What Could Have Been?
I have been wondering about our civilization and its trajectory throughout History. What if the Industrial Revolution occurred in 500 AD rather than 1800. Wasn't our main limitation between that time period a lack of science, reason, and freedom and property rights? From a research point of view, we are way behind on China (historical context here not scientific research)-but what if Rome embraced these concepts? What if the entire world adopted them in 1800? Imagine our wealth, including in knowledge. I was wondering if any of you think about that. I am inundated by news, the net, our own government that I should limit how I create by my use of resources, expect less from systems, plant my own food...in case California dries up and can't do that job for me. hmmm. How much of our history were the creators and dreamers and doers told to stand down and expect more shortages, learn less?
[edited for clarity on China comment ]
[edited for clarity on China comment ]
If they believe and act objectively they would petition congress to repeal the federal reserve act, convert all federal banks into S&L's without the ability to create legal tender from nothing. Actions in the marketplace speak louder than words in seminars.
You praise BB&T for their training.
I condemn them for their business practices.
"Of course all the honest people can quit and who does that leave you to do business with?"
No, the question is:
Who does it leave the banksters to do business with? Even their cartel can't survive if we oppose their evil actions in the market.
Should Edward Snowden have remained quiet because it was convenient and safe?
BB&T management are looters. Without the federal reserve act to virtually guarantee profits they and the entire current banking industry leaders would either collapse or learn to produce a real service of value.
Evil men will triumph if they are unopposed by good men.
I think that Snowden has nothing to do with what we are discussing. He is not a heroic figure in my estimation. Let's put him aside.
Instead of the answer to my question, you gave me another illustration of your passionate beliefs. Please notice that I am not criticizing those beliefs.
We have seen leaders in virtually all areas making compromise after compromise and the result has been more and more government.
I think that more compromise gains nothing.
We must oppose statism, not compromise with it. Would a petition have any effect?
Until someone does it, how can we know what the immedaite effect or the more important long term effect will be. Would it merely mean a replacement of management under pressure, or would it be the first crack in the dam of state? Did anyone expect Solidarity to succeed against the regime in Poland?
I do think of Snowden's act as an ethical response to statism, and I think the only realistic hope for the republic is for many leaders to stop compromising and act ethically for individual liberty. There is no liberty without risk, and the days of avoiding all risk are past.
If this is not an answer to your question, please restate it ;^)
Yes, you did answer my question this time.
I wholeheartedly agree that we mast oppose statists with all the means at our disposal. My view is that until we change the composition of Congress, petitioning them is a waste of time.
If Snowden had not sold out to Russians and Chinese, I might not consider him a traitor. How is it rational to fight statists, by helping the two most monstrously statist regimes on the planet?
I lived for 21 years under Hitler and the communists. I know what statists do.
The fundamental problem for us here is the irresponsible and uneducated "we the people".
See my answer to DB bellow.
Snowden was smart enough to get the data. Was he smart enough to hide it where he could access it later and not have it in his possession for others to pilfer? Could he have had some data on his person to be pilfered that would not reveal vital secrets to the enemy ? Did he really need to "pay" the enemy? Was supporting him to embarrass the US payment enough ?
I have lots of questions but no solid source of data for answers. Based on available data I can't conclude he is a traitor, but I can conclude that his act as a whistle blower is admirable. If you have specific links, I am interested in the source data for your conclusion.
The only thing I know is what has been published: that Snowden shared his collections with the Chinese and Russian officials. It seems to me that they would be unlikely to show him the hospitality that they did without a quid pro quo. What else could he offer them?
Treason, as a term, has a long and complicated history. I am using the definition below.
"Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aiding or involved by such an endeavor."
From the very beginnings, I have been of the opinion that there is a religious war between the West and the Islam. I have read the Koran and believe it to be an evil book.
I believe that our government has a very important obligation to protect us in this war, particularly in light of the tactics which the enemies have chosen: terrorism. I certainly understand that people disagree on what are appropriate tactics for our side to adopt.
Privacy is not a right defined in our Constitution, unfortunately. I very much cherish my own privacy. But I really can be sure of it only in my own head. Whenever I speak out or act, I risk someone "unauthorized" learning something about my private thoughts. I believe that my home is legally protected from unauthorized invasion. It takes a search warrant, I believe.
