Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

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To be picky, the timescale/locations of #23 is way off:

Socrates (Athens= 470–399 BC

Plato (Athens) 423-348 BC

Aristotles (Athens) 384–322 BC

Archimedes (of Syracuse) some 2-3 centuries later 287-212 BC

Euclid (of Alexandria) was active in Alexandria around 300-270 BC

Hyppocrates (of Kos) 470-360 BC

Pytagoras (of Samos) 570–495 BC

Thucydides (Athens) 460-400 BC

Herodotus (of Halicarnassus) 484-425 BC

Aesop (?) 620-564 BC

Solon (Athens) 630-570 BC

Pericles (Athens) 495–429 BC

Aristophanes (Athens) 446-386 BC

Sophocles (Athens) 497-406

the:

>That some unknown miracle blend of circumstances happened to arrive in Athens in 500 BC leading a tiny city of 250k people to produce Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aesop, Solon, Pericles, Aristophanes, and Sophocles, and that it might be possible to intentionally recreate such conditions today around the world and spur incredible human flourishing, and why aren’t we working on this?

is more accurately something like:

In the course of several centuries over a vast territory comprising almost all inhabited mediterranean countries some 10-15 people excelled in their fields and many of them happened to live in the main city (and cultural capital) of the area.

Sounds a lot less a miracle, between 630 and 300 BC is three centuries.

Also, the capital of a major economic/military power will usually attract the ambitious people from the surrounding regions. Its equivalent to saying "wow, so many famous actors lived in Hollywood!"

> is more accurately something like:

> In the course of several centuries over a vast territory comprising almost all inhabited mediterranean countries some 10-15 people excelled in their fields and many of them happened to live in the main city (and cultural capital) of the area.

Your restatement excluded what I think is the most interesting part:

>> and that it might be possible to intentionally recreate such conditions today around the world and spur incredible human flourishing, and why aren’t we working on this?

"Why aren't we working on this" seems like a very good question, one that you don't hear very often - "Why don't we even encounter these sorts of questions more often?" might be an interesting sibling question.

Because recreating such conditions isn't possible, basically because such conditions never existed and the idilliac setup the article seems to describe never happened.

The article seemingly conveys (at least to me) the idea that "by miracle" all those famous philosophers, writers and mathematicians were in the same place at the same time (and possibly had coffee or dinner together), this simply never happened.

So, if the idea is about creating brand new conditions (which ones?) capable to create a city/location where - over three centuries - a handful of people, excelling in their field lived, this has already been done, let's say Rome 200 BC - 100 AD, London 1600-1900, i.e. more or less the capitals (administrative and/or cultural) of large empires that lasted several centuries.

My interpretation of the intended meaning[1] of the author was to attempt to reproduce ~conditions conducive to producing this sort of effect.

If you reconsider the idea under this reframing, does it seem like more of a reasonable, "maybe worth a try"-class idea?

[1] where "such conditions" ~= "of the kind, character, quality, or extent"

What about saying that such conditions exists right now in contemporary world. We have great amount of thinkers and scientists and technologists and populists and cult leaders.

All of them producing and moving world forward. It is crowded competition, actually.

I wonder if it would be possible for these people and others to produce in a more collaborative manner, perhaps with a shared roadmap, strategy, etc. To me, it seems at least plausible, what's your take?

Socrates was not particularly collaborative. Lived through dictatorship+revolution led by his students and got killed after. The resentments were real. Quite a few people were tortured and killed in that story of betrayal, revolution, contrarevolution, amnesty and broken amnesty.

Like seriously, it was way more violent and bloody then your average western society now. And we don't even go to regular wars against other cities and don't keep slaves. Neither of those two are collaboration.

And now you can actually become citizen without being born from citizen father.

This difference would be advantageous to us though wouldn't it?

Yep, the cynic in me thinks that actually creating the conditions where a dozen people's speculation on stuff dominates discourse for a couple of millenia like the Greek philosophers is less about the quality of speculation, and more about ensuring that not much else of note is written down...

Lots of stuff gets written down nowadays, but so much of it is crap, and most of everything kind of vanishes into the ether of old forum posts as time marches on.

A lot more crap or even super high quality thinking vanished in that era.

Socrates was even refusing to write at all. All we know is what Plato wrote for his own reasons.

Some of those haven't been reported to sit foot or have much to do with Athens!! At least Archimedes and Pythagoras.. Even Aristotle was a foreigner to Athens, although he learned a lot from his Athenian counterparts! Herodotus wasn't Athenian either!!

That today, thousands of years later, we have managed to retain what those people said or wrote is also a very good reason to be thankful.

Plus, Archimedes not only was from Syracuse (Italy) but flourished under a complete (even if benevolent) monarch.

And Aristippus the inventor of capitalism? :D Or Antisthenes the one I use to see how the mental issues were valued in the past? :D

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