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Previous HN discussion on the subject with 82 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638158 Myself I h

Previous HN discussion on the subject with 82 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638158 Myself I have never understood why the debate. Oceans can appear to be very dark on cloudy stormy days, and the sky can be red, giving an impression of a wine like colour, or at least wine in a container. What is more interesting is that is was not until the 1850s people started to debate the description. So for nearly 2500 years nobody seems to have thought twice about it.

NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
The part that everyone wonders, but can't bring themselves to say aloud for risk of sounding silly, is this: Could the mode of thought of the ancients have been so alien to us, that (at least some aspects of) their minds are no longer comprehensible? This isn't, after all, the only example of it. Jayne himself posited that a few millennia ago, everyone was some sort of schizoid puppets, lacking the capacity to have a will of their own. This might not even be the sum of it. If they could be so alien, and thought in ways now incomprehensible to us, why then might it not be so that we too suffer similarly irrational ideation? Are there things important to us beyond reason, that seem to make all the sense in the world now? Crazy talk. Stupidity. Incoherent ramblings. But that's why everyone wonders such silently, hoping the other guy will take the bait and suggest it...
- ben_w 4y ago
  > The part that everyone wonders, but can't bring themselves to say aloud for risk of sounding silly, is this: > Could the mode of thought of the ancients have been so alien to us, that (at least some aspects of) their minds are no longer comprehensible? While it's an interesting question — I find myself musing on what it might mean for some thought to be literally un-thinkable for some specific human — I think most people have the opposite problem. Then again, perhaps I'm projecting that assumption: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy
- vlz 4y ago
  I would like to follow up on what "incomprehensible" mean in that case. Understanding another person can be a range of things. Attributing coherent motives for observed action might be on the one end of the scale. Feeling exactly what they are feeling might be on the other. Even for other people today it can be hard to bridge that gap. We can imagine ourselves in their positions, trying to feel what they are feeling. Some dimension of their inner life will doubtlessly escape us. However even with the ancients, we can in most cases understand why they did what they did. People are puzzled by details like the "wine-dark sea" exactly because they understand many other parts of the Iliad and Odyssey quite well. There are about 90 generations separating us from Homer. Quite a lot changed in that time, but these are mostly humans like ourselves and we can relate to them ok. Also for Julian Jaynes, "schizoid puppet" is a bit over-dramatized for his (theorized) lack of self-awareness in Bronze Age or older people, for context, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
    I read the book a few years back. It was far more out there than any of the summaries I'd read of it years prior. Chapter after chapter, he made the case that no one in the ancient world ever used a word that indicated they had any will of their own. That they never had epiphanies or insights or even true thoughts. That when they did act, it was a big booming voice inside their head that they took to be the voices of various gods and deities, guiding them through life via micromanagement. The wikipedia article does not really do it justice. I wish I could dismiss it as woowoo nonsense. But far more recently, there are credible reports of circumstances where because a bunch of people were dancing, those who came near them and noticed started dancing uncontrollably themselves, for days on end. Some even dying of exhaustion. The software that is the human mind is buggy as shit, easily put into bad states, and networked enough that glitches are apparently contagious.
    - vlz 4y ago
      The Bicameral Mind really is a fascinating theory. I wish there was more evidence for or against it either way. The absence of text on free will does not really convince me, because there might be a number of reasons for that and there is not much text anyway for the bronze age and earlier. But it sure would explain all kinds of religious experiences and texts, so who knows.
- stevula 4y ago
  Surely the difference between modern people and ancient Greeks is just a matter of culture. We can understand ideas from other cultures today. Why would it be any different trying to understand ancient thoughts? I think it’s more likely we are just missing some context.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
    Surely. I doubt there are any significant biological differences going back even tens of thousands. But that just makes it weirder. If culture alone lets you see colors differently... then what other basic, fundamental experiences are subject to being so wildly different?
jrumbut 4y ago
I would also note that they may have mixed different varieties of grapes, used different materials for containers, mixed water and anything else they felt like mixing in with it, and stored their wine in different conditions than are common today. It probably wasn't very well strained either, compared to today's wine. If you look at "natural wines" available now you'll see they are all kinds of colors. If you look at the sea in different circumstances it will be different colors. I suspect the reason this becomes a problem for modern readers is that we became used to drinking unadulterated wines from crystal clear glasses. My guess is that to an ancient Greek, the color of wine was less a fixed point and more of a spectrum.
seanhunter 4y ago
Yeah. As someone who grew up around the sea and loves Homer I always loved this description and it never seemed remotely strange to me. If you've ever seen the sea as the sun rises or sets it can seem almost syrupy and dark like a Burgundy even on a clear day. Likewise in cloudy days or during storms it can get very dark also. And as you point out they would have been looking at wine in a cup (without transparent sides) so it would have just looked dark most of the time rather than particularly red.
- yetanotherloser 4y ago
  yup. I think it's past time we rounded up a bunch of classicists and just made them go sailing so they stop worrying about this.

NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago

The part that everyone wonders, but can't bring themselves to say aloud for risk of sounding silly, is this: Could the mode of thought of the ancients have been so alien to us, that (at least some aspects of) their minds are no longer comprehensible? This isn't, after all, the only example of it. Jayne himself posited that a few millennia ago, everyone was some sort of schizoid puppets, lacking the capacity to have a will of their own. This might not even be the sum of it. If they could be so alien, and thought in ways now incomprehensible to us, why then might it not be so that we too suffer similarly irrational ideation? Are there things important to us beyond reason, that seem to make all the sense in the world now? Crazy talk. Stupidity. Incoherent ramblings. But that's why everyone wonders such silently, hoping the other guy will take the bait and suggest it...

ben_w 4y ago
> The part that everyone wonders, but can't bring themselves to say aloud for risk of sounding silly, is this: > Could the mode of thought of the ancients have been so alien to us, that (at least some aspects of) their minds are no longer comprehensible? While it's an interesting question — I find myself musing on what it might mean for some thought to be literally un-thinkable for some specific human — I think most people have the opposite problem. Then again, perhaps I'm projecting that assumption: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy
vlz 4y ago
I would like to follow up on what "incomprehensible" mean in that case. Understanding another person can be a range of things. Attributing coherent motives for observed action might be on the one end of the scale. Feeling exactly what they are feeling might be on the other. Even for other people today it can be hard to bridge that gap. We can imagine ourselves in their positions, trying to feel what they are feeling. Some dimension of their inner life will doubtlessly escape us. However even with the ancients, we can in most cases understand why they did what they did. People are puzzled by details like the "wine-dark sea" exactly because they understand many other parts of the Iliad and Odyssey quite well. There are about 90 generations separating us from Homer. Quite a lot changed in that time, but these are mostly humans like ourselves and we can relate to them ok. Also for Julian Jaynes, "schizoid puppet" is a bit over-dramatized for his (theorized) lack of self-awareness in Bronze Age or older people, for context, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
  I read the book a few years back. It was far more out there than any of the summaries I'd read of it years prior. Chapter after chapter, he made the case that no one in the ancient world ever used a word that indicated they had any will of their own. That they never had epiphanies or insights or even true thoughts. That when they did act, it was a big booming voice inside their head that they took to be the voices of various gods and deities, guiding them through life via micromanagement. The wikipedia article does not really do it justice. I wish I could dismiss it as woowoo nonsense. But far more recently, there are credible reports of circumstances where because a bunch of people were dancing, those who came near them and noticed started dancing uncontrollably themselves, for days on end. Some even dying of exhaustion. The software that is the human mind is buggy as shit, easily put into bad states, and networked enough that glitches are apparently contagious.
  - vlz 4y ago
    The Bicameral Mind really is a fascinating theory. I wish there was more evidence for or against it either way. The absence of text on free will does not really convince me, because there might be a number of reasons for that and there is not much text anyway for the bronze age and earlier. But it sure would explain all kinds of religious experiences and texts, so who knows.
stevula 4y ago
Surely the difference between modern people and ancient Greeks is just a matter of culture. We can understand ideas from other cultures today. Why would it be any different trying to understand ancient thoughts? I think it’s more likely we are just missing some context.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4y ago
  Surely. I doubt there are any significant biological differences going back even tens of thousands. But that just makes it weirder. If culture alone lets you see colors differently... then what other basic, fundamental experiences are subject to being so wildly different?

jrumbut 4y ago

I would also note that they may have mixed different varieties of grapes, used different materials for containers, mixed water and anything else they felt like mixing in with it, and stored their wine in different conditions than are common today. It probably wasn't very well strained either, compared to today's wine. If you look at "natural wines" available now you'll see they are all kinds of colors. If you look at the sea in different circumstances it will be different colors. I suspect the reason this becomes a problem for modern readers is that we became used to drinking unadulterated wines from crystal clear glasses. My guess is that to an ancient Greek, the color of wine was less a fixed point and more of a spectrum.

seanhunter 4y ago

Yeah. As someone who grew up around the sea and loves Homer I always loved this description and it never seemed remotely strange to me. If you've ever seen the sea as the sun rises or sets it can seem almost syrupy and dark like a Burgundy even on a clear day. Likewise in cloudy days or during storms it can get very dark also. And as you point out they would have been looking at wine in a cup (without transparent sides) so it would have just looked dark most of the time rather than particularly red.

yetanotherloser 4y ago
yup. I think it's past time we rounded up a bunch of classicists and just made them go sailing so they stop worrying about this.