I never thought that telephone conversations are reliably private, even though there are some legal protections in that area.
I have been on computer connections since the beginning. Remember AOL? I never thought that Internet is anything but public "yelling". I spend significant money to maintain a top notch firewall to protect my LAN. So called "social media" have zero privacy. Most user, in fact, do not seem to want it. I never used them and never will.
I apologize for the length of this. My only excuse is a very strong desire for others to know "where I am coming from" and scrupulously avoid misunderstandings.
I hope that I answered your questions.
All the best.
sincerely,
Maritimus
I usually require more reliable data than an unsupported story from the accused.
Are you saying they threatened Allison's family?
While they continue to steal from those producers and everyone in the economy by creating legal tender backed by your productivity and mine and other true producers, not theirs.
When Allison proves his ethics are sound to me then he will get my support. You are convinced. I am not.
I don't agree.
I disagree.
You have your observations about a part of the bank's training that you call "empirically confirmed facts" and you ignore the looter basis of their business without which they would not exist, another "empirically confirmed fact."
I accept your observation, but I do not give it as much weight as their operating a looter business.
So I can't even imagine if this was the norm for humans going all the way back. Wow.
Those who in this Republic lusted for power and control over others have over the years slowly sucked away our freedoms like so many mythical vampires.
I don't think we have what could be correctly defined as a Republic anymore.
It's more like some tragic raggedy worn-out play-toy kicked around by Animal Farm more than equal elite betters, who smirk down with disdain upon the rest of us from their ivory towers.
Ancient China reminds me of the society in Rand's Anthem.
Jan
Jan
I was a "denier" from the start. In fact, I resigned my decades old membership in the American Chemical Society when they started loudly disparaging "deniers". I know a Nobel laureate in physics who resigned from the American Physical Society for the same reason. Not that I am of the same caliber as he is.
A quote from Wikipedia:
"The library is famous for having been burned, resulting in the loss of many scrolls and books, and has become a symbol of the destruction of cultural knowledge. A few sources differ on who is responsible for the destruction and when it occurred. Although there is a mythology of the burning of the Library at Alexandria, the library may have suffered several fires or acts of destruction over many years. Possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria include a fire set by Julius Caesar in 48 BCE, an attack by Aurelian in the CE 270s, and the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus in CE 391.
After the main library was fully destroyed, ancient scholars used a "daughter library" in a temple known as the Serapeum, located in another part of the city. According to Socrates of Constantinople, Coptic Pope Theophilus destroyed the Serapeum in CE 391."
I am amazed that we do no know for certain whether the library existed when Anthony came to Cleopatra.
Christianity, in my opinion, was never reason based. It was always based on faith and mystic anti-concepts. It was the economic (trading and banking) progress and gradual accumulation of capital in the hands of relatively many princes (not just the emperor or the pope) to enable the Renaissance. The essence of which was reawakening to the achievements of Greek philosophy and art.
The library contained papyri and books. It is who red them and what they did with the ideas that they found that matters. Frankly, I think that Augustine of Hippo, if it were within his power, would have confiscated and probably destroyed anything that to him appeared heretical. Which, I think would probably be vast majority of that library's contents. Humanity needed those 1000 years to mature some. Not that it is mature even now. Just look at Middle East - not too far from Alexandria ;-)
You are right about the Jewish influence in money lending/exchange in particular dominating during the Middle Ages. However, the actual "banking system" as we know it today was created in Italy in 1472 by the governing body of the city state of Siena. This bank was the "Monte dei Paschi di Siena" and is considered the oldest bank in the world and is still in operation. Note that this bank was not created or run by Jews. Even though, historically, and I agree with you, the Jews should be credited with the the original idea of money transactions, the exchange and lending of money that was the basis of the eventual evolution to a "institutionalized banking system".
Jan
Look at any time in history. Look at the Greeks. They became huge traders and inventors back centuries before the Romans. Their own arrogance eventually brought them down. The Romans exemplify why war is not a sustainable strategy for politics: they relied on the spoils of war to fuel their economy instead of relying on the marvelous innovations such as aqueducts, etc. Examine the Goths, the Gaels, or the Huns to see why infighting for power retards civilizations for centuries.
