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As individuals we need some reassurance that our actions matter and there is no better way to achieve that than to identify "great men" (somehow these character

As individuals we need some reassurance that our actions matter and there is no better way to achieve that than to identify "great men" (somehow these characters are always male) and posit that they somehow managed to single handedly change history. Thinking is systems, discontinuous, non-linear collective phenomena precipitate social changes like a breaking wave. Invariably somebody will be at the cusp and a smaller number might even have the energy, ruthlessnes and thick skin to survive there for a longer period. This makes them no more "responsible" for a new industry than a molecule is responsible for the existence of the wave. But paint that well placed molecule with a fluerescent marker and it does a good job identifying the location of the discontinuity. This is really the main role of the "crazy people". To signal to the silent "normie" multitudes the existence of a shock front.

colechristensen 4y ago
Nonsense, there are plenty of circumstances where a lone person or small group was responsible for great change. The thing that’s missing from people’s attention is that usually this change was ripe and if not one person, another would have come along in a short time. The many occurrences of scientific discoveries happening completely independently at almost the same time demonstrates this. And there certainly have been great women, too often somebody else got credit for far too long, but there have been plenty. Khun, summarized, said that (in science but really applicable anywhere) development tends to happen with long periods of many people making incremental changes interspersed with short bursts of paradigm shifts where the basic assumptions change… often led by small groups or individual outsiders.
- college_physics 4y ago
  > The thing that’s missing from people’s attention is that usually this change was ripe and if not one person, another would have come along in a short time This is more or less what i am saying. When conditions are ripe for change, change happens, irrespective of whether there is a "crazy person" around or not. Individuals mostly make a small difference in timing.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    To the contrary, I think the Roman Empire was a few inspired people short of an Industrial Revolution a thousand years early. Things can be prepared but also waiting for the right spark. There are also lots of circumstances of similarly prepared places where the revolution only happens in one place.
    - college_physics 4y ago
      Quantifying the relative importance of "sparks" versus prevailing conditions needs an objective theory of how social and technological evolution happens and we are nowhere close to having that insight. It would probably have a strong dependence on the size of the system (the number of people alive) and the degree of interconnectedness in terms of information and resource flow. The smaller and more disconnected, the more the actual relevance of individual behavior. That is just a guess, though. But perpetuating in the 21st century the myth that "new industries come from crazy people" feels more of an Ayn Randian agenda than a path towards harnessing human creativity.
      - colechristensen 4y ago
        Why quantify? Do we need to come up with a rigorous method for assigning how much fame a person ought to have based on their accomplishments? Yes, fame can be quite silly and doled out unfairly but the pushback trying to claim individuals who did trigger these paradigm shifts aren’t all that valuable is likewise silly. There is plenty of room between the extremes. Contribution is an exponential distribution, you don’t get by by cutting out the few who contribute a lot or the many who contribute a little.
dinkumthinkum 4y ago
Why do you say they are always male? That just sounds like leftist propaganda as well. I’m not sure yet the rest means other than I think you deny the reality of this phenomena described.
- college_physics 4y ago
  All the examples in the post are male and there is even a "great man" theory of history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    The Great Man theory of history refers to men in the same sense as the American constitution - persons, people not necessarily males. Queen Elizabeth (I) or Cleopatra would have probably been recognized as examples of Great Men shaping history by the authors.

colechristensen 4y ago

Nonsense, there are plenty of circumstances where a lone person or small group was responsible for great change. The thing that’s missing from people’s attention is that usually this change was ripe and if not one person, another would have come along in a short time. The many occurrences of scientific discoveries happening completely independently at almost the same time demonstrates this. And there certainly have been great women, too often somebody else got credit for far too long, but there have been plenty. Khun, summarized, said that (in science but really applicable anywhere) development tends to happen with long periods of many people making incremental changes interspersed with short bursts of paradigm shifts where the basic assumptions change… often led by small groups or individual outsiders.

college_physics 4y ago
> The thing that’s missing from people’s attention is that usually this change was ripe and if not one person, another would have come along in a short time This is more or less what i am saying. When conditions are ripe for change, change happens, irrespective of whether there is a "crazy person" around or not. Individuals mostly make a small difference in timing.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  To the contrary, I think the Roman Empire was a few inspired people short of an Industrial Revolution a thousand years early. Things can be prepared but also waiting for the right spark. There are also lots of circumstances of similarly prepared places where the revolution only happens in one place.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    Quantifying the relative importance of "sparks" versus prevailing conditions needs an objective theory of how social and technological evolution happens and we are nowhere close to having that insight. It would probably have a strong dependence on the size of the system (the number of people alive) and the degree of interconnectedness in terms of information and resource flow. The smaller and more disconnected, the more the actual relevance of individual behavior. That is just a guess, though. But perpetuating in the 21st century the myth that "new industries come from crazy people" feels more of an Ayn Randian agenda than a path towards harnessing human creativity.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      Why quantify? Do we need to come up with a rigorous method for assigning how much fame a person ought to have based on their accomplishments? Yes, fame can be quite silly and doled out unfairly but the pushback trying to claim individuals who did trigger these paradigm shifts aren’t all that valuable is likewise silly. There is plenty of room between the extremes. Contribution is an exponential distribution, you don’t get by by cutting out the few who contribute a lot or the many who contribute a little.

dinkumthinkum 4y ago

Why do you say they are always male? That just sounds like leftist propaganda as well. I’m not sure yet the rest means other than I think you deny the reality of this phenomena described.

college_physics 4y ago
All the examples in the post are male and there is even a "great man" theory of history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  The Great Man theory of history refers to men in the same sense as the American constitution - persons, people not necessarily males. Queen Elizabeth (I) or Cleopatra would have probably been recognized as examples of Great Men shaping history by the authors.