zzzpaz

> You keep comparing the colosseum killings to events that transpired over large geographical areas, for different purposes than entertainment.

I see, so enslaving, torturing, raping Africans and native American was not entertainment right? Was really required to kill 98% of the indigenous population. I understand, that makes sense indeed given your point of view.

> You cannot measure how primitive a culture is by the amount of people they kill.

Oh no? Then what's the metric let's see. You define what's primitive?

> To me (and, I would argue, most people), the monument symbolizes specifically those often pointless killings and nothing else

What do you think and your opinion is useless for the history. The monument was not symbolizing these killings give that was build before the killings happened and was not build for the sole purpose of killing people.

> prove my lack of knowledge of historical events

You proved that yourself I didn't need to do anything.

> Meanwhile, you have not told me anything I did not already know.

Meanwhile, your opinion is wrong even tho you've the right amount of information to understand that these games was normal.

It's like box, extreme sport or anything else like that. The difference is that the violence and the killings were well received by the population as these were normal back then.

Gladiators were not forced to participate to the games, they decided to do out of their own will. Which is totally different from other events where people were not given the choice. If you didn't want to participate to the games, was ok. No freedom for you. If you wished to do so, you had a chance to live free and a chance to die in the arena.

It's an example to dispute the false claim that 10 years is little time for a technology to mature. If 10 years are enough for hardware let alone software.

Another example are social media, from 2004 to 2014, they were widely used by almost everybody that has an internet connection (Facebook had more than 1 billions active users back then)

The same goes for blockchain if you want go to that extend. Blockchain is a concept of 1982. Nakamoto stated to work on the code for bitcoin in 2007 and released in 2009.

> Cryptographer David Chaum first proposed a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups."

Your argument is not rational, you cannot just throw false statements without even proposing proof of what you aim to claim.

> I don't think they started developing the iPhone in 2007

Development of what was to become the iPhone began in 2004. Just 3 years before being publicly available, which is similar to the two years of development for BTC.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_iPhone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto

Agreed, but unfortunately is the sad reality. And social media didn't help either my friend

You tend to realize this after you've done this experiences. If you don't, you'd miss out something and somehow you will get it back later.

I know of people who got married before 20 yo, been together for a decade, got kids an all and after that one of the partner walked away because "I'm missing something out, I want find myself".

Traveling is a way to learn new culture and see things with a different lens so I'd definitely not remove that from the experience of person on their 20s

Indeed. The tech is not scalable and in 10 years very little has been done to make the decentralized dream come true

None of this is widely used. The only widely used purpose of blockchain is trading.

> But 10 years is a short time span. Internet took more time than that to mature.

10 years in tech is definitely enough. Most of the biggest trend mature and get widely used in 10 years.

Smartphone from 2007 (iphone) / 2008 (android) to 2017/2018 has been having a massive adoption everywhere in the world.

Windows from 1995 to 2005 (with XP already around since 2001) has proven the same.

Cloud technology, from 2006 to 2016, definitely has still room to go but already widely used.

> Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life.”

What this has to do with politics? A person's personal choice doesn't necessarily need to be related to the political situation.

Majorly people are moving from farms to city life, so it's not even accurately describing the trend.

The Colosseum was active for 400 years, you consider that a relatively short period of time? In total they estimated that 400.000 people died in there, in 400 years! That's 1.000 people a year. Even if you double or triple that number is nothing compared to the deaths of the slaves trade in the Americas (estimated to 5 millions and more, in the same timespan of 400 years - 1500 to 1900 - just before being capture or during the transit to America) or the number of native Americans that have died during colonization (which is estimated to be to the order of 100 millions with a decline in population of 98%)

If that's not even enough to give you another metric the Iraqi war killed 460.000 civilians in less than 20 years and it's pretty recent.

> It serves to remind us of a more primitive past and of how far we've come.

This is what you fail to understand as well, they were not primitive by any means. Despite this games the society in Rome during the Roman empire was liberal (go read a book about it), we've killed and we continue to kill much more after the Roman empire and nowadays. The examples above should be enough for you to understand

> We are also specifically dealing with a historic artefact that symbolizes these killings.

It does not symbolize these killings only and was not solely built to host gladiator games. The Colosseum had multiple purposes. There were kind of games with wild animals (lions or African animals) vs man (similar to what nowadays people do in Spain during the Bullfighting) and was also used to stage battles, drama, composition, natural environment simulation and so on.

If your historical sources are Hollywood movies and TV series, of course you are missing something out.

It was a place or entertainment, similar to what today is a Cinema or a theater (indeed it's real name is Flavian Amphitheater)

Reminds me of The Late Mattia Pascal romance

It's just a useless observation. Same as being an alien approaching our planet and saying "oh.... Look at this planet. Over the years billions of people must have died".

