Adding a comment instead of another top-level post saying basically the same thing. Add my thoughts, on things I liked about this plan:
It’s centered on people. A lot of rationality is thinking and deciding and weighing and valuing possible actions. Another frame that is occasionally good (for me at least) is “How would <my hero> act?”—and this can help guide my actions. It’s nice to have a human or historical action to think about instead of just a vague virtue or principle.
It encourages looking through history for events of positive impact. Many of us wish to impact the future (potentially the long future) for the better. It’s nice to have examples of people in the past that made an impact. I think it helps me think about my possible impact and the impact of the people around me.
It marks a time on a calendar. Maybe my sense of time was warped by covid, but also I think I’ve missed the regular holidays that a religious life spaces throughout the year. It’s also nice to coordinate on things, even if the coordination is small and just a few friends.
I want to start a list of people I might consider for this, but keeping it to myself for now!
Ideas myself and others have had, off the top of my head;
Atul Gawande (checklist manifesto, rearranged how hospitals organize themselves to reduce medical error)
Moon landing
Invention/inventors of oral rehydration therapy
Gutenberg
Galileo
Newton
Darwin
Long list of people who sheltered victims from the Holocaust (plus that one German who bought 250k Nanking residents time to escape)
Norman Borlaug
A general abundance day celebrating all modernity has brought us (Ray suggests summer solstice for this, which seems right)
Polio vaccine guy
Actually, there are a lot of vaccines and they’re most great, holidays for everyone
Gotta be something related to computers and/or the internet somewhere
Juneteenth
That guy who invented incubators for premature babies and funded them through carnival exhibits when hospitals ignored him.
Anniversary of banning leaded gasoline.
EDIT: While looking up the German in WW2 I found a French guy who saved half a million Chinese people in WW2 and I’m so mad I’ve never heard about him before.
Second place day: celebrate the Leipnizes, Wallaces, and that-guy-who-invented-the-telephone-6-hours-too-late of the world. Geniuses who made absolutely stunning breakthroughs, but were slightly slower or less popular or in the wrong country so it didn’t count.
Thinking of Leibniz as only “the guy who was second after Newton” is a bit misleading. His mathematical contributions were important enough that we still talk about Leibniz rule for the derivation of a product, and his philosophical works were also quite significant.
Adding a comment instead of another top-level post saying basically the same thing. Add my thoughts, on things I liked about this plan:
It’s centered on people. A lot of rationality is thinking and deciding and weighing and valuing possible actions. Another frame that is occasionally good (for me at least) is “How would <my hero> act?”—and this can help guide my actions. It’s nice to have a human or historical action to think about instead of just a vague virtue or principle.
It encourages looking through history for events of positive impact. Many of us wish to impact the future (potentially the long future) for the better. It’s nice to have examples of people in the past that made an impact. I think it helps me think about my possible impact and the impact of the people around me.
It marks a time on a calendar. Maybe my sense of time was warped by covid, but also I think I’ve missed the regular holidays that a religious life spaces throughout the year. It’s also nice to coordinate on things, even if the coordination is small and just a few friends.
I want to start a list of people I might consider for this, but keeping it to myself for now!
Ideas myself and others have had, off the top of my head;
Atul Gawande (checklist manifesto, rearranged how hospitals organize themselves to reduce medical error)
Moon landing
Invention/inventors of oral rehydration therapy
Gutenberg
Galileo
Newton
Darwin
Long list of people who sheltered victims from the Holocaust (plus that one German who bought 250k Nanking residents time to escape)
Norman Borlaug
A general abundance day celebrating all modernity has brought us (Ray suggests summer solstice for this, which seems right)
Polio vaccine guy
Actually, there are a lot of vaccines and they’re most great, holidays for everyone
Gotta be something related to computers and/or the internet somewhere
Juneteenth
That guy who invented incubators for premature babies and funded them through carnival exhibits when hospitals ignored him.
Anniversary of banning leaded gasoline.
EDIT: While looking up the German in WW2 I found a French guy who saved half a million Chinese people in WW2 and I’m so mad I’ve never heard about him before.
Second place day: celebrate the Leipnizes, Wallaces, and that-guy-who-invented-the-telephone-6-hours-too-late of the world. Geniuses who made absolutely stunning breakthroughs, but were slightly slower or less popular or in the wrong country so it didn’t count.
Thinking of Leibniz as only “the guy who was second after Newton” is a bit misleading. His mathematical contributions were important enough that we still talk about Leibniz rule for the derivation of a product, and his philosophical works were also quite significant.
It seems like the edit example is a really good heuristic. When we hear about good deed are we mad? Maybe good to celebrate it.