is a very unpopular view, of course, because it is threatening to the self-esteem of my contemporaries who believe that all of the social changes and scientific advances in the past century or so have put us on the cusp of some permanent state of enlightenment. I am sure that we are rather on the cusp of great disaster. No one really likes to think that, but the evidence is pretty obvious in my opinion.

An argument made on such vague terms is easy to make. You never qualified how you measure intelligence, nor which people you're talking about (those who in the past who were wealthy and well-written enough to leave records vs the 'common clay' of today,) nor have you said which cultures you believe to be on the cusp of collapse, nor any prediction of the cause of such obviously imminent disaster. And of course, no proof that it would be a disaster, rather than a mere rebirth.

So I would argue that the provider of such an unenlightened exposition is not in a position to be giving such analysis in a meaningful way.

Oddly, I think one thing in support of your claim is that modern people do better at IQ tests. I've read that if we calibrated correctly, then populations from a few generations ago would have absurdly low median scores -- as if they had actual mental conditions.

But that can't be right measurement. Any test that took a normal person from 1900 at found them to so lacking in intelligence that they can't function in normal life is clearly missing some part of their intelligence. And perhaps that missing something is what you would describe as broad mindedness and robustness.

Also remember that when you are comparing your generation to a younger one, you have the leg-up of an entire generation of knowledge and experience that they don't have. But they may gain that in time.

If you are concluding that your kids' generation, and your grandchildren's generation are each successively less intelligent, please take a moment to reflect if that's a generational issue, or just an age issue. Kids do dumb stuff... are you sure that you or your peers weren't doing equivalently dumb things at that age?

Late reply, but no, I didn't really have the younger generations in mind when I said this. I was thinking of my generation compared to my parents' and grandparents' generations. Heck, even comparing presidents from the last 40 years to those we had a century ago reveals a decline -- not that I'm a fan of Woodrow Wilson or Warren Harding.

> ... we are more enlightened.

We have always believed that.

Not really.

All through the European middle ages people regularly believed (rightly!) that the ancients were wiser than them. Of course they still believed themselves superior because they were Christian -- and were partially right about that too.

Do you have an example of that? I can find examples of things like ancestral worship, but I can't think of any where they felt their ancestors were more enlightened? I'm sure there are individual examples but, as a general statement, I can't really think of a society that was suggesting they go back and do what their ancestors used to do.

Not do what they do, but think like they thought. Many medieval authors wrote from the perspective that the ancients were much more intelligent and knowledgeable than they. The Renaissance, for example, was sparked by the discovery of ancient Greek manuscripts a couple of centuries earlier. As those ideas were reintroduced, there was astonishing intellectual discovery and growth in Italy and then throughout Europe.

I'm not really able to think of any of those medieval authors who thought that way. I'm sure there are examples, but I can't think of any. It seems that, at least in practice, we've pretty much always felt we were the apex of morality and knowledge. That's, I would guess, why broad changes are the exception, slow, difficult, or violent.

I guess I probably should have written something longer and with some caveats.

The idea of Enlightenment has intrigued me ever since a conversation I had when I was working with the UN in a third world country.

The conversation was with a lady from an African country and she was talking about her tribe. She said she was from the enlightened tribe. My initial reaction was to question her belief in her own superior enlightenment. My subsequent reaction was to question my own level of enlightenment and ask what right I had to question hers.

My feeling is that enlightenment (or whatever metaphysical term you want to use) can only be gained following a long period of introspection and study requiring isolation, peace and calm, something that is sadly lacking in most parts of the modern world. Claiming that we are more enlightened than the ancients where such conditions only required finding the proverbial mountain cave is a bit of a stretch.

> Do you think people today live happier, more fulfilling lives because food is superabundant to the point of excess and sexual proclivities are uninhibited?

Yes, very much so.

> Why are you so sure?

Because it aligns with my experience, ultimately. And because I have explanations for why these ancient thinkers thought the way they did - the kind of sexual behaviour that made sense in a world without modern medicine is very different from what makes sense with it.

> Because it aligns with my experience, ultimately.

The experience of one person over not even a full lifetime?

That's just laughably dumb. I don't mean to be rude but I also don't know what to say to that.