6 ms·

As a side note, not only one's life is short, but the entire human history is short. I'm over 40 and it struck me that if I repeated my life 50 times it would a

by euske 9y ago

As a side note, not only one's life is short, but the entire human history is short. I'm over 40 and it struck me that if I repeated my life 50 times it would already go back B.C.! We've invented and developed ALL the things in between. I don't think I could live 50 times and do that myself. That was some amazing achievement, humans.

goldenkey 9y ago
That is the sole reason companies calculate 'man hours.' You simply can't do exponential work just by living 50 times over. Other people in parallel matter a ton. Interesting point though
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  You appear trip be contradicting the parent's point -- I read them as saying that it's not merely the sum of hours but the interplay of minds. So in theory 10 people might do something on less man hours than 1 because the interactions create utility that speeds development.
jonnybgood 9y ago
But what is that ”amazing achievement” relative to? We have no frame of reference other than our imaginations. Could we have went to the moon much earlier? If the Cold War didn’t happen would we still have the achievement of landing on the moon or be in space at all like today?
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  Relative to all of previous history.
- UweSchmidt 9y ago
  Sure, with all the money saved on military expenses, and countries not drawn into conflicts we'd be a lot farther ahead.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    Or we would have more McMansions and reduced biodiversity. It certainly seems that's the typical route a welfare maximizing democracy allocates resources by default.
  - musage 9y ago
    > War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. -- George Orwell
  - Accipitriform 9y ago
    "Sure, with all the money saved on military expenses, and countries not drawn into conflicts we'd be a lot farther ahead." I doubt that. Like it or not, military conflicts (and military confrontations such as the Cold War) have produced many of the technological advances that we enjoy today.
edpichler 9y ago
Really good comment. Remind us that 2 thousand years seems a lot, but isn’t that much. If you let me, I advice you to study philisophy, and you shall realise that our history is much bigger than our calendary. And if you study “The republic” os Plato, you will see that our material achivements are improved a lot,for sure, but the humanity as a whole civilization is in decay. Plato’s dialogues explain how our civilization evolves and decays in cycles, and we are currently in decay. Democracy is the system that currently rules the world, and it is one step before tirany.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- aero-002 9y ago
  Why is democracy one step before tyranny?
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    To the modern understanding of tyranny, it certainly is strange, but Plato had a very particular view of politics (he was what you might call elitist). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes#Tyranny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes#Tyranny Given 2,000 years of history, he'd likely have different views (I'd hope so anyway), but that's what the poster appears to be driving at. That doesn't seem to be the root cause of tyranny in Russia or China, but democracy can devolve into it.
- ahelwer 9y ago
  The 2400-year-old opinion of a specific philosopher, brilliant though they may be, does not necessarily reflect reality. One of the harder mental blocks I had to get through with philosophy, though it seems incredibly obvious both in retrospect and to those who haven't yet encountered it, is that philosophers write with no authority on metaphysical matters; any time a philosopher says the nature of a thing is thus, they are surely wrong. This is contrasted with technical matters, where it's possible and indeed common for our intellectual giants to describe things precisely as they are. I mean this as no slight against philosophy, nor to denigrate its utility, but as a simple observation that your mode of engagement with the material must differ; see the common interpretation that reading the philosophical corpus is more like listening in on a conversation spanning the ages rather than learning a just-so list of facts about our world.
helloindia 9y ago
Just yesterday, I was having a similar thought. as a buddhist student, I realised I missed the Buddha(2500yrs ago) by around 50 generations, assuming life expectancy of 50.
- louisswiss 9y ago
  That's more like 100 generations (assuming historically most people have kids at roughly 25).
nickreese 9y ago
Thank you for this perspective. This hit me in a really unique way and is an amazingly useful frame when focusing on dissecting a large, seemingly insurmountable problem.
subcosmos 9y ago
Just imagine the increase in human lifespan that can occur in the next 100 years, given how much it has changed in just 50 ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Life_Expectancy_at_Birth_by_Region_1950-2050.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Li...
- XorNot 9y ago
  Ehhh... We've made very little progress increasing the length of our later lives. Almost all the average life span increase has come from fixing infant mortality and things which kill us in our 20s and 30s. We have not succeeded in slowing aging.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - your-nanny 9y ago
    Not to denigrate the importance of what we have achieved.
  - subcosmos 9y ago
    We haven't slowed aging. We have however made progress in lowering overall cancer incidence and heart disease. https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/facts-and-figures-2018-rate-of-deaths-from-cancer-continues-decline.html https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/facts-and-figures-2018-ra... https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death
tfuop 9y ago
stolen ancient knowledge is what u see ijevnted in last 50 years...so thank ze ancestors u dumb bullshiter
interfixus 9y ago
I often fall into ruminations of this kind. Currently in my late fifties, as a boy I have no doubt met people who in their turn have met someone born in the late seventeen hundreds. My own grandfather is a candidate. We had a couple of long generations - he was born in 1885, and could easily have known people in their nineties in his childhood. And less than ten of my lifetimes take us back to Columbus. Less than twenty to my viking ancestors. And oh yes, my teens were barely yesterday.
mattbierner 9y ago
In 2016 I did a small project that visualizes time as a series of hypothetical cross generation conversations (such as a 5 year old listening to an 80 year old's stories) [0]. Really fascinating to see how recent seemingly ancient events such as the American civil war or the invention of the printing press are when examined in these terms. [0]: http://mattbierner.github.io/forward-propagation/ http://mattbierner.github.io/forward-propagation/
- mikhailfranco 9y ago
  I like the example of Kittyhawk to the moon - 66 years. I realize they are not commensurate, since rockets and balloons existed long before aircraft, and the Wright Flyer 1 is not really in the ancestral lineage of Apollo spacecraft. Those 67 years are still impressively short, even though the advances were mainly due to wars (hot and Cold).
- logancg 9y ago
  This was awesome. Thank you! It’s incredible that it only takes ~70 people’s lives, end to end, to get back to the invention of cuneiform. Imagine all those people in a room. You could fit them in a small banquet hall. And between the oldest and youngest is the difference between the invention of writing and the utterly complex, global economic flow that we’ve networked ourselves into today.
  - Humdeee 9y ago
    Just imagine the diversity and conversations you would have in that banquet hall... conversing alongside the evolution of common fashion and speech. You (currently being working class in present day) would likely be the most sought after person of interest, even among some of the bigger names in history. Behind you lies empty space of generations yet to come, who will immediately become more interesting if the same banquet were to be repeated with their inclusion. What topic would you approach them with? Current events? Medicine? Tech? What could they simply pull from their pocket that would blow our minds today?
messel 9y ago
Just thinking about how many simultaneous breakthroughs occur, and expertise in so many areas is mind boggling. In contrast there are slower periods/cultures too, ie hunter gatherer societies. You could spend one life to become an expert doctor only to have all that knowledge made obsolete by time.