Well, while is true that many people died in the colosseum (so in the entire history of our planet) what's the point? If was not to analyze or judge their behavior?

If you look at the OP reply on one of my comments you'd see that his intention indeed was to judge their behavior with our lens. Which is wrong. That's it.

> So just because it is a long time ago, it is not allowed to be in awe of the staggering amount of deaths that occurred in one single location?

You can from your individual point of view of course. But not to argue on historical facts.

> You appear to argue that there is only one valid attitude when it comes to historic artefacts; trying to understand everything, without any kind of emotional reaction.

Unfortunately that's not me, this is how history is analysed to many extend.

Your view of the history is subjective and by definition could be wrong.

Is not that you can't empathize with deaths that occured in the past, is just that you can't portrait your view as historical fact, is just your opinion as valid as anyone else. Since we can't commit to 7 billion different opinions, we've to use fact and logic to analyze history otherwise it will just be a mess.

Roman empire was not a place where people died only. Was a liberal empire, pretty cosmopolitan, high level of personal freedom (was ok to be gay for example) and it has shaped the entire ancient Europe with streets and reliques that some are still in use today (look at the Roman roman aqueducts).

On the other hands they used to enslave and kill people, like any other country and empire has done before and after that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogen...

I just said it multiple times just go and look at my replies.

Is not required to have an opinion on past events based on nowadays standards. Historian do that all the time, they look at the history with objectiveness especially when is far away to avoid to get trigger by random deaths that happen all the time (even nowadays).

So if you want understand the history the worst thing to do is to cry because someone died. You need to understand events and why these things happened and then maybe you can learn something.

I don't think is complicated to understand, but apparently seems to be the case.

If nobody is offended then why are we here discussing about how many people have died in the colosseum? Just enjoy the fact that now you can see more as compared as what we were able to see before.

Maybe you never been there, so just pay a visit and see the magnificence of it. After all, is still around after 2000 years and pretty well conserved.

This comment is so weak. Human life cannot be counted in percentage as every life matter.

I'm surprised that doesn't even have down votes.

> The point that zzzpaz appears to make is that we should be ambiguous to anything that happened in the past, because at the time those things were commonplace.

Please don't put word in my mouth as I never said what you just mentioned.

If you want speak about history you need to consider the era that we are referring to. So yes, in the ancient time these things were commonplace (Romans, Greeks, Egyptian and Babylonian), in the contemporary era these are not.

You can't use modern time logic to fight against ancient times. Otherwise next time we can spend the afternoon to speak about the code of Hammurabi and how stupid these laws were.

A good start is to learn about the historic periods and understand how to put things into perspective before being offended by random fact far away

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods

You draw the line the same way history draws it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods

We're in the contemporary era and things that happened in the Nazi time are still relevant. While things that happened in the ancient era are, by definition, ancient.

So if you want speak about history a good start is to try to study it first.

Otherwise next time we're discussing on how aggressive were people in the Neolithic and how stupid were the law in the Code of Hammurabi

I'm here to show how empty these arguments are as compared as what happened next in history or even on how we treat people in some war zone nowadays

So said, is not that hard to understand that the article was about showing something that was hidden before and now is available to everyone to visit. Nobody is hiding or denying what happened there, every Italian school teaches it without propaganda.

Yet, many comments here are about "how so many people died let's not go to visit it". Like this is not even the sense of the article?

These comments brought the political consideration into picture and I'm just showing how weak these are.

It's not necessary to drag USA, but it's just an example of how stupid these arguments are. Historical facts needs to be analysed with the lens of what was considered normal at that time not with the lens on what we consider to be normal today. As many slaves were used also to build the pyramids for example or to some extend modern slavery is a thing in some countries (look at how Qatar is handling the construction of the stadiums for the 2022 fifa world cup). Why aren't we offended by what happen today as we've the right sensibility to understand this things?

If that was not a great similitude is this a good one instead:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_of_U.S._Marines_urinat...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_priso...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_post-invasio...

This are pretty much modern and new example, instead of paying so much attention to what happened 2000 years ago you should consider to fight in order to avoid this things to happen again. Instead of doing some empty consideration on pretty old facts.

One point is to look at the far last (2 thousands years ago) and one point is to see the recent and contemporary history.

We have countries like the US that have been bullying and fighting wars around the world since the end of the world war two, yet we're here to discuss how many gladiator and lions were killed two thousands years ago

As always you can't feel how smelly is your breath but you're easy to spot a small dot in someone's eye

Yes is still alive in many places US included. But this comment is just stupid, everybody knows what happened in the colosseum so does everybody knows that major civilizations were build on top of genocides. North and south America, Australia are just a few recent example of the great British empire.

You don't want to consider it an historical relique? That's ok, but then don't bother to visit countries that have been aggressive since inception

So we should glorify a place like United States of America which was built on top of one of the worst genocide of the history? Where slavery was the norm till 1863 and since the end of world war 2 it has been involved in numerous wars around the world

Same millions of lives were lost to accomodate the current United States of America.

