3 ms·

Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very imp

Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.

thewebguyd 4mo ago
Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race. I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not good, and tarot cards are meaningless woo woo. But there were also such skeptics back then too.
- card_zero 4mo ago
  I don't understand the downvote, it's like "nooo, their ideas were exactly as good as the ones we have today, humans don't learn over time, how dare you imply we used to be stupider, it's sacrilege". So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become right-on to say that it's so, as if denying it is a prejudice like timeism or something. It obviously matters to some world view, equality maybe?
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    I didn't downvote you. But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect. You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future was using the exact same pattern-recognition ability we use today to look at data visualizations, or trend graphs. You could go back in time, steal an ancient roman baby, and raise them in today's year and they would be no different from you or I.
    - card_zero 4mo ago
      Yes, of course that's right. But I thought you were the one conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence, when you said "behaviorally". Behaviors being due to ideas, not nature (I don't much rate nature's effect on smarts anyway). Maybe I need to spell this distinction out next time it comes up, which will be the next ancient history thread, probably. I guess the endless repetition of "they were just as smart as we were you know!" is in order to counteract an unstated idea that the ancients were some other species, like orangutans in bronze armor, I don't know. Maybe it's common to vaguely think that about them? But this gratuitous counter-point should be on a strictly genetic basis, or else you'd be accidentally denying that ideas improve.
    - bjt 4mo ago
      I agree with the "steal an ancient roman baby" premise. The "roman citizen" example is not as strong. Cognitive ability is not just genetics. The grown-up roman would be missing a lot of advantages during their upbringing that weren't available back then. Also, limiting it to just "citizens" means limiting it to their upper class. Compared to Roman times, we've had pretty big advances in nutrition, healthcare, education, and widespread middle class wealth. It's not unreasonable to infer that these would have an impact on cognitive ability similar to the effect they've had on life expectancy. That being said, there's definitely a present-ist bias, as the McSweeney's article does a good job mocking. I do believe their best thinkers were as good as our best thinkers.
      - card_zero 4mo ago
        Well no, not even as good. For instance, your comment invokes the idea of prejudice, and the value of being unprejudiced. Did Romans know about that, and consider it important? Maybe, I couldn't say offhand, but my point is that they might not have had some valuable idea like that. I think we can say with certainty that they must have lacked some idea of great value to thinking. That makes the ancients all worse at thinking, all of them. This doesn't of course mean that their best ideas were bad though!
        pseudalopex 4mo ago
  - NikolaNovak 4mo ago
    We have access to different data points today. But the way I read the original post is that human mind as such did not meaningful change. If you took a Roman or Egyptian embryo from 5k years ago and incubated it today, you'd have a modern human. The fact that many people back then had crazy ideas, is orthogonal to the biological argument at hand - and that's before we look at amount of people with crazy ideas today, many of which are largely the same. Basically I think we have to pick a lane on whether we are talking biology, vs culture, vs knowledge and accumulated data.
    - card_zero 4mo ago
      Yes, but I don't know why we'd be talking about biology in the first place, unless everybody's going around assessing everybody else a biologically stupid or smart. (If so, where do they think the smart ones get their good ideas from, are those ideas supposed to be inborn? Or exuded from a strong and genetically healthy idea-gland?)
      - NikolaNovak 4mo ago
        >>"assessing everybody else a biologically stupid or smart" Again, welcome to reality, meet some racists. They make the majority of population :O More seriously and in the spirit of HN: Because a lot of people, per the original post, assume ancient people were fundamentally, biologically, less intelligent. Couple of reasons: 1. We teach people about evolution and Neanderthals etc, but it's hard for most of us to grasp the time scales. People conflate "Egyptians 5 thousand years ago" and "australopithecus 5 million years ago". 2. As many many people do today, we also conflate circumstances with inherent - like we've seen several times in this very thread, because people 5k years ago they didn't have technology or knowledge of today, there's subconscious assumption they weren't fundamentally as intelligent as capable. Original post had a simple and specific claim: Egyptians 5k years ago were biologically equivalent to humans today and their intelligence was just as high. Raise them in modern society and you'd get the same bell curve. That claim alone is mind blowing to many.
NikolaNovak 4mo ago
If that's sarcastic, good one :) If genuine, I'm puzzled. In the current world we have a tremendous amount of people who hold various superstitious beliefs as well as spend tremendous amount of time on their genealogy. And nepotism never went away. I agree those are "bad ideas", but don't see how they differentiate us from people 5k years ago?
- card_zero 4mo ago
  I guess I got downvoted for not supplying very persuasive examples. The point is, cleverness is having good ideas-about-ideas, and these have obviously improved over time, so people in the past were obviously not so clever. I could point at all the self-help books that promise to improve the way you think, or Wikipedias list of fallacies, but I don't those are great examples either. It's frustrating that I can't make a simple point just because it needs more research. I hoped people would find better examples themselves. I don't think your word "tremendous" works, I think superstition declined and values improved, but it's hard to nail this down for people who are keen to disagree. Does that include you? Why?
  - NikolaNovak 4mo ago
    Atheists range from 4-6% in USA, I think less than 1% in India, to a nice round 0 percent in many other countries where they'd basically be beaten up for this. I think word "tremendous" is appropriate when we are talking about 95+% Outside of the "so mainstream and prevalent we don't even consider it" superstitions (which, remember, were all the historical ones we may dismiss now, thousand years later), we have horoscope and astrology, psychics, and people who think wearing same socks will help them on a winning streak, and everybody hesitant to talk about good or bad outcomes less they "jinx it". Maybe you're from Germany or Scandinavia and your daily experience is different? But again, the thread started about biological differences and I will agree that there are little to none between ancient Egyptians and modern humans. In terms of cultural values, sanctity of life, freedoms and poverty and lifestyle, I do think some things have improved. We can debate numbers as to how much. Understand that as a Canadian, and not knowing where you're from, you unfortunately find me at a cynical time as we watch our southern neighbour work so very very hard to dismantle much of the progress we are discussing here very every effectively, so it's just difficult to put one's mind in historically optimistic mindset :-/ Romans had educated intellectuals who had some progressive and scientific ideas, and the less educated masses who had less progressive and educated ideas. This seems to describe today's world well. And we still LOVE to attack the "intellectual elite" for having progressive, scientific ideas.
effed3 4mo ago
is not too difficult to find "very bad ideas" today, just look around. The point is about knowledge and culture, not individuals