by euske 9y ago

goldenkey 9y ago

That is the sole reason companies calculate 'man hours.' You simply can't do exponential work just by living 50 times over. Other people in parallel matter a ton. Interesting point though

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
You appear trip be contradicting the parent's point -- I read them as saying that it's not merely the sum of hours but the interplay of minds. So in theory 10 people might do something on less man hours than 1 because the interactions create utility that speeds development.

jonnybgood 9y ago

But what is that ”amazing achievement” relative to? We have no frame of reference other than our imaginations. Could we have went to the moon much earlier? If the Cold War didn’t happen would we still have the achievement of landing on the moon or be in space at all like today?

BurningFrog 9y ago
Relative to all of previous history.
UweSchmidt 9y ago
Sure, with all the money saved on military expenses, and countries not drawn into conflicts we'd be a lot farther ahead.
- cornholio 9y ago
  Or we would have more McMansions and reduced biodiversity. It certainly seems that's the typical route a welfare maximizing democracy allocates resources by default.
- musage 9y ago
  > War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. -- George Orwell
- Accipitriform 9y ago
  "Sure, with all the money saved on military expenses, and countries not drawn into conflicts we'd be a lot farther ahead." I doubt that. Like it or not, military conflicts (and military confrontations such as the Cold War) have produced many of the technological advances that we enjoy today.

