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3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

openculture.com

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Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#51

Post by imoverclocked »

dylan-m wrote: post #28
robbedpeter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect - iq has risen steadily with improvements in nutrition, public health, and medical science. It's mostly plateaued over the last 50 years, but it's evident that pre-industrial / pre-rnlightenment humans had a much harder life, including things that suppressed potential at an almost global scale. We may see additional gains if there are globally adopted pedagogical improvements in both childhood educa…

> This is incorrect - iq has risen steadily In particular, we recently invented this peculiar notion that one can boil intelligence down to a number :b

... and somewhat more recently, we are able to apply Goodhart's law.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#52

Post by sizzzzlerz »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #20

I feel sorry for the poor guys who never missed a day of work and gave their all to building that damn pyramid, 3200 years later nobody even knows who they were.

Said nobody on their death cot ever, “I wish I’d spent more time carving hieroglyphs down at the Pharoah’s tomb!”

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#55

Post by tomrod »

ALittleLight wrote: post #7

I used to live in a scorpion-rich environment and can attest that a sting should disqualify one from manual labor for a day. I found that every time I was stung though the effects were less and less. The last time I was stung was a minor nuisance at most. I would advise, if you find yourself living with scorpions, to check your shoes, by shaking them out, before putting them on.

When we had scorpions, we got barncats. They took care of scorpions, snakes, and a few other critters that are pests when mixed with humans.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#56

Post by praptak »

reaperducer wrote: post #37
ALittleLight wrote: post #7

I used to live in a scorpion-rich environment and can attest that a sting should disqualify one from manual labor for a day. I found that every time I was stung though the effects were less and less. The last time I was stung was a minor nuisance at most. I would advise, if you find yourself living with scorpions, to check your shoes, by shaking them out, before putting them on.

I second the shoe-shaking ritual. Even if you keep your shoes inside. When I lived in the desert, the neighbor had work done in his yard, and every scorpion from his property moved into mine. One day I found the cat eating a scorpion in the living room. Rushed him to the emergency cat vet place, and was told that cats aren't bothered by scorpions or their stings. But don't make crunchy, meaty scorpions part of a regu…

It makes sense, there are like 100 species of scorpions in the regions where house cats were first domesticated. Cats do hunt scorpions which probably scored them some extra holiness points with the ancient Egyptians.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#57

Post by swatcoder »

dragonwriter wrote: post #14
LanceJones wrote: post #12

We really are the same people. No measurable difference in IQ (as well as that can be "measured"). Only knowledge (some gained for us; some lost, too) and context are different. The tablet is a cool reminder of this.

> We really are the same people. No measurable difference in IQ (as well as that can be "measured"). There is definitely IQ variation in the same society on a short timescale and between societies and the same time, during the time when we have been able to measure it; given what we know about the wide variety of environmental influences on IQ, it stands to reason that Egypt 3,200 years ago would have significantly d…

If people lived and thought and partied and slept, had friends, raised family, and weren’t too miserable, I’m not sure how variations in IQ distribution really matter much?

Maybe the metric captures something arbitrary about modernity — and a community’s conformance to it — and not much meaningful about the people in other times and places.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#58

Post by unnouinceput »

sizzzzlerz wrote: post #52
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #20

I feel sorry for the poor guys who never missed a day of work and gave their all to building that damn pyramid, 3200 years later nobody even knows who they were.

Said nobody on their death cot ever, “I wish I’d spent more time carving hieroglyphs down at the Pharoah’s tomb!”

You can translate this to modern world. "I wish I'd spent more time arguing with strangers on internet"

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#59

Post by jeffbee »

praptak wrote: post #56
reaperducer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the shoe-shaking ritual. Even if you keep your shoes inside. When I lived in the desert, the neighbor had work done in his yard, and every scorpion from his property moved into mine. One day I found the cat eating a scorpion in the living room. Rushed him to the emergency cat vet place, and was told that cats aren't bothered by scorpions or their stings. But don't make crunchy, meaty scorpions part of a regu…

It makes sense, there are like 100 species of scorpions in the regions where house cats were first domesticated. Cats do hunt scorpions which probably scored them some extra holiness points with the ancient Egyptians.

Dogs also hunt scorpions. Dogs are not immune to scorpion stings, they're just ignorant.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#60

Post by agumonkey »

ALittleLight wrote: post #7

I used to live in a scorpion-rich environment and can attest that a sting should disqualify one from manual labor for a day. I found that every time I was stung though the effects were less and less. The last time I was stung was a minor nuisance at most. I would advise, if you find yourself living with scorpions, to check your shoes, by shaking them out, before putting them on.

There was a recent YouTube video on how this process was used in horses to anti venom.
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