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"One of history’s fews iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations." Sapiens, By Yuval Noah Harari This quote stood out
by has2k1 6y ago
"One of history’s fews iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations." Sapiens, By Yuval Noah Harari
This quote stood out for me when I read Sapiens.
- urbleflan 6y agoIt's a little strange to use the phrases "tend to" and "iron law" in the same sentence.
- some_furry 6y agoWith a sufficiently hot take, iron laws become malleable.
- jshevek 6y agoA tendency can be shown to be present in all known categories of samples (justifying 'Iron') , while not occuring in every single sample, making it a tendency. Separately, tendency can mean a type of outcome is more likely, or that there is an underlying force acting in a direction, regardless of whether that force is cancelled by other forces.
- has2k1 6y agoMay be strange at a first glance but binary/boolean logic/reasoning/quantification is just a special case of probability theory. This is covered exhaustively in Probability Theory: The Logic Science, by E.T Jaynes. And so "tend" and "iron law" are interpreted as assertions of different levels of certainty, where "tend" implies a certainty greater than 50% and "iron law" a certainty closer to 100%.
- monkeydreams 6y ago> It's a little strange to use the phrases "tend to" and "iron law" in the same sentence. Not really. Tendency denotes a general inclination, such as objects tending to move toward the centre of mass. Tectonic plates tend to shift slowly. In both cases these are very solid and reliable predictions which are almost certainly true in a vast majority of cases. I would not agree with the statement vis-a-vis luxury items and necessity (fur coats, diamond rings, harems, are not demanded by all), but there is a tendency for certain classes of items to be considered "essential" over time.
- whytaka 6y agoGravity is a tendency for things to fall back to earth. But somethings can escape it.
- monadic2 6y agoHuh I wonder what he would have said about access to clean air, water, and land.
- friendlybus 6y agoWhat context is this in? Some people who are religious break this rule. The amish aswell are an extreme example.