We’re neither Athenians nor Spartans. Athens and Sparta were city-states. Greek culture thrived because Greece is a mountainous archipelago that prevented large empires from forming. The Greek city-states were constantly at war with each other and with the outside world, and so they had to develop strong new ideas to survive.
You mentioned the Netherlands, which is quite similar in the sense that it was a small country with strong threatening neighbors, but still became successful because of its good social technology. The story of Europe in general is basically the same as Greece. The complexity of European geography meant that after the fall of Rome no power could dominate the whole continent. So Europe was made up of small independent political entities that were constantly fighting each other. This competitive environment meant that they were forced to innovate good social technology.
But we are a community that faces a choice about what values we want: insularity and strong group membership, or openness and intellectualism. This seems fairly analogous to me, and after all don’t we need strong new ideas to stop the AI apocalypse or improve lives all over the world? Perhaps the Amish vs. liberal German judaism would be a better analogy.
Compared to whatever we could likely do, the Athenians were insular. We are connected to the internet and to very much information. We have cheap travel that allows traveling to another continent for a conference and then flying back.
We’re neither Athenians nor Spartans. Athens and Sparta were city-states. Greek culture thrived because Greece is a mountainous archipelago that prevented large empires from forming. The Greek city-states were constantly at war with each other and with the outside world, and so they had to develop strong new ideas to survive.
You mentioned the Netherlands, which is quite similar in the sense that it was a small country with strong threatening neighbors, but still became successful because of its good social technology. The story of Europe in general is basically the same as Greece. The complexity of European geography meant that after the fall of Rome no power could dominate the whole continent. So Europe was made up of small independent political entities that were constantly fighting each other. This competitive environment meant that they were forced to innovate good social technology.
But we are a community that faces a choice about what values we want: insularity and strong group membership, or openness and intellectualism. This seems fairly analogous to me, and after all don’t we need strong new ideas to stop the AI apocalypse or improve lives all over the world? Perhaps the Amish vs. liberal German judaism would be a better analogy.
Compared to whatever we could likely do, the Athenians were insular. We are connected to the internet and to very much information. We have cheap travel that allows traveling to another continent for a conference and then flying back.
That’s correct. But I worry that some projects in the rationalistsphere are about turning our backs on modernity in very strong ways.