Not strictly a rationality quote, but screw it, it’s beautiful anyway:
I take it as a given that, during the course of my lifespan, there’s always been television (not color to start with, but there was TV), that indoor plumbing and lights have always been around, flight is not only possible but commonplace and pretty much always has been, and the moon landing happened before I was born.
A part of me regrets missing the introduction of all of those exciting technologies and innovations, because to me they are all background things that just are. They aren’t wondrous, they just are.
No matter where you live in history, there are always improvements that you’ll appreciate, but there’s always amazing stuff that was there before that you will only see as part of the world as it’s always been, and will be even more amazing stuff that will come after you that would probably blow your mind if you ever had the chance to see it (or would be so far beyond your comprehension you couldn’t appreciate it).
You don’t truly appreciate the amazing parts of an advance unless you’ve watched those parts happen.
To me, computers (and video games, etc), color/stereo televisions, microwaves, mobile phones, digital wristwatches, and many of the things you no doubt take for granted are marvels. When I was a kid, they largely did not exist. Which is not to say they all of them were completely unavailable, but when I was growing up no one I knew owned any of them and they were brand new.
I both envy my grandparents (now all dead) and my yet-to-be-born grandchildren the wonders of their lifetimes that I will never see they way they do. The wonders of my grandparents are my commonplace items. The wonders of my grandchildren are probably beyond my imagination.
But that’s just human nature. We want to see it all. And eventually we learn we’ll never succeed. It’s both heartening and saddening at the same time.
I disagree with this. Although it’s difficult to guess how people thought back then when they didn’t have all these marvels of today, it’s still really easy to appreciate the things themselves. Things related to cultural evolution, like basic human rights, art, modern goverments, those are a bit more difficult to see, but still, with little thought, it’s easy to see much of the sheer awesomeness they have. It’s also easy to see how things could easily be so much worse, and usually it’s easy to check from history that yeah, things have been very much worse.
Though much of this quote is about how awesome things are in our world, and I totally agree with that.
I guess that might depend on the person. For me, even though I can appreciate things like television and electricity on an intellectual level, I can’t really appreciate them on an emotional level the way I can appreciate things like ubiquitous mobile phones or Wikipedia that weren’t there when I was a kid.
Not strictly a rationality quote, but screw it, it’s beautiful anyway:
-- natehoy
I disagree with this. Although it’s difficult to guess how people thought back then when they didn’t have all these marvels of today, it’s still really easy to appreciate the things themselves. Things related to cultural evolution, like basic human rights, art, modern goverments, those are a bit more difficult to see, but still, with little thought, it’s easy to see much of the sheer awesomeness they have. It’s also easy to see how things could easily be so much worse, and usually it’s easy to check from history that yeah, things have been very much worse.
Though much of this quote is about how awesome things are in our world, and I totally agree with that.
I guess that might depend on the person. For me, even though I can appreciate things like television and electricity on an intellectual level, I can’t really appreciate them on an emotional level the way I can appreciate things like ubiquitous mobile phones or Wikipedia that weren’t there when I was a kid.