Humans are incredible. Leaving the planet and taking a trip on the moon and possibly mars someday is no small feat.
We just need to fix our planet. Or to be honest, stop ruining it so it heals itself.
I think you will find this agrees with Shannon’s original point and purpose as expressed in his seminal equation. Every interpretation since beginning with “the state of …” or “number of states …” is a misapprehension exhibiting the intellectual fallibility of our times.
This is only one for instance.
Read my threads, if you can find your way around my claims of the voices in our heads being real and waging a secret war among us, and the UFOs are actually a long familiar secret, you will find other arguments regarding the tightly held ideals so many believe as fundamental truths of this age.
Burtrand Russel and Einstein both agreed to their death beds that most of what we tell ourselves is true is merely what we have come to agree with among ourselves.
This is as true today.
The difficulty lies not in finding “Truths”, the difficulty is undeceiving the self.
So what makes you think you successfully undeceived yourself? The voices in your head told you as much?
Besides, of course the voices in our head are real. (What would be a unreal voice in our head?) But if you believe they are coming from aliens or whatever it is you are claiming, I would recommend therapy.
I came to be a person of interest due to my ideals. As a person of interest I have been indoctrinated (press ganged) into the greatest secret of our humanity.
I am not here to “prove” to you. I am bearing an account, and I think if you read this collection of threads you will see I have explained my position clearly if not “incredulously.”
If you cannot tell without an authoritative collective reassuring you that “entropy” is the “existential phenomena of potential distributing over the surface area of negative potential.” After hearing it and giving it some moments, you cannot be impressed only assured.
The great big problem is that we as humans are sleep walking through our time of prosperity and comfortable convenience.
That we must awaken ourselves every day to a new world that is POTENTIAL RESOLVING not states interacting.
You have trained yourself to see the world as you expect it, and the world you “think feel and believe” in is a pleasant self satisfying lie. On many levels.
Or of course, you know nothing about me, but your root problem is that you believe you are enlightened? You are not the first, though. Also I engaged with various philosophy, meditation, and chaos magic since quite some years and to be honest, I read way more convincing text about the topic of seeing through the illusion and going beyond our self censor than your rants. So if you do not want to take my advice about therapy, maybe take this about modesty?
It is nice to meet you, know that I am not your savior, I am your undeceiver.
Many hundreds of thousands of us have tread the paths for virtue as you have.
You were not wrong, you were right! In a way. In a way you could not explain to yourselves coherently, to maintain the civilized stability of your daily existence.
Reasons and rationalizations are a well barbed trap in Man’s mind.
I am telling you the greatest secret of our humanity, the conspiracy of all conspiracies against our natural destinies is that we are not alone in our own minds.
A vast culture predates our generations, the signs have always been there, they led you to occultism, yet you could not accept the simple truth.
Consciousness may be entangled and navigated, manipulated by widely varying ranges of skill.
There is a secret war. Those taking it most seriously are the same lines Satanic sacrificing in the 80s, voices in the minds of children shooting up their schools, and now are Jesus in the thought controlled American mind.
Better candidates: a) place-value numbering aka the positional numeral system, b) the Cartesian coordinate system. Forced to choose, I would pick (b).
I’d also argue that Meitner and Noether deserve a mention.
Stepping outside my expertise, I’d argue Poppers description of what science and Pseudo-Science is, is essential.
Anyway great list!
Not only did he influence the young hegelians and Marx, he continues to influence many philosophers across all kinds of schools and ideologies.
Marx not being there is an implicit moral judgement - if “great” means good in some ethical sense subjective, then OK. But if “great” means impactful or influential, that’s a problem.
Then no Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Tocqueville, Watt, Ramón y Cajal, Ford, Schumpeter, Cervantes…
On the latter, not a single mention of literature. Not even Homer. I find this list problematic in an innumerable amount of ways.
The compounded effect of having knowledge recorded for generations to come - thereby unlocking all the other things mentioned on this list - surely should count for something.
It might be a nice exercise to describe the larger waves of ideas that follow certain cultural currents. To list some random examples, capitalism has spurred many developments, as did religion. Setting up universities, introducing law, being able to replicate documents, all seem more relevant than some individuals taking credit for the cherry on top.
To contradict myself once more, where is Gutenberg in this list?
1. That individuals are capable of unique achievements separate from their context, trends, etc.
2. That doing some intellectually impressive thing is "great", in a values or ethics sense. There are many things listed here that other intellectuals have argued as having extremely negative consequences for human society, culture, etc.
Which is why I think a list of the "greatest" is inherently a bit flawed, and you're better off looking at a list of "influential" people or ideas instead.
The list itself mentioned is interesting but it focuses on content of consciousness and not consciousness itself. The contents keep changing. Consciousness doesn't.
In other words humans discovering consciousness is more interesting than what appears on consciousness. Humans.
Mechanics: wheel, lever, screw, gear trains, cam/follower, crank‑slider, water/ wind mills, mechanical clock, printing press, and the steam engine.
Every advance in basic metallurgy. Controlled smelting, casting, hot forging, alloying to make bronze, carburising to make early steel, blooms and bloomery furnaces, quenching/tempering, wrought‑iron forging, large‑scale iron production, advanced steels.
Coinage.
Sail.
If you take the position these are not intellectual achievements, I think you under-appreciate how revolutionary they were at the time.
lukan•1h ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15255847
o4c•47m ago