edpichler 9y ago

Really good comment. Remind us that 2 thousand years seems a lot, but isn’t that much. If you let me, I advice you to study philisophy, and you shall realise that our history is much bigger than our calendary. And if you study “The republic” os Plato, you will see that our material achivements are improved a lot,for sure, but the humanity as a whole civilization is in decay. Plato’s dialogues explain how our civilization evolves and decays in cycles, and we are currently in decay. Democracy is the system that currently rules the world, and it is one step before tirany.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
aero-002 9y ago
Why is democracy one step before tyranny?
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  To the modern understanding of tyranny, it certainly is strange, but Plato had a very particular view of politics (he was what you might call elitist). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes#Tyranny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes#Tyranny Given 2,000 years of history, he'd likely have different views (I'd hope so anyway), but that's what the poster appears to be driving at. That doesn't seem to be the root cause of tyranny in Russia or China, but democracy can devolve into it.
ahelwer 9y ago
The 2400-year-old opinion of a specific philosopher, brilliant though they may be, does not necessarily reflect reality. One of the harder mental blocks I had to get through with philosophy, though it seems incredibly obvious both in retrospect and to those who haven't yet encountered it, is that philosophers write with no authority on metaphysical matters; any time a philosopher says the nature of a thing is thus, they are surely wrong. This is contrasted with technical matters, where it's possible and indeed common for our intellectual giants to describe things precisely as they are. I mean this as no slight against philosophy, nor to denigrate its utility, but as a simple observation that your mode of engagement with the material must differ; see the common interpretation that reading the philosophical corpus is more like listening in on a conversation spanning the ages rather than learning a just-so list of facts about our world.

helloindia 9y ago

Just yesterday, I was having a similar thought. as a buddhist student, I realised I missed the Buddha(2500yrs ago) by around 50 generations, assuming life expectancy of 50.

louisswiss 9y ago
That's more like 100 generations (assuming historically most people have kids at roughly 25).

nickreese 9y ago

Thank you for this perspective. This hit me in a really unique way and is an amazingly useful frame when focusing on dissecting a large, seemingly insurmountable problem.

subcosmos 9y ago

Just imagine the increase in human lifespan that can occur in the next 100 years, given how much it has changed in just 50 ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Life_Expectancy_at_Birth_by_Region_1950-2050.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File:Li...

XorNot 9y ago
Ehhh... We've made very little progress increasing the length of our later lives. Almost all the average life span increase has come from fixing infant mortality and things which kill us in our 20s and 30s. We have not succeeded in slowing aging.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- your-nanny 9y ago
  Not to denigrate the importance of what we have achieved.
- subcosmos 9y ago
  We haven't slowed aging. We have however made progress in lowering overall cancer incidence and heart disease. https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/facts-and-figures-2018-rate-of-deaths-from-cancer-continues-decline.html https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/facts-and-figures-2018-ra... https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

tfuop 9y ago

stolen ancient knowledge is what u see ijevnted in last 50 years...so thank ze ancestors u dumb bullshiter

interfixus 9y ago

I often fall into ruminations of this kind. Currently in my late fifties, as a boy I have no doubt met people who in their turn have met someone born in the late seventeen hundreds. My own grandfather is a candidate. We had a couple of long generations - he was born in 1885, and could easily have known people in their nineties in his childhood. And less than ten of my lifetimes take us back to Columbus. Less than twenty to my viking ancestors. And oh yes, my teens were barely yesterday.

mattbierner 9y ago

In 2016 I did a small project that visualizes time as a series of hypothetical cross generation conversations (such as a 5 year old listening to an 80 year old's stories) [0]. Really fascinating to see how recent seemingly ancient events such as the American civil war or the invention of the printing press are when examined in these terms. [0]: http://mattbierner.github.io/forward-propagation/ http://mattbierner.github.io/forward-propagation/

mikhailfranco 9y ago
I like the example of Kittyhawk to the moon - 66 years. I realize they are not commensurate, since rockets and balloons existed long before aircraft, and the Wright Flyer 1 is not really in the ancestral lineage of Apollo spacecraft. Those 67 years are still impressively short, even though the advances were mainly due to wars (hot and Cold).
logancg 9y ago
This was awesome. Thank you! It’s incredible that it only takes ~70 people’s lives, end to end, to get back to the invention of cuneiform. Imagine all those people in a room. You could fit them in a small banquet hall. And between the oldest and youngest is the difference between the invention of writing and the utterly complex, global economic flow that we’ve networked ourselves into today.
- Humdeee 9y ago
  Just imagine the diversity and conversations you would have in that banquet hall... conversing alongside the evolution of common fashion and speech. You (currently being working class in present day) would likely be the most sought after person of interest, even among some of the bigger names in history. Behind you lies empty space of generations yet to come, who will immediately become more interesting if the same banquet were to be repeated with their inclusion. What topic would you approach them with? Current events? Medicine? Tech? What could they simply pull from their pocket that would blow our minds today?

messel 9y ago

Just thinking about how many simultaneous breakthroughs occur, and expertise in so many areas is mind boggling. In contrast there are slower periods/cultures too, ie hunter gatherer societies. You could spend one life to become an expert doctor only to have all that knowledge made obsolete by time.