thewebguyd 4mo ago

Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race. I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not good, and tarot cards are meaningless woo woo. But there were also such skeptics back then too.

card_zero 4mo ago
I don't understand the downvote, it's like "nooo, their ideas were exactly as good as the ones we have today, humans don't learn over time, how dare you imply we used to be stupider, it's sacrilege". So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become right-on to say that it's so, as if denying it is a prejudice like timeism or something. It obviously matters to some world view, equality maybe?
- thewebguyd 4mo ago
  I didn't downvote you. But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect. You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future was using the exact same pattern-recognition ability we use today to look at data visualizations, or trend graphs. You could go back in time, steal an ancient roman baby, and raise them in today's year and they would be no different from you or I.
  - card_zero 4mo ago
    Yes, of course that's right. But I thought you were the one conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence, when you said "behaviorally". Behaviors being due to ideas, not nature (I don't much rate nature's effect on smarts anyway). Maybe I need to spell this distinction out next time it comes up, which will be the next ancient history thread, probably. I guess the endless repetition of "they were just as smart as we were you know!" is in order to counteract an unstated idea that the ancients were some other species, like orangutans in bronze armor, I don't know. Maybe it's common to vaguely think that about them? But this gratuitous counter-point should be on a strictly genetic basis, or else you'd be accidentally denying that ideas improve.
  - bjt 4mo ago
    I agree with the "steal an ancient roman baby" premise. The "roman citizen" example is not as strong. Cognitive ability is not just genetics. The grown-up roman would be missing a lot of advantages during their upbringing that weren't available back then. Also, limiting it to just "citizens" means limiting it to their upper class. Compared to Roman times, we've had pretty big advances in nutrition, healthcare, education, and widespread middle class wealth. It's not unreasonable to infer that these would have an impact on cognitive ability similar to the effect they've had on life expectancy. That being said, there's definitely a present-ist bias, as the McSweeney's article does a good job mocking. I do believe their best thinkers were as good as our best thinkers.
    - card_zero 4mo ago
      Well no, not even as good. For instance, your comment invokes the idea of prejudice, and the value of being unprejudiced. Did Romans know about that, and consider it important? Maybe, I couldn't say offhand, but my point is that they might not have had some valuable idea like that. I think we can say with certainty that they must have lacked some idea of great value to thinking. That makes the ancients all worse at thinking, all of them. This doesn't of course mean that their best ideas were bad though!
      - pseudalopex 4mo ago
- NikolaNovak 4mo ago
  We have access to different data points today. But the way I read the original post is that human mind as such did not meaningful change. If you took a Roman or Egyptian embryo from 5k years ago and incubated it today, you'd have a modern human. The fact that many people back then had crazy ideas, is orthogonal to the biological argument at hand - and that's before we look at amount of people with crazy ideas today, many of which are largely the same. Basically I think we have to pick a lane on whether we are talking biology, vs culture, vs knowledge and accumulated data.
  - card_zero 4mo ago
    Yes, but I don't know why we'd be talking about biology in the first place, unless everybody's going around assessing everybody else a biologically stupid or smart. (If so, where do they think the smart ones get their good ideas from, are those ideas supposed to be inborn? Or exuded from a strong and genetically healthy idea-gland?)
    - NikolaNovak 4mo ago
      >>"assessing everybody else a biologically stupid or smart" Again, welcome to reality, meet some racists. They make the majority of population :O More seriously and in the spirit of HN: Because a lot of people, per the original post, assume ancient people were fundamentally, biologically, less intelligent. Couple of reasons: 1. We teach people about evolution and Neanderthals etc, but it's hard for most of us to grasp the time scales. People conflate "Egyptians 5 thousand years ago" and "australopithecus 5 million years ago". 2. As many many people do today, we also conflate circumstances with inherent - like we've seen several times in this very thread, because people 5k years ago they didn't have technology or knowledge of today, there's subconscious assumption they weren't fundamentally as intelligent as capable. Original post had a simple and specific claim: Egyptians 5k years ago were biologically equivalent to humans today and their intelligence was just as high. Raise them in modern society and you'd get the same bell curve. That claim alone is mind blowing to many.

