Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

gq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#121

Post by medstrom »

hrktb wrote: post #112
belval wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumption is as old as time. Whether true of false Bret Devereaux did an analysis on it and it made for an interesting read: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... As far as we can tell, historically your assumption is wrong. Hard times do not really breed hard people it's a myth that comes from the antiquity and was used by philosophers and elites to link the moral corruption of a peop…

That was a weird read. For instance: > Under the assumptions of our Fremen Mirage, we ought to expect farming societies to be frequently overtaken and subjugated by their non-farming neighbors Isn’t it basically the Vikings crushing their neighboors to get fertile territories ? That’s also France’s whole history, getting overrun in waves of invasions, backing up what he calls the “mirage” that is supposed to get debu…

The Vikings were themselves a farming society. So this has nothing to do with the postulate that non-farming societies would overrun farming societies -- I'd look for a different example.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#122

Post by fifilura »

JamesSwift wrote: post #75
sampo wrote: post #47

In 1893, Fridtjof Nansen took a ship with a 12 men crew to North of East Siberia, purposefully sailed the ship to get stuck in sea ice, and hoped that the ice movement with ocean currents would take them to the North Pole. The ship spent 3 years stuck in ice, but didn't quite flow over the North Pole. These people didn't go mad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nansen%27s_Fram_expedition

That wiki article was a super interesting read. I might find a book that goes more in depth.

Try Ronald Huntford's biographies. His books about Amundsen/Scott and Shackleton are also worthwhile. Such an amazing period.

In summary, Shackleton and Nansen are admirable for courage an endurance. But Amundsen is far ahead of them all in competence, and that is what counts.

And then you can also try "The worst journey in the world" by Ansley Cherry-Garrard. An expedition in darkness...

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#123

Post by fifilura »

budlightvirus wrote: post #85
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of food did they store and eat that was to last five years? And water? The wiki is light on these details in my skimming of it.

They mention building a shelter with walrus hides so I'd imagine they did a fair amount of hunting rather than trying to bring all their supplies with them from the outset. Shackleton's voyage used a similar approach.

At this period in time, before Vitamin C was discovered, fresh meat, in particularly raw meat, was critical for survival. The canned food didn't contain vitamin C so scurvy was a constant problem.

The competent explorers learned the habit of eating raw meat from the inuits.

That said, the walrus hut was built by Nansen and Johansen after leaving the ship.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#124

Post by imtringued »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #39

I have thought for awhile that the best space voyagers, or guys whom are going to be isolated, are individuals who already had minor breakdowns when they were younger. That includes so many of us? Why? Because they know the crazy thoughts will pass. I'm not talking about individuals with serious mental illness like Schizophrenia, or have a genetic lineage of mental illness. I'm talking people that have survived mild…

>People who know the craziness in their heads will go away,

You're making the assumption that most of these people learned to live with a bad environment and they expect to live in that bad environment for the rest of their life.

What about those whose anxiety stopped because they left the bad environment? You're not going to leave Mars.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#125

Post by hrktb »

belval wrote: post #119
hrktb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a weird read. For instance: > Under the assumptions of our Fremen Mirage, we ought to expect farming societies to be frequently overtaken and subjugated by their non-farming neighbors Isn’t it basically the Vikings crushing their neighboors to get fertile territories ? That’s also France’s whole history, getting overrun in waves of invasions, backing up what he calls the “mirage” that is supposed to get debu…

I think this sentence taken out of context gives it a completely different meaning. Farmers were being killed by the Vikings for sure, but France the farming society was never under existential threat from the Vikings.

Sure, yet in the blog's context, arguing wether there are 100% pillaging societies that never had farmers nor developed land under their control is also an argument I feel nobody is making (that's also not the argument made in the parent posts)

Pirates would be the closest thing that comes to my mind, but it's more an economic activity inside a society than a separate culture.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#126

Post by imtringued »

medstrom wrote: post #121
hrktb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a weird read. For instance: > Under the assumptions of our Fremen Mirage, we ought to expect farming societies to be frequently overtaken and subjugated by their non-farming neighbors Isn’t it basically the Vikings crushing their neighboors to get fertile territories ? That’s also France’s whole history, getting overrun in waves of invasions, backing up what he calls the “mirage” that is supposed to get debu…

The Vikings were themselves a farming society. So this has nothing to do with the postulate that non-farming societies would overrun farming societies -- I'd look for a different example.

This form of selection bias is extremely common. An ethnic group and their neighbors rarely meet, if they do, then one side is a military force on an expedition which leads to a characterization of the ethnic group being violent.

Examples: Vikings, Barbarians, Huns, ...

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#127

Post by hrktb »

medstrom wrote: post #121
hrktb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a weird read. For instance: > Under the assumptions of our Fremen Mirage, we ought to expect farming societies to be frequently overtaken and subjugated by their non-farming neighbors Isn’t it basically the Vikings crushing their neighboors to get fertile territories ? That’s also France’s whole history, getting overrun in waves of invasions, backing up what he calls the “mirage” that is supposed to get debu…

The Vikings were themselves a farming society. So this has nothing to do with the postulate that non-farming societies would overrun farming societies -- I'd look for a different example.

It depends on what you call a 'farming society'. If it's about where their priorities lies, Vikings are not a farming society. They valued fertile lands and resources, and expanded where farming would be better, but that doesn't make them primary farmers until they fully settle and stop invading neighbors.

The same way I do chores, but I'm not a house maid (until perhaps I quit my job)

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#128

Post by medstrom »

hrktb wrote: post #127
medstrom wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vikings were themselves a farming society. So this has nothing to do with the postulate that non-farming societies would overrun farming societies -- I'd look for a different example.

It depends on what you call a 'farming society'. If it's about where their priorities lies, Vikings are not a farming society. They valued fertile lands and resources, and expanded where farming would be better, but that doesn't make them primary farmers until they fully settle and stop invading neighbors. The same way I do chores, but I'm not a house maid (until perhaps I quit my job)

As far as I know, Scandinavia was absolutely a farming society to the same extent England and France were. It's not like they all up and went a-viking: the people that did were a small percentage of the population, and this is to be viewed as equivalent as Rome sending the army (a small percentage of Rome's population) to conquer Gaul. They aren't suddenly considered less of a farming society when they do this. It's just how farming societies fight each other.

Re: A brief history of people losing their minds in Antarctica

#129

Post by dang »

naoru wrote: post #50
permo-w wrote: post #34

First >A current theory among social scientists suggests that pibloktoq [a temporary madness found in Inuhuit peoples] was not a congenital malady peculiar to the Inuhuit but rather a severe stress reaction arising from early contact with Western outsiders. Could someone explain this theory to me? secondly, I sincerely doubt that the early expeditions had anything remotely resembling adequate nutrition, besides enoug…

> a very restricted diet combined with not seeing the sun for 6 months That's not an expedition. That's Russia. Now you know why majority of Russians are terminally funny in the head.

Nationalistic flamebait is not allowed on HN, regardless of what country you're talking about. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Post reply on HN