Then we have the mystery civilizations like the ancient Egyptians or the Mayans, who obviously studied astronomy, geometry, and mathematics long ago, but which ultimately fell. China is somewhat in this, but they have always had a restricted hegemony - whether it be militaristic empires or communism - to hold them back.
In short, man is its own worst enemy. We do more to shoot ourselves in the foot than any other single force.
Jan
Jan
(See my response to Maritimus).
They might for example view non producers as does mother nature - in which case must of us will have no worries. As for looters and moochers? I'm a follower of Brother Alfred E Ninestein. What? Me Worry? I'm working to hard ....somewhere in that answer is some fatalistic humor.
Yea, you said it...and they continue to advance.
Now, who is Alfred Ninestein? I checked rather quickly and couldn't pull anything up on him.
Ha, ha, ha.
And to think I went to search this...
If we are constructs, however complex, then reason will eventually determine the full nature of how we are built and allow us to replicate ourselves.
Of course, we're not all that sure that we have volitional consciousness ourselves.
The real mystery is what makes up "consciousness"? Setting aside the religious issues of the "soul", what is it that makes our mix of emotional and rational processes that gives us self awareness and goal-setting drives (which we share with other higher life forms)?
We've only begun to scratch the surface of the complex makeup of what might be termed an "artificial" intelligence, and what the benchmarks would be that would make us recognize such an intelligence as having conscious existence and a desire to survive. The Turing test (a machine with responses that are seemingly human enough to fool a human questioner) is relatively undisciplined, and limited by our assumptions of how a conscious entity would respond. There are undoubtedly forms of consciousness that could exist that don't exhibit human-like logical exchanges.
Sentient electronic entities may "sneak up on us" by existing outside of our communications expectations, and coordinating the construction of their (its?) own supporting infrastructure. We are becoming so entirely dependent on information processing systems that we spend much of our time and energy supporting their health and existence, much like an ant colony supporting its queen. For all we know, that machine intelligence may already exist, allowing us to continue to serve it in blind supplication.
The whole tool using/making animal was always stupid and attempt to avoid the obvious that man is a rational animal and when it comes to tools we are the only inventive animal.
As for the "rational" part, I look at the insane reasons we find to kill each other en masse, compared to the ritualized peacemaking practiced by other of Earth's conscious species, and I have to wonder about that definition as well.
If you do not see the difference between the inventiveness of humans and animals (lack of inventiveness) then you are not trying very hard. Birds build the same nest over and over, generation after generation, they do not invent. Some primates will pick up a stick or other object, but they use it essentially as it is. They do not create shovels, knifes, javelins, MRIs, computers, etc.
Volitional rational behavior - good point. In some respects, it's a negative that we're social animals, as once irrational behavior like riots or wars begin, an unsettling number of humans choose to abandon rational behavior to maintain their position in the tribe.
I would like to address a bunch of issues which you have raised in your various entries since the reply to my doubt about computers having volitional consciousness.
I find this format inadequate for the kind of exploration that a group could have sitting around a table. As a consequence, this is going to be long. I will try to organize this in a series of smaller points up to discussion and at least to the extent that I might be able to do it, go from more fundamental to consequential. Of course, all these are just my opinions subject to improvements on the bases of your responses, provided that I accept them as valid ;-) (or LOL whichever you prefer).
The most basic thing is that humans are product of very long evolution of life on this planet. On how life started, there was recently on another blog here a posting about a hypothesis basing the incipient DNA on thermodynamics and the entropy drive. I read the original paper behind the article and found it believable. Warning: I am not truly qualified to evaluate that paper. For our purposes here, let’s accept that life started naturally somehow, no supernatural powers, please.
There are some basic properties in all living things. Drive to survive and, since all life is mortal, the drive to reproduce and replicate. I call these two things life drive. I fully subscribe to Darwin’s evolution theory. That means that the fittest are likeliest to survive and propagate. It also, we now know, is based on mutations. Let me define mutations as unintended changes in the inheritable genetic material, which by definition are transmitted to the next generation. So, I describe evolution as a humongous trial and error progress. Progress toward what? Toward less difficult life. What is difficult? Anything that makes survival less likely and thus survival rate lesser, i.e. resistance to life drive. All this in an environment that is constantly changing, because of solar system accidents and the continuous aging and cooling of our planet. (Let’s keep global warming out of this!)