NikolaNovak 4mo ago

If that's sarcastic, good one :) If genuine, I'm puzzled. In the current world we have a tremendous amount of people who hold various superstitious beliefs as well as spend tremendous amount of time on their genealogy. And nepotism never went away. I agree those are "bad ideas", but don't see how they differentiate us from people 5k years ago?

card_zero 4mo ago
I guess I got downvoted for not supplying very persuasive examples. The point is, cleverness is having good ideas-about-ideas, and these have obviously improved over time, so people in the past were obviously not so clever. I could point at all the self-help books that promise to improve the way you think, or Wikipedias list of fallacies, but I don't those are great examples either. It's frustrating that I can't make a simple point just because it needs more research. I hoped people would find better examples themselves. I don't think your word "tremendous" works, I think superstition declined and values improved, but it's hard to nail this down for people who are keen to disagree. Does that include you? Why?
- NikolaNovak 4mo ago
  Atheists range from 4-6% in USA, I think less than 1% in India, to a nice round 0 percent in many other countries where they'd basically be beaten up for this. I think word "tremendous" is appropriate when we are talking about 95+% Outside of the "so mainstream and prevalent we don't even consider it" superstitions (which, remember, were all the historical ones we may dismiss now, thousand years later), we have horoscope and astrology, psychics, and people who think wearing same socks will help them on a winning streak, and everybody hesitant to talk about good or bad outcomes less they "jinx it". Maybe you're from Germany or Scandinavia and your daily experience is different? But again, the thread started about biological differences and I will agree that there are little to none between ancient Egyptians and modern humans. In terms of cultural values, sanctity of life, freedoms and poverty and lifestyle, I do think some things have improved. We can debate numbers as to how much. Understand that as a Canadian, and not knowing where you're from, you unfortunately find me at a cynical time as we watch our southern neighbour work so very very hard to dismantle much of the progress we are discussing here very every effectively, so it's just difficult to put one's mind in historically optimistic mindset :-/ Romans had educated intellectuals who had some progressive and scientific ideas, and the less educated masses who had less progressive and educated ideas. This seems to describe today's world well. And we still LOVE to attack the "intellectual elite" for having progressive, scientific ideas.

effed3 4mo ago

is not too difficult to find "very bad ideas" today, just look around. The point is about knowledge and culture, not individuals