Studying the demise of historic civilisations • Hacker News Board

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#321

Post by cmrdporcupine » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #244

Jack000 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by this standard, Japanese would be a variation of Chinese

Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian are all directly derived from Vulgar Latin. Japanese is a linguistic isolate, perhaps distantly related to Korean (which is also a linguistic isolate). Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system, and a little bit of vocabulary; calling Japanese a variation of Chinese is akin to saying English and German are a variation of Latin.

It's even further remote than saying English and German are a variation of Latin, as at least the Germanic languages are in the same family of Indo-European languages. Japanese and Chinese are not related in any way we know of.

It'd be more like saying Finnish or Hungarian are a variation of Latin or German. Some small amount of shared vocabulary (and maybe phonetics) due to proximity, but no more.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#322

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

xref wrote: post #140

wallace_f wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is misleading. I think when tossing out the credence of people such as Wadhington or Jefferson with the slavery problem, there is very little context understood about the cultural norms, science and religion those people lived in. The problem was that they did not see other races as people as they saw themselves. They saw their lives and societies and thought of them as savages. They further justified th…

> The slave owner like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson was in some ways like an extreme version of the modern liberal -- seeing the person of color as needing an authority to rule over them and provide them with things like welfare, access to education, etc. You’re being downvoted because you chose to regurgitate alt-right theology to lay history’s problems at the doorstep of “liberal guilt” The largest group…

You’re being downvoted because you chose to regurgitate alt-right theology to lay history’s problems at the doorstep of “liberal guilt”

This is just spin doctoring and propaganda. Otherwise, your "logic" would make this man "Alt-Right." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

There is an empirical basis to question the effects of “liberal guilt.”

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o...

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#323

Post by notfromhere » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

scottLobster wrote: post #225

Mbioguy wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'm gonna cut to the chase: that line is probably the most fascist thing I'm going to read all day, and excepting you, Hacker News has failed to call it out. This idea that war can somehow mythically rejuvenate the ethos or spirit of a country isn't unique to fascism though. It was also common in the jingoist imperial western european powers, and partly used as justification for aggression against neighbors and…

I think you're straw manning a bit there. It's not illogical to say that severe national challenges help rejuvenate society in the long run. You can even see it locally when the power goes out for a few days in a hurricane, and all of a sudden neighbors who barely knew each other for 10 years are pooling resources and talking. War is horrific in the short term, but everyone on this site has benefited from it in some…

military research is not the same as war. Flight was developed by the commercial sector.

the people blabbering about war as a means of national rejuvenation are usually the ones not planning on bleeding out in a muddy ditch. 30 million people died in WWI and not much was rejuvenated

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#324

Post by barberousse » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #311

nonbel wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ~600 BC Egyptians claimed it was because the proximity to water protected them from periodic "great conflagrations" and the lack of rain from catastrophic flooding: > "There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you…

Amazing quote thanks for that. It's just inspiring to imagine Plato and Socrates, in a garden, discussing basically the same article we're discussing here.

That's because Egypt was to Greece what Greece was to Rome

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#325

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

dak1 wrote: post #227

hungryhobo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly this is just not?true. the Chinese script have evolved, but one can still look at inscriptions from thousands of years ago and understand it. it might be hard for people to understand different dialects in China but they all use the same writing system, standardized in the Qin dynasty. Same with the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese and Korean. A native Chinese speaker would have little problem reading…

That's no different than saying the English alphabet is just a modified version of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, and that with a dictionary and a bit of training you could use that too. 'ȝ' becomes 'g', 'Ð' becomes 'D', and we still use 'æ' today, which is also a rune, and they even used 'W'! Also, the number of characters in Chinese has also drastically changed over time. So while many characters have a 1:…

[deleted]

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#326

Post by barberousse » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

serkanyersen wrote: post #109

Ottoman empire lasted 624 years and it's not mentioned in this article. They mention 'Western Turk (70)' and I've no idea what that means.

Politically my guess is modern Turkey but 'Western turk' is legit term to distinguish, culturally, from Eastern turks such as Siberians, Kazahks, etc whom the Turkish language, spoken in Turkey, descends from

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#327

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #42

digitaltrees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of multi generational transfers of wealth. Make each generation start from scratch. I know it's easier said than done as not all assets are fungible or distributable (social networks, geography etc) but it would make a difference. I read recently that the same families that controlled most the wealth in Florence in the 1600 still control most the wealth now, that's probably not good for scrappy innovation.

>...it would make a difference. It sure would. If I wanted to design a system to throw society into abject chaos, basically permanently, I can’t think of a better way than a rule of “make it impossible to build something for your children”. That idea is anti-family, it’s anti-civil-society, and it’s anti-civilization.

False. There are numerous examples of very high estate tax societies that didn’t descend in to chaos. Are you also for a landed gentry with inherited titles? If not why? Why is one type of property ok to pass down and not the other.

The notion of the “idle rich” spoiled offspring exists for a reason. Nothing kills ambition more than unearned wealth. Obviously there are many counter examples with many wealthy heirs contributing significantly to society. But I would argue that they would behave the same if they inherited less.

As Aristotle roughly said, the mean between extremes is often the right answer. You could completely eliminate any transfer of wealth without social collapse; just like you could have essentially unlimited transfer of wealth with out social collapse: you would just end up with an aristocratic system. The question is what do you want to create.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#328

Post by hnnmzh » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #286

prevedmedved wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously claiming that you can understand seal script inscriptions? Are you Indiana Jones?

Not sure if you know Chinese or not but seal script will look rather familiar to anyone who knows Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script If you look at the picture on the upper right, you can make out "tian xia" and "wang" -- all under heaven (i.e. the world) and king (the character for emperor isn't invented yet)

> the character for emperor isn't invented yet

Hmm it's right there。 The 4th “皇” and 5th “帝”。 And the combined form “皇帝” - a title invented by the First Emperor himself。

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#329

Post by coolio2657 » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #165

supernova87a wrote: post #21

You know I lately think that, ok, we're mostly past the age of empires physically conquering one another, we're in the age of economic ebbs and flows of established countries. And in this kind of age, the thing that sinks a country is not aggression by others, but indifference and lethargy as a country "gets old". "Getting old" means the political desired and inertia of a rich, settled population get to dominate the…

You should check out Raoul Vaneigem, he develops similar ideas, but focusing on the middle class stuck in their "everyday life" and routines. Whatever you do at work, 8 hours a day, leaves you with just enough energy to consume entertainment and wait for the next day. The cycle doesn't end until you're 65 and are allowed to retire, by the time you don't have any kind of energy (physical and/or mental), most people do…

This is a clear perspective and it needed to be put out there for others to understand. I salute your well-worded post, lm28469.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#330

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #147

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that the cure will be worse than disease? If that's so, then I guess we agree there's a somewhat concavey-looking function of "limiting generational wealth transfer" -> "sustainable benefit to civilization". Which shifts the problem from "whether to do it at all" to "how to move towards maximum without screwing up". It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to s…

>It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. I fundamentally, emphatically disagree with this. I think it's a weird rewriting of history to think that "Civilization was built by trying to stop wealth transfers within powerful families". Do I think a lot of wealth is trapped within a few families, and that might be a problem? Sure. Do I think that the ability to dest…

I think their argument was that civilization iterates on solutions to many social problems by adjusting policy over time so that human coordinated behavior is effective. The argument above isn’t focused on wealth transfer in particular.

Civilization experiments with policy. At the extreme, there is a push towards consolidation and monopolies and this is counterbalanced by the rule of a unhappy mob. This causes policy to shift over time.