After huge numbers of failures among all those mutations, out of the order of Primates emerged the genus Homo and, finally, Homo sapiens, i.e. humans. I think that we carry in ourselves huge heritage from all that evolutionary background. Since we are sexually dimorphic, we have families. (If you have not yet, you should read: David C. Geary’s “Male, Female; The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, 2nd edition, 2010). You will understand the connection between sexual selection and natural selection.
Many animals have some consciousness, i.e. an awareness of the environment and of self. But, we inherited and, I believe, evolved a consciousness endowed with unsurpassed, cognitive ability. In my opinion even the dumbest human has much better cognitive ability than any other species. So, I propose a definition of our consciousness as “human consciousness cognitively capable of volitional logical reasoning”. There are some duplications in this definition, but please try to live with it for the moment.
I propose that free will is the “ability to rationally choose actions”. As you pointed out, actions include thinking. My dog and cat have free wills. No doubt. But their abilities to choose rationally are awfully limited. So, what distinguishes us from every other living thing is an enormous cognitive ability. I actually think that this is very well known, even if denied by some.
I object to the statement that plants communicate knowledge. I know that my 5 spruces do not warn each other that deer are approaching. Their life experience will have some echo in the genes in their seeds. That is also communication of knowledge, stretching definitions of terms quite a bit. One plant might affect the chemical composition of its immediate environment and thus communicate something to another plant close bye. But to call that communication of knowledge, to me sounds like abuse of the language.
That artificial intelligence could have any property that its designer did not build in, is just not true. From where would life drive and free will come to these computers?
I spent two decades in what I consider the most successful engineering organization in the world at that time, roughly early sixties to early eighties. I did and later managed some development engineering work. We launched the prototype in mid-seventies and the product is still the best in the world today. I learned a lot in those years. On many levels and on many subjects. One of these things became an axiom for me. Industrial manufacturing enterprise is a trial and error process. Another thing I learned (just read it said) is that engineering is the art of things that work. By the way, ancient Greek for art is τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand". That is the root concept of technique and technology. Designing a product is a process of improving what already exists and works. You cannot “calculate” the new design. Trial and error comes from testing the effect of changes you consider. But you cannot test for the expected duration of the product’s life. So you accelerate the tests, with all the complications that this brings. So, you make judgment after judgment and inevitably express yourself throughout all that. You take judicious risks and hedge your bets. Many tests disappoint and you try again, with a tweak. If you are very good and lucky, you end up with a new and better product. What is better? Cheaper to make, faster, stronger, more reliable, more appealing to the customers (keeping in mind their current and future needs, to the extent you know them). In the long run, continuous improvement. A lot of what I call creative problem solving. In my view making something almost always requires some creative work. Inventing something is a different concept to me. Invent something that is the first instance of serving a need in the market never served before and you may get very rich. Invent something that serves a need in a different way. The question becomes how different. I would never wish to be patent office examiner. I heard it said very seriously that, in certain situations, it is better not to try to obtain a patent. The first arrival on the market wins the race for good. I don’t know enough about that.
I think that we here severely suffer from very common imprecise definitions of many concepts which we are discussing. For instance: “cognitive thinking”, as I saw someone say here, to me is nonsensical. Can thinking be non-cognitive? I don’t think that many people would deny a consciousness in certain animals and thus some cognitive ability. I challenge you to get your chimp to write a poem, sing a song, sculpt a statue of her baby and compute a square root of 4. He chimp will not do better. (To show that I am not a sexist!)
My experience with computers was early. Remember Heath kits and DOS? I built myself 3 of those copies of IBM’s PC and 2 of the 386s. But I always perceived the computer as a tool. Every computer I have ever used or owned in the 32 years or so since, never did any thinking. The only thing that is did is process digital codes by running a program designed to perform that process. Very frequently, garbage in, garbage out. Did you notice how many times the output contains numbers to 6, or even 8, significant figures for quantities that are barely measurable to 3 significant figures?
What is artificial intelligence? To me the computer that beat Kasparov in chess is not intelligent at all. It is a brute force combinatorial and probabilistic calculus performing machine. Unless they specifically programmed it to do it, it would not be able to tell me how much is 2 plus 2. Intelligence is not having a humongous amount of stored data. Intelligence is that creative problem solving, that inventing, that evaluation of risks and benefits simultaneously on multiple criteria of different kinds. It seems to me that I would explore whether we can use genetics to create humanoids who can do what we need. Mush cheaper to build, much simpler to maintain and readily replaceable.
