5 ms·
I'm always surprised at reactions from modern readers who seem to think that these sorts of observations are new. It's a particular type of blindness to histor
by three14 17y ago
I'm always surprised at reactions from modern readers who seem to think that these sorts of observations are new. It's a particular type of blindness to history. People aren't more intelligent now than three thousand years ago.
Note that we have sources that commented on duplicates by around the 8th century, according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soferim_(Talmud) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soferim_(Talmud)
see the summary comment about Chap viii.
The Talmud describes all kinds of things that you might think are "modern" - ironing clothes (albeit by a different method), rain gutters, complicated financial arrangements (e.g. a contract with a managing partner and a silent partner, the silent partner putting up all the money, but half as a loan to the other partner and half as an investment), fertilizer, complicated property rights (e.g. when have I established a right to prevent someone from blocking my light or building a structure that lets them overlook my private property), methods of fraud detection in written contracts, and so on.
People knew about these duplicates since ancient times and weren't troubled by them. They have had explanations that aren't particularly far-fetched, e.g. that Ps. xviii. and II Sam. xxii are duplicates because one's a historical record of what King David said, and the other is the version he later edited for Psalms. Perhaps modern readers have different explanations, but the mere modernity doesn't automatically make them any better.
- randallsquared 17y agoPeople aren't more intelligent now than three thousand years ago. While I agree that there's a lot to be learned from our ancestors, there's some question about how the average intelligence may have changed over historical times. The Flynn effect suggests that rather large changes can take place across entire populations.
- three14 17y agoThe Flynn effect is too short a timescale. Maybe it was just recent malnutrition from industrialization. Aside from the fact that cranial capacity has been pretty stable, it's just impossible to believe that intelligence is substantially different if you spend time studying the Talmud, or for that matter Greek philosophers. The Greek philosophers throw people off, because everyone remembers all the science they got wrong. For instance, in the Talmud, in that kind of transaction I mentioned - the half-loan half-investment deal, where one guy puts up the money and one guy puts up the work, the Talmud notes that the guy doing the work a) received a loan, and b) is working to manage the other guy's investment. Putting two and two together, he's working for the other guy for free, just because he got a loan. I.e., he's paying interest, and therefore this is forbidden under the prohibition against usury unless the investor pays the worker for his time. You can't begin to wrap your head around that kind of stuff unless you have more or less modern intelligence.
- randallsquared 17y agoThe Flynn effect is too short a timescale. I don't really disagree, mainly because the idea that our ancestors were mostly very unintelligent compared to today's average seems absurd given their known accomplishments. However, I do wonder from time to time if that could be explained almost entirely by selection effects. The short timescale of the Flynn effect could possibly be attributed to the lack of reliable tests for g prior to the 20th century, for example...
- jacquesm 17y agoWhat I wouldn't give for the SVN revision log of the original (untranslated) bible text. That would upset a lot of holy applecarts.