TIL how much it clearly didn't stop at Aristotle and Alexander the Great
TIL how much it clearly didn't stop at Aristotle and Alexander the Great
Source : « The Great Scientists: From Euclid to Stephen Hawking », from John Farndon
I.d.k. why i thought that Euclid, and perhaps also others, were around Plato or before, just wanted to share, what a time.
B.t.w., we know about ChatGPT, some about Sam Altman, but nothing about the researchers, and the same goes for every other technology, it's a choice of society 🤷(, causes&consequences).
Edit : Transcript :
All the same, if anyone wanted a proper education, Alexandria in Egypt was the place to go, and here Archimedes went as a young man.
At the time he was there, the city was the greatest centre of learning in the ancient world. Although the museum or university there was barely 20 years old – the city itself had been founded by Alexander the Great just half a century earlier – it already held an unrivalled library, containing at least 100,000 scrolls, including all of Aristotle’s priceless personal collection.
It was here that the great Euclid taught geometry, that Aristarchus showed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and that Hipparchus made the first great catalogue of constellations, categorizing stars in terms of their brightness. And it was here that, much later, Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, the most influential book about the nature of the universe for 1,500 years.
Euclid was probably dead by the time Archimedes was there, but Archimedes undoubtedly met Eratosthenes, the brilliant thinker who measured the circumference of the world to within 4 per cent of modern figures, and made a measurement of the year’s length as precise as any until barely half a century ago.
Edit : Now that i think about it, conquering Persia&Egypt&.. probably helped them in developing these knowledges/sciences
My favorite ancient thinker would be Diagoras of Melos. He supposedly threw an idol of Herakles into a fire and said that if he was a god, the idol wouldn't burn.
He got chased out of Melos when it burned.
He should have picked a full god then
Don't share pictures of text
What a weird rule, do you know why it exists ?
What should i have done to post this information then ?What a weird rule, do you know why it exists ?
Accessibility. A blind person (or someone who just can't see that well, or who wants to read it at a different font and sizing level) has the opportunity to read this in text form with a screen reader or with adjusted view settings. But those don't work with images (screen readers may if the image has alt text).
Ease of search. If someone wanted to find this post down the line, they are not able to search the actual text of the post because it's an image.
Quality. In all honesty, what is gained by this post being an image instead of text? What is the visual element adding that couldn't be accomplished with italics and bolding?
What should i have done to post this information then ?
Copy it and treat it as a quote in your written post (same place you put your source). You can add formatting to it if you want to emphasize parts.
I.d.k. why i thought that Euclid, and perhaps also others, were around Plato
There was an Euclid that was a pupil of Socrates. He was a friend(and classmate i guess) of Plato.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_of_Megara
And dont worry, it wasnt just you who was confused
"Editors and translators in the Middle Ages often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria when discussing the latter's Elements. "
We likely don't know much about the researchers of modern technology because they're often created by a huge team of hundreds of people. There's no single person responsible for the bulk of the work. In the case of ChatGPT and the line of work leading up to it, it was very much also the researchers' choice as well to not name a specific person as being the main contributor. For example, the transformer paper had all the author names shuffled so the credit doesn't all end up with one person.
Still, some are closer to the source of these ideas than others, think about awards attributed to individuals for example. And if our "idols" are singers, actors, politicians, or youtubers, then we'll produce singers, actors, politicians, or youtubers. Why don't we have more emissions that will interview each week a researcher on h.er.is studies ? Just that we'll have the population we deserve, that's all.
Also, they bring everything but the money goes to the investors(, not really what Ayn Rand claimed).
And we're using objects everyday without understanding how they work.
For now, we're working all day and spend our free time entertaining ourselves and spending time with our family, i'd certainly be wrong to judge, but if our time ever gets liberated(, e.g., with machines, longevity, ...), then i just hope that our civilization will seek a higher purpose than entertainment 🤷.Still, some are closer to the source of these ideas than others, think about awards attributed to individuals for example.
This is where the researchers would disagree with you. I don't know if you've ever been involved in research (or startups). There's a common saying that ideas are a dime a dozen. It's much more so the work you do that's important, not the idea itself.
singers, actors, politicians, or youtubers
Notice how being in the spotlight is an important aspect of all the professions you've listed. That naturally selects for people who are comfortable with or enjoy being on camera and are good at that kind of live performance. Similarly, science selects for people who are good at doing science. Sometimes, there's an overlap, but it's not that common.
If you're interested in interviews with prominent scientists, Lex Fridman does quite a few of those. But if you want more people to do this, you'll have to contend with the fact that most scientists simply have no interest in being on camera and probably never developed the skills needed for it.
