[HN Gopher] A collection of human errors: assessing the distant ...
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       A collection of human errors: assessing the distant past
        
       Author : pepys
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2022-11-24 22:19 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.laphamsquarterly.org)
        
       | csours wrote:
       | What is a conspiracy theory but a mystery cult? To be sure, the
       | ancient mystery cults practiced in secret and only revealed the
       | mysteries to the inner circle. Our modern mystery cults preach
       | their secrets openly. They are alike in that the true believers
       | have understanding that is not available to the outer world.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries
       | 
       | ====
       | 
       | To be clear:
       | 
       | 1. There are real conspiracies.
       | 
       | 2. None of them control the whole world, or are responsible for
       | all of the problems that any one person or group of people faces.
       | 
       | 3. The 'mystery'/'conspiracy' helps someone make sense of a world
       | that makes no sense to them; you cannot disprove the mystery with
       | evidence, the mystery is the only thing they have to hang onto.
       | You have to give them something else to hang onto before you take
       | away the mystery; by the time they have reconnected with the
       | world, you don't need to disprove the mystery.
       | 
       | The connection to the article is the dichotomy of the fable vs
       | history; myth vs reality. Humans still have the same tendencies
       | as they ever did.
        
       | Jun8 wrote:
       | Emilie du Chatelet
       | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilie_du_Chatelet), mentioned at
       | the beginning of the article, was a fascinating woman, living at
       | a time when "natural philosophy" was morphing into different
       | sciences. For a time she was also very active in the social
       | scene. Like so many brilliant women of history (see Marry
       | Wollstonecraft for another example), her biography ends in death
       | during childbirth. Voltaire was her long time companion and lover
       | (among many others), see this post for a look at their
       | relationship: https://www.geriwalton.com/voltaire-emilie-du-
       | chatelet/. For an in-depth coverage of her work, check out the
       | Stanford Encyof Philosophy entry:
       | https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emilie-du-chatelet/. Her life
       | would make for a fantastic movie.
       | 
       | Maria Agnesi, of the Witch of Agnesi fame, was another woman
       | mathematician whose life overlapped with du Chatelet's. She was
       | also from a wealthy family (a must for being an educated female
       | in those times) but she lived quite a different type of life,
       | focusing on religion towards the end.
        
         | totetsu wrote:
         | Maybe such stories will not just be a thing of the history
         | books with anti progress on reproductive rights..
        
       | tangus wrote:
       | Site returns 403 Forbidden
        
         | jfk13 wrote:
         | Loads just fine for me.
        
       | neonate wrote:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20221126004133/https://www.lapha...
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-26 23:02 UTC)