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It seems a safe bet that the people who have already been remembered for thousands of years will continue to be remembered for a thousand more: Jesus, Euclid, A

It seems a safe bet that the people who have already been remembered for thousands of years will continue to be remembered for a thousand more: Jesus, Euclid, Aristotle, Socrates, etc. But as for contemporaries, there's two big differences: a great many more people, and increasing pace of achievements and change - and both will hopefully continue. So, it's possible no one alive today will be remembered in 1000 years. Maybe things done in 100 years will push them all out of the public consciousness. On the other hand, it's much easier to discover fundamental truths, of enduring consequence, in the early phases. Finally, it matter how consequential the achievememt is. It's hard to know what will be used in 1000 years, and what turned out to be consequential. Perhaps we don't see its significance today. Notable achievements might be: understanding/creating life (from scratch, not just pokimg memory locations); understanding/creating intelligence; understanding/curing physical disease; understanding/curing mental disease; inventing FTL travel; establishing a growing non-earth colony (note: who established the vikings colony on Greenland that was abandoned after 100 years?); first contact (that leads to growing trade); modifying human nature; founder of a new and better approach to community (or exposition of it); whoever blows up the world. There's a limit to how many people can be remembered in the public consciousness. Newtom amd Einstein will be remembered by math/science historians... but will anyone else, if there are many of the above acheivements? (or ones I haven't and can't imagine...)

mythrwy 9y ago
Agreed. Another limitation to contemporary people being remembered far into the future is it's currently hard to believably claim coming back from the dead or turning water into wine. And it's easy to find out if a person plagiarized an essay or harassed a co-worker. Thus the era of legendary heros may be largely over.
- hyperpallium 9y ago
  That's interesting, and "no man is a prophet in their home town". With social media, perhaps everyone knows you as a child/teenager. OTOH there are PR firms who manage one's online presence. Yet, someone like Elon Musk, though highly capable, also gets credit for the all the work of his teams - at least in the public eye. And if "he" saves the world from climate change, AND "he" colonizes Mars, perhaps that's a greater miracle than magic catering. i.e. He could be a legendary hero. Also, I'm not sure how important Jesus's miracles were for the success of christianity. Of course, the PR helped, but I think it's more that his teachings worked better for city-living than the alternatives. Today, most secular societies have incorporated his ideas. (They are "Christian" is the sense that their economic policy might be "Keynesian"). Though he wasn't the only one with such ideas (e.g. Buddha), I think that's the main reason for his profound influence, and this influence is the main reason he is remembered. I mean, many prophets performed "miracles" but not all are remembered.
joshvm 9y ago
One simple reason that we remember scientists is that we use their names for things. We use Maxwell's equations, Ohm's law, Newtonian mechanics, Euler-Lagrange, the Einstein coefficients, Avogadro's number and so on. And then there are the SI units which are mostly named after people. Perhaps we'll enter a sci-fi scenario where we've forgotten why things are named the way they are. The general public? You learn from the high school syllabus, which has a finite amount of time and content. This is expensive educational real estate! That means you can learn the basics (mechanics, electricity, cell bio, etc), and some current state-of-the-art to add relevance and interest. Will the basics change in 1000 years? No idea. Classical equations "work" well enough to predict common phenomena, even if we come up with some unified theory in the future. Most of the people that we think of as "scientists" were post-Renaissance. Galileo onwards. Newton, Euler, Farady, Darwin, for example: these are new people - barely 500 years old at most. It's helped that we've been increasingly good about writing things down, and science has been heavily romanticised. Quantum mechanics and relativity are babies. A lot of recent discoveries, even Nobel winning science, go largely unnoticed because they're so niche technically that most people have no idea about them. Things like the giant magnetoresistive effect - absolutely world changing, but it's not trivial science and we're probably not going to be using magnetic media in 1000 years. What about algorithms and mathematics? There are algorithms which are provably correct methods for doing things, named after people (e.g. Dijkstra's algorithm). Are these likely to be forgotten by computer scientists? There are lots of extensions and optimisation tweaks, but the core remains the same.

mythrwy 9y ago

Agreed. Another limitation to contemporary people being remembered far into the future is it's currently hard to believably claim coming back from the dead or turning water into wine. And it's easy to find out if a person plagiarized an essay or harassed a co-worker. Thus the era of legendary heros may be largely over.

hyperpallium 9y ago
That's interesting, and "no man is a prophet in their home town". With social media, perhaps everyone knows you as a child/teenager. OTOH there are PR firms who manage one's online presence. Yet, someone like Elon Musk, though highly capable, also gets credit for the all the work of his teams - at least in the public eye. And if "he" saves the world from climate change, AND "he" colonizes Mars, perhaps that's a greater miracle than magic catering. i.e. He could be a legendary hero. Also, I'm not sure how important Jesus's miracles were for the success of christianity. Of course, the PR helped, but I think it's more that his teachings worked better for city-living than the alternatives. Today, most secular societies have incorporated his ideas. (They are "Christian" is the sense that their economic policy might be "Keynesian"). Though he wasn't the only one with such ideas (e.g. Buddha), I think that's the main reason for his profound influence, and this influence is the main reason he is remembered. I mean, many prophets performed "miracles" but not all are remembered.

joshvm 9y ago

One simple reason that we remember scientists is that we use their names for things. We use Maxwell's equations, Ohm's law, Newtonian mechanics, Euler-Lagrange, the Einstein coefficients, Avogadro's number and so on. And then there are the SI units which are mostly named after people. Perhaps we'll enter a sci-fi scenario where we've forgotten why things are named the way they are. The general public? You learn from the high school syllabus, which has a finite amount of time and content. This is expensive educational real estate! That means you can learn the basics (mechanics, electricity, cell bio, etc), and some current state-of-the-art to add relevance and interest. Will the basics change in 1000 years? No idea. Classical equations "work" well enough to predict common phenomena, even if we come up with some unified theory in the future. Most of the people that we think of as "scientists" were post-Renaissance. Galileo onwards. Newton, Euler, Farady, Darwin, for example: these are new people - barely 500 years old at most. It's helped that we've been increasingly good about writing things down, and science has been heavily romanticised. Quantum mechanics and relativity are babies. A lot of recent discoveries, even Nobel winning science, go largely unnoticed because they're so niche technically that most people have no idea about them. Things like the giant magnetoresistive effect - absolutely world changing, but it's not trivial science and we're probably not going to be using magnetic media in 1000 years. What about algorithms and mathematics? There are algorithms which are provably correct methods for doing things, named after people (e.g. Dijkstra's algorithm). Are these likely to be forgotten by computer scientists? There are lots of extensions and optimisation tweaks, but the core remains the same.