Perhaps we should avoid looking at historical events with the current judgement and ideology.

It was a different world then and execution were pretty normal (so was slavery for example, which US have kept till 1863)

That's your point, my point is the one of the comment.

And I guess the government didn't give the PC to everyone because "oh we need to stop our Bill Gates to run out of the country". But rather, their interest was to give equal opportunity to those in need.

That their family would use it for daily needs instead of a computer.

Poor people can't think in long terms as they're struggling with their daily needs thus it makes sense for them to solve these rather than think what if my kid would turn into a rich man thanks to it.

What's the point? Indeed that's your attitude and is ok.

At my age when I was in school the whole class had a computer (like 25 of us). Today of that class only 3 work using computer everyday.

The second part of my comment explain that if you've the right attitude and interest then a computer can help you, if you don't is just another tool like your fridge

Bank make money Insiders make money Who buy the shares at IPO price most likely make money

All the rest take the risk

> the sad truth is that many times cases like this are rare exceptions.

Well, giving a computer to someone doesn't turn them into a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs just because they own it. Depends on the attitude of whom receive it.

You could say that most of the people will use it for fun and you entertainment.

On the other side there are people who will use to uplift themselves and that's something that has to be appreciated.

The truth is that these young man, without a computer wouldn't be in this situation today. So even if is an exception is still good to see that.

> Companies also aim for a service-type of business, where you basically take a cab - just without a driver (who again can get distracted, tired, etc.)

I'm not seeing this with the current situation, given that everybody is aiming to sell the same amount of cars, but just self driving. That's how Tesla get the evaluation that it gets (total addressable market) and I can't see a fleet of robo taxi in the horizon yet.

So said, I'd agree if this is what we're leaning towards but again, is not what it seems to be going to be. If that would be the case, it falls under the "mass transportation" that I was referring to before.

> and to which you said you have more or less the same opinion

Well, they do not exists yet (Tesla even suggest not to run their car autonomously). Will not exists to the extend that we think they'd exists.

I think there would be space in which self driving will be probably adopted (eg. For example last mile delivery, robo taxi etc) but I can't see this being something that everybody must have. We can optimize the amount of cars around the roads by just sharing them. Yet all the current automakers + new one are addressing the problem (once again) but giving each and everyone of us a new self driving car. We need way less car, less pollution (electric cars still pollute, way less, but differently) more mass transportation systems. I can't see how this world can work with 7 billion people owning a car. Luckily there are countries where you can live without a car and where mass transportation is a thing.

So said, I was not the one writing that comment and I would've have said something like that either.

My argument if that a mix of human plus self driving cars as yet to be tried at massive scale (eg. 50% self driving / 50% human or whatever that percentage is). With this mixture I don't think we will be able to actually "reduce" accident just because there are less human.

You've to see the distribution of whom create accident, example if 80% is caused by distraction then maybe you could reduce the number of accident by having self driving cars. But most of the current modern cars have many automatic detector that get triggered when a danger is detected.

We can say that these cars are expensive and as such people who buy old cars without this systems are more likely to cause accident.

The same people won't buy self driving cars due to the cost. So I'd argue that maybe we won't see much improvement unless a large percentage of people actually buy self driving cars

The technology is century away for mass distribution, same as cars nowadays are still not available in evey household around the world and there are plenty of countries driving super polluting cars taken from "first world" country

I'm more or less of the same opinion and honestly. The fact that human drivers are unsafe adding new "automated" drivers in the road would automatically make the human one safer? I don't think so. Before you can reach a point where all the cars are fully autonomous you'd need decades if not century and we're here discussing that having them on the road would be better. Well, we'd see what data once this cars are around brings to us, but human machine mixture in a road sounds like a mess that we'd want to be saved from.

Reason why self driving cars are rather hard to be mainstream:

- they're freaking expensive, currently, even the "normal cars" are not always accessible to everyone in this planet, yet we assume that the entire world population has enough money to buy Teslas and sleep while going to work like is an extension of California.

- despite having common traffic rules, people drive how they want to. If you've drove long enough and in different places of the world you'd notice that: traffic rules are an opinion, driving style changes from city to city within the same country, if not district to district. "Exception" are the norm: people park where they're not supposed to, people go where they're not supposed to, people stop where they're not supposed to like all the time.

- self driving cars make economical sense only under certain conditions, and even then the time spent automating that is yet to be proven effective. Of course you can argue that we've something working, but at this stage is rather a prototype that handle base cases.

If we want to have self driving car, just have them only. Not mix them with human to create a perfect condition to have new accidents were the insurance would have challenging time on defining who's fault.

I'd rather invest money on mass transportation systems (eg. Metro, train, buses)