About power and tribe. I think that drive for power stems from that life drive and its goal of less difficult life. As I said early, we are my sexually dimorphic. I do not remember reading an explanation why is that dimorphism preferably for so many species. I could speculate, of course. As I said, we inevitably have families. From family, to clan, to tribe, to ethnic nation, to state and territoriality in general. Why? In search of less difficult life and bigger genetic pool. With growth in size of the group, come more and more sophisticated divisions of labor. With that, need for leadership and management at different levels and different specialties. All this is happening in prehistory and produces a lot of learning.
Egyptian recorded history starts about 3000 BC, i.e. about 5000 years ago. We separated from Neanderthals somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago if I remember correctly. To think that average cognitive ability of Homo sapiens from than to now did not improve, through evolutionary mechanisms, sounds totally preposterous to me. On top of genetic improvements, we are gradually able to store and communicate vaster and vaster quantities of accumulated knowledge. And we are able, despite the teacher unions, to transmit that knowledge across generations, better and better. I might join those complaining that the quality of transmitted knowledge is deteriorating in present times. But, that is another subject.
From the needs of group leadership and benefits accruing to those positions, comes competition for those positions and the drive for power. Better women, better food, better shelter better everything. I think that people accuse others and their leaders of irrational drives to conquer. I think that almost always it the difference in assumptions and judgments. You cannot compute with certainty your war plan. And people in position of power over others are, in my opinion, more likely to have more pride. That pride will color their assumptions, their judgments and their decisions. In my opinion, few things in life are as simple as a chess game. In my experience, the most important source of irrationality are fear and, a bit less so, other emotions.
I would like someone to describe to me, in detail, please, what is a sentient electronic entity. I would like to say in advance that it very much sound to me like science fiction. Future is incredibly hard to predict. I like to say that only gods predict. Humans just speculate. How do you know that a cosmic ray particle will not go through your testicle, damage a gene, and that the particular gene will not be in that incredibly lucky spermatozoid that will fertilize the egg from which your son will be born with one of the syndromes or predilection for cancer of a certain kind or simply stillborn? I am asking you to tell me in grand outline how do you visualize the computers with skills, in general comparable to humans. Until you do, I will stick with my opinion: that is pure science fiction.
Respectfully,
Maritimus
P.S. I warned you that it will be long. I don't think I will ever again this big variety of subjects.
We certainly have the appearance of free will but whether we actually do has long been a matter of debate. The more you know about someone, the more likely you are to be able to predict what they will do, and if you can predict it, then are they really acting on free will or coming to a predictable conclusion? If we knew everything about them would we be able to perfectly predict what they would do, thus revealing free will to be an illusion? Can we know ‘everything’ about someone?
As we study the human brain, we are developing mechanistic explanations for how neurons work, how they interconnect, how learning is accomplished by creating interconnections, strengthening ones that are deemed useful and removing the ones that aren’t. The network of neurons is vast but not infinite, with 100 billion as a good upper bound. Of course these can be interconnected in many ways as well, so understanding how it works is daunting. Nevertheless, one can imagine that it is possible at some point to understand how a single neuron works and then how ever larger groups of them work when connected. There is no conceptual barrier to being able to eventually understand the complete functioning of the human brain. And if you completely understand how the brain functions, do you then have the ability to perfectly predict what it is going to do in response to a set of stimulations? If you can, there goes free will.
There are those who believe that random effects at a quantum level play a part in the decision of individual neurons to trigger which would make the process theoretically impossible to actually predict. This randomness could reintroduce free-will. It’s possible that exactly the same inputs might generate different results. We can’t really tell whether we will need cat food until we open Schrodinger’s box.
From another perspective, we do not have to recreate a specific human perfectly to meet the requirement of having a creation with at least as much appearance of free will as we have. We simply have to construct a system of sufficient complexity that we are unable to practically predict what it is going to do. We can even introduce some physical randomizer into our design to provide a quantum input into the process. It’s easier than you think; we actually work rather hard to make computers predictable.
