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Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

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Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#201

Post by MikeCapone »

araneae wrote: post #197
MikeCapone wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) For most of history, humans and their ancestors didn't live very long. When you die at 30, there's not much selection for biological mechanisms to fix the problems that happen in someone who is 60. Natural selection is looking for genes that are good at reproducing themselves, not genes that are good at giving an individual long life. Once you have sexual reproduction in place, it is much simpler to just have lots…

>For most of history, humans and their ancestors didn't live very long. Again, this is completely irrelevant to your argument. You can still evolve to live for a longer time while reproductively viable. >Once you have sexual reproduction in place, it is much simpler to just have lots of offspring than to evolve even more repair mechanisms to extend life (at no great benefit to genes). Again, it's all about trade-offs…

> I own The Selfish Gene. And unlike you, I've read most of his actual scientific work as well, not just his work for the plebeian.

Okay, you've just crossed the pompous ahole threshold. Good day to you, sir.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#202

Post by johnnybgoode »

philwelch wrote: post #196
johnnybgoode wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he is, then so did the mob revolutionaries. In fact, so did an HN poster right here in this thread: > The French Revolution was a step forward for humanity, no matter how messy it was. (from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868344 ) The idea that the government should kill protesters might seem far too disrespectful of human life, but then, doesn't the word "messy" in the above quote evoke the same reaction?

That was a bit of verbal slight-of-hand, yes. I meant to imply that if you're willing to say "the ends justify the means" to kill people at Tiananmen Square, you don't have very good standing to criticize the French Revolution, because it's in fact easier to make that same argument about the French Revolution than it is about Tiananmen Square.

> it's in fact easier to make that same argument about the French Revolution than it is about Tiananmen Square

No, it isn't, because your argument depends on the "end" being an escape from "absolute monarchism" into democracy. Even if you believe the ends justify the means in general, the argument doesn't work when the end result is not very good.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#203

Post by johnnybgoode »

philwelch wrote: post #198
bokonist wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would have been a better option than killing people for asking for it. The people who died were people who refused to vacate a public area after occupying it for weeks, accumulating automatic weapons, defying orders to disperse, and burning buses and using them as blockades. These were not peaceful reformers, but power seeking revolutionaries, in the mold of revolutionaries that have destroyed nations for the past th…

I think it suffices to say that you have a lot of revisionist views. Not that you're wrong, per se, but that you go heavily against the common understanding of these events.

Yes, history (or "the common understanding of these events") is written by the winners. The democrats (small d) won the wars and conquered the world. Now, democratic schools teach pro-democracy views, which constitute the only acceptable mainstream position. Surprise, surprise.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#204

Post by Confusion »

araneae wrote: post #64
smhinsey wrote: post #42

Richard Feynman, because he showed me through his writing that we all, no matter our backgrounds, can be enthralled by the mysteries that surround us.

And that through charisma, you can become more famous than physicists that do better physics than you.

What is the point of this remark? Feynman was brilliant and deserved that Nobel as much as Gell-Mann. The difference is that Feynman was also inspiring, while the Gell-Mann perhaps deserved a second Nobel. That's plenty of reason to admire the first and not the latter.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#205

Post by chrischen »

johnnybgoode wrote: post #162
chrischen wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, people who praise China's system isn't completely nuts. I have lived in China though, and I have a bunch of relatives there. I also visit regularly. But the fact is that the general consensus among Chinese youth (both from those I've encountered and from sentiments I've read on the web) is that even they don't like their current system. Even older generations acknowledge the fact that their standard of livin…

> But the main difference between China and America is that China is authoritarian and America (and all the developed world) is democratic. The problem is that "democratic" is not the opposite of "authoritarian". China and the US both have authoritarian governments, although they do of course differ in certain ways. > And as evident in the development of a society: as the standard of living and education of the popul…

> The problem is that "democratic" is not the opposite of "authoritarian".

Sorry bad choice of word I guess. What I meant is that China's government is authoritarian but it is also closed, whereas the US government, although it has authority, it is responsible to the people, even though indirectly.

> is not too far off from describing the strategy of the ruling class in most modern democracies.

The ruling class in modern democracy is composed of those naturally fit to rule. There is nothing wrong with that in my opinion. So basically what I'm saying in that when a society advances and more people are educated, there are enough people to fill in that ruling class naturally.

> In practice, a democracy always grants power to a select few; democracy is inherently unequal in this sense.

