6 ms·
And we've had maybe about ~10 people as impactful as Newton, in the last ~500 years. Is the typical person amenable to those all-or-nothing odds?
by ssivark 6y ago
And we've had maybe about ~10 people as impactful as Newton, in the last ~500 years. Is the typical person amenable to those all-or-nothing odds?
- vaidhy 6y agoI only have to be meaningful to myself. If I can do that without kids, great.. if kids are what makes it meaningful, great.
- m0zg 6y agoThere is a time dimension to this as well, especially for women. By the time you decide you want kids, you might not be able to have them.
- m0zg 6y agoThe trouble with counterfactual history is that it's very easy to come up with one's own version. What if, for example, Newton's parents never had children? Or what if they never had children, but someone other than Newton invented the same, or better, things? And from there it quickly branches out to things that are combinatorially incomprehensible. At a macro level, fertility ratio below 2 (much more than 2 at the time, actually, since a lot of children died, but 2 is more self-explanatory) in Newton's England, however, would mean that England as we know it today would not exist, and some other nation that procreates better but perhaps doesn't value math and science as much, would take its place. From there: no computers, no United States, no Internet or Moon landings, different outcomes in several large scale wars. Pretty catastrophic, if you ask me.