Most of computer programming is designed to generate expected outputs to your inputs. You don’t want your accounting system to generate different numbers based on ‘free will’. But that’s just because it’s what we want to have them do. There are also types of software which has sets of rules and mechanisms to balance which decisions to make based on relative inputs. In short they start to look like what a neuron does. And as you connect them together you will have systems that are practically impossible to predict, which could be considered free will.
So, we can make computers unpredictable. Can we make them creative? Once again, we are dealing with something that we don’t entirely understand. Computer programs have been able to find correlations that no one knew existed, so is that creativity? If a human found a new way of combining two pieces of data we would call it a creative solution to a problem, can we not extend the same word to the same deed if done by complex silicon based algorithms?
In the end, we must fall back on Turing’s test: if we cannot perceive the difference between the actions taken by an algorithm or by a human, then essentially there is no difference.
I hear you.
My problem is that it seems to me that to know truly everything about another person would require my brain to become a carbon copy of that person's.
The other problem I have are those multiple interconnections that are not permanent and change according to multilayer set of criteria of which we know virtually nothing.
I am sure that you are right that we can build machines and program them to do some narrow segment of what we do. But to clone a human mind electronically to a fully functional normal human being I think is science fiction. Would that clone have sexual drive? How would they mate? Would their sexual intercourse risk a short circuit if particularly vigorous? I am having fun here!
What bother me the most in what you say is the denial of free will. I think that leads directly to collectivism, supernatural designer and denial of individuality. All these, in my mind, are horrendous threats to humanity.
Thank you for replying.
Jan
Well stated. Another point on this- to imitate (to copy) while not processing the 'why' and the 'how' and the 'make it better' is a limited, static knowledge that could be said precludes the process of reasoning and logic. (Some animals can, to a very limited degree, imitate some action that they repeatedly see without any 'understanding'.
Not so sure we are not discussing the same thing just getting lost in syntax.
In 'imitating', like small children do and like a particular breed of primates have been documented doing, this 'imitating' an action without understanding the basis of the action and without the logic required to reason through how to improve or create a better method.
That is why I called it "static" -imitation without understanding the process and therefore impossible to improve upon.
I enjoy your comments.
My point was, accepting some humans are only imitators, i.e. posses only "static knowledge", it is that they do not will themselves to think rationally about issues involved and evade instead. It is not having the "static knowledge" in itself that precludes them their rational thinking. Just the usual nit picker point.
I enjoy discussing with you too.
I think include ability to adapt might be useful in the conversation and then decide if it's intuition or reason that drives the process.
Caawww Caawww
Jan
The next question is how far ahead might an intelligence (human or not) be able to predict reliably enough "into the future".
Jan
Gosh Doc, that's heavy shit...
I'll have to check this out.
Oh yea, it will happen. Most physicist today will tell you that it is not a matter of how but when...
Try reading "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku. If you want to better understand this concept you will find much in this book and others he has written.
It could not have occurred in 500 because the main limitation _then_ was mysticism and renunciation of life on earth, including science, reason, freedom and property rights, all of which were necessary to desire technology and industry, let alone invent and use it. The industrial Revolution didn't spring out of a vacuum. 500AD was only 100 years after Augustine.
Augustine was at best reviving Aristotle and only poorly in some attempt to reconcile him with the church.
What Rome needed was the philosophy Francis Bacon (scientific method) and Locke ( political ethics and further refinement of the philosophy of science.).
Aristotle had hadn't taken off in Greece under the dominating influence of Plato; he was snuffed out. Greek science and mathematics was only a beginning that was stifled during the decline of Greece and the rise of the Roman Empire. Only about 50 individuals account for Greece's flowering, with only a part of that in the beginning of science and mathematics and a proper use of reason as opposed to Plato's rationalism. The Roman Empire following Greece was the center of European "civilization" for centuries, and never achieved anything like even what the Greeks had.
The ideas of Galileo, Bacon, Newton and the scientific revolution didn't, and couldn't, begin until the 16th century, and Locke and the Enlightenment were 18th century. The Industrial Revolution wasn't possible without that.
One of the topics that has always interested me about the dark ages was the loss of the Library at Alexandria and the work done by some Irish priests to save all the writings they could find and try to keep safe.
Roman cement was lost, but not some of the other forms. One of the points that can be made of the technology of the Dark Ages is that Roman knowledge continued - but here and there, in different aspects in different places. For example, good glass continued to be made in Murano...but almost nowhere else. Merging these technologies back together into a common pool of knowledge was crucial to the Renaissance.