Democracy's advantage is not in equality, but in allowing those fit to have more, have more, and those fit to rule, to rule. Those fit to rule would,on average, rule better than constantly selecting random small group of people to rule.

As for your education point, China has restrictions on information, and it has a similar style of education as the US, but with an even more mechanistic approach.

So while the education system in US is not ideal, the one in China is less ideal, but in the US you at least have freedom of information, which permits and promotes anyone to self educate if he or she wants to.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#206

Post by drawkbox »

adi_muresan wrote: post #186
drawkbox wrote: post #130

Nikola Tesla

Indeed, the guy was really a genius. He pushed the whole of humanity towards using alternate current and it saddens me to see that he didn't (and still doesn't) get the credit he deserves. In my mind he's the only true genius.

He was one in at least 20 billion.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#207

Post by DanielBMarkham »

This reminds me of George Washington's words: Whatever you do, please don't build a monument for me. I'm happy just serving.

So what did they do? Built a huge freaking stone phallus in the middle of the nation's capital.

I admire a lot of people. Too many to try to narrow it down. The difficult part about choosing one is that you're always looking at relative progress. At the end of the day, doing something admirable means measuring the delta between what most people like you accomplished and what you accomplished. That means that famous president with a big monument probably isn't as impressive as poor, uneducated grandfather who did something to make a lot of people's lives' better.

But I think you measure greatness in making people's lives better in the long run. So if I don't have candidates, I definitely have the metric.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#208

Post by johnnybgoode »

chrischen wrote: post #205
johnnybgoode wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the main difference between China and America is that China is authoritarian and America (and all the developed world) is democratic. The problem is that "democratic" is not the opposite of "authoritarian". China and the US both have authoritarian governments, although they do of course differ in certain ways. > And as evident in the development of a society: as the standard of living and education of the popul…

> The problem is that "democratic" is not the opposite of "authoritarian". Sorry bad choice of word I guess. What I meant is that China's government is authoritarian but it is also closed, whereas the US government, although it has authority, it is responsible to the people, even though indirectly. > is not too far off from describing the strategy of the ruling class in most modern democracies. The ruling class in mo…

> What I meant is that China's government is authoritarian but it is also closed, whereas the US government, although it has authority, it is responsible to the people, even though indirectly.

Every government answers to the people in some sense, because no government really wants all of its people to be against it. That would cause problems. This is one reason both the Chinese and US governments expend so many resources on propagandizing their populations.

> The ruling class in modern democracy is composed of those naturally fit to rule. There is nothing wrong with that in my opinion. So basically what I'm saying in that when a society advances and more people are educated, there are enough people to fill in that ruling class naturally.

I have to disagree with you here. As you pointed out, it's more efficient when people are generally left to do as they wish, including in the area of education, for example. Yet, the ruling classes in both countries have decided against this and are enforcing their views. In fact, your idea, fully applied, precludes the existence of a ruling class.

> Democracy's advantage is not in equality, but in allowing those fit to have more, have more, and those fit to rule, to rule. Those fit to rule would,on average, rule better than constantly selecting random small group of people to rule.

This paragraph would honestly make more sense if you replaced "democracy" with "aristocracy". In fact, many proponents of aristocracy make essentially the same argument you just did.

> So while the education system in US is not ideal, the one in China is less ideal,

I agree, China's education system is even worse. But my main point is that we're talking about two bad options now, not one good option and one bad option.

Re: Ask HN: Whom do you admire most?

#210

Post by defen »

philwelch wrote: post #85
bokonist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has continued to become much more free since 1989. The comparison with Russia or the East European states is particular interesting, because China's growth rates have been much better. As for Tienanmen, every single mob revolution in the history of the world has caused far more deaths than the number of people who died at Tienanmen. Imagine how many millions of lives would have been saved if Louis the XVI had a…

Imagine how many millions of lives would be freer and richer if Deng had acted in the same way as Gorbechev, Yeltsin, or even Egon Krenz. Had Louis XVI acted in the same way as Deng, continental Europe may still be under the heel of absolute monarchism today, with all the stupid pointless wars that entails. The French Revolution was a step forward for humanity, no matter how messy it was.

> The French Revolution was a step forward for humanity, no matter how messy it was.

I don't think you have a full understanding of just how messy the French Revolution was. Are you familiar with the war in the Vendee? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendee

How about the Committee of Public Safety? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Public_Safety

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