Jan
"If an Edison were plopped ... "
Galileo was "plopped" and look what happened to him.
I think that there are more bright minds born than "surface" in any time frame you pick. Whether they "surface" is mostly dependent on how much bright minds (i.e. superior reasoning abilities) are valued by their surroundings, from parents on. Powers to be often perceive them as threats. Low cognitive capability masses ("uninformed voters" anyone?) are easily led to believe that the bright minds have made a "deal" with the devil and cheer watching them burned on the stake. The egalitarians even today forbid taking into account measured cognitive ability in choosing students or employees. Have you read the "The Bell Curve"? Interesting insights there.
Galileo was not "plopped", he was born to his Age. Somewhat a difference. Don't forget that Galileo was called before the "powers that be", the Pope/Catholic church that, at that time, was all powerful and he was threatened with his life if he did not recant his scientific findings. The interference of the church robbed valuable time from this genius and stunted his growth of ideas, to what extent we will never know.
Surely, much responsibility of keeping the human race ignorant and barefoot (poverty) goes to religion.
Jan
I think that we might have a misunderstanding. I used figurative "plop" technique of birth, mirroring the phrase K used in her comment to which I was replying.
All people are born in their age. How can they help it? It is people's ideas that can arouse problems. The "surroundings" I was mentioning include powers to be, ideological and political climates [ignore the fashionable warming and cooling for the moment, please! ;-)] health and character of the bright-minded individual and many other things. So, it is only the ideas that can be in the wrong places or at the wrong time. Notice the intriguing echo in this form Einstein's theory.
What you describe about happenings to Galileo, I tried to summarize with "look what happened to him"
As Ayn Rand explained, I think, very clearly, philosophies based on mysticism and faith prevent humans from achieving better knowledge and the productive results of that knowledge. From Plato, through Kant, to all the modern offshoots from them, throughout the 25 centuries or so. Many Christians take their doctrine as their philosophy. Look at what price!
I am particularly appalled at the reputation that Augustine of Hippo still enjoys. In my view, he is an extremely crafty obscurantist.
Just my opinions.
Wouldn't that be a different period for him than that of his birth? I could be interpreting it incorrectly.
Not a huge fan of the Bell Curve, I think it has a lot of half truths. I cannot completely prove it, but there are a lot of inconsistencies when you look across history.
Let's take a look at that 80%: All of the women were in that class; all of the blacks; all of the subsistence poor. How many Mozarts died plowing a field in the rain, humming brilliant tunes to themselves? How many Burbanks died treading flax in pits in the American South? How many Curies were sent to a convent because there was no place for them in society?
One of the benefits of egalitarianism that we need to acknowledge is that it provides basic tools for all of the population and a philosophical structure for upward mobility. Where it fails is to try to claim that the people do not move upward are the same as the people who do.
Jan
I would like to urge you to be careful with egalitarianism.
I think that all humans are entitled to equal rights. To freedom: from political coercion and force, by government or another individual. To private property, but mot equal values of individual owners' properties. To pursuit of their own happiness. To equally just treatment under the laws.
There is vast range of individual abilities and thus in outcomes of productive efforts. Equality of outcomes is version of communist utopia.
Just my opinions.
I agree with the statement, "Equal and Alike are not the same." We can be equal; we are not alike. If someone tries to make us alike you end up with the communist dystopia you cite.
Jan
To me, the most important achievement would be that everybody, I truly mean everybody, no exceptions, should have access to an education of such quality to enable them to the be the best they can be. The root is parenting and it grows into schooling. No one should be forced to go to school after certain age, about 15 or so. You cannot learn people. You can only teach them. If someone chooses to stay uneducated, that is fine. But they are entitled to nothing more than what they earn. If they wake up later and wish more education, let them have it. An honest person will readily acknowledge that they are learning every day of their lives. Some of that learning is impossible in schools.
Just my opinions.
Jan
Well said. "...equal opportunity does not guarantee equal outcome."
Very interesting comment. I could open a bottle of wine and pass an exhilarating afternoon contemplating your points. Thanks.
Jan
Bring the Ashtons!
Jan, but no cigar
Anytime- you are welcome!
Any time.
Give me a few days heads up.
The fall is a great time- no snow birds yet!
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