[HN Gopher] The Reign of Alexander III of Macedon, the Great?
___________________________________________________________________
The Reign of Alexander III of Macedon, the Great?
Author : throwup238
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-05-18 00:23 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _Instead, Alexander repeatedly come up with relatively simple
| solutions that he knows, from experience and intuition, his army
| can execute._
|
| > "Real artists ship." --SPJ
|
| I once heard a coach claim that given a student with the heart of
| a champion, they'd podium after having been taught but two
| actions.
|
| (note the importance of _two_ actions: pure strategies don 't
| dominate)
| ggm wrote:
| I am sure Yogi Berra wouldn't agree but the verb "to podium" is
| a neologism I want to help root out and destroy.
|
| I sometimes wish we had our winning athletes stand on herms,
| not a podium. At least the herms are decorated (usually, now
| chiselled off)
|
| _I do realize english is a fluid language and adapts to suit
| it 's needs. I do not believe in appeals to dictionary
| authorities, I just don't LIKE "to podium" as a verb_
| flir wrote:
| Verbing weirds language, but for some reason it also funs
| language.
|
| (j/k)
| ggm wrote:
| It's particularly common in the balling arena. Sporting
| appears to verbalise like nobody else can. They probably
| medal in it.
| flir wrote:
| ok, enough, enough, I admit it - I hateses it.
| rvense wrote:
| You're hateful towards it?
|
| Personally I'd probably interpret "to medal" as "to
| meddle" and misunderstand completely.
| BostonFern wrote:
| its needs
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. What are actions?
| monkeydreams wrote:
| The fact that a champion _does_ rather than holds back or
| tries to execute complex plans, is the point. They don 't
| overthink - they just go in and give it 100%.
| lukan wrote:
| Sounds also like the description of an attacking bull to
| me.
| brazzy wrote:
| The key is, though, that they _do the right thing_ , and
| are also willing and able to abort or change plans (again,
| in the right direction) when the situation changes.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _What are actions?_
|
| Tactics; ways to attack.
|
| (probably an unspoken assumption is that the two actions
| taught would both start in the same way, so one launches the
| attack, sees which* line gets closed, and continues in the
| line which has been opened. Even if you don't have the speed
| to properly determine the open line for the continuation,
| it's still possible to successfully run the pair as a mixed
| strategy and expect to find an opening stochastically)
|
| * the same coach believes the most beautiful action is "feint
| direct, direct": at first you pretend to straightforwardly
| touch, but should your opponent fail to defend (because
| they're expecting a more complex action and are waiting to
| see where you're really going to attack), you go ahead and
| turn the "feint" into a real score.
| schmidt_fifty wrote:
| > "Real artists ship." --SPJ
|
| Many of the most prolific artists of all time are now forgotten
| by the masses. The choice of "artist" is particularly
| perplexing here because the implied sentiment seems to apply
| primarily to industry and _not_ to artists.
| brazzy wrote:
| But _all_ the artists that never completed a work because
| they always thought "it's not perfect yet" are forgotten, by
| everyone.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Yet there are plenty of one hit wonders that are
| remembered.
|
| Tolkien being an example.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| That's two hits: the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
| Also several academic pieces in his professional field.
| Not including the material subsequently published by his
| son and estate.
| antupis wrote:
| And The Lord of Rings was first published as separated
| books.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Back in the day, it only took one hit, and after that one
| could drive off of Skyline Blvd in a sports car, or
| retire to a horse farm, or run a SF nightclub, etc.
|
| see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34566920
| tokai wrote:
| Thats not true. Several artist never shipped or published
| any works, but are still well known today. Vivian Maier and
| Henry Darger comes to mind.
| fch42 wrote:
| Agree. In addition, there are also plenty of artists who
| either shipped yet died poor (van Gogh, for example) or
| who were prolific proposers/thinkers/sketchers with "low
| actual ship rate" (Leonardo never _built_ his helicopter,
| yet "dreamed in drawing" about it a lot).
|
| Measuring the "influence" of an artist my "number of
| artworks created and sold" is a bit like measuring
| academics by "number of papers published". It's at best a
| very coarse approximation of "the real thing". At worst,
| total bull.
| fch42 wrote:
| A clear counter example would be someone like Franz Kafka.
| He hid much of his works in his lifetime, and willed for
| them to be destroyed posthumously whether published or
| unpublished.
|
| That _anything_ came down from him was the executors of his
| will ignoring his stated intent.
|
| And yet he's considered a literary Great of the 20st
| century.
|
| Sometimes, legacy is that what others did.
| ctchocula wrote:
| > I once heard a coach claim that given a student with the
| heart of a champion, they'd podium after having been taught but
| two actions.
|
| Out of curiosity, for which sport?
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| Another quality post by Bret Devereaux, the man single-handedly
| puts out some of the best content on the Internet these days.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| I love this article
|
| https://acoup.blog/2022/03/03/collections-how-the-weak-can-w...
| w0de0 wrote:
| I'm sure to be in the minority in finding this fellow's writing
| poorly edited and roundly devoid of incisive insight. I'm being
| droned at by a textbook whose author has an italics fetish (lest
| I miss his point in a deluge of exposition - emphasis need not be
| emphasized were it not drowning).
|
| It's inevitable one learns, but I long to read a scholar with a
| little style and rather more respect for his audience's basic
| knowledge. Informed and informative, yes; erudite or pithy, he is
| most certainly not. Given a Gordian Knot this author would spend
| four years quite precisely untying it, never once noticing the
| sword he daily affixes to his hip.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| Whilst I appreciate the allusion to the Gordian Knot, you're
| still just... mistaken.
|
| I have no idea how you can read this and think that Bret
| doesn't a) have style (more than a little, even!) and b) a
| respect for his audience's basic knowledge.
|
| "Devoid of incisive insight"? Are we reading the same thing?
| "Poorly edited" - okay, yeah occasionally I've caught a
| grammatical or spelling error but everyone makes these - even
| big newspapers - when you put out enough words. It's well
| edited, but short of perfect. Not the same as poorly though,
| not even in the same league.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I've always found Bret to have a very distinctive style - one
| might call it "nerdy" if one had to pick one word. Not just
| that he talks about LotR and Star Wars, but also the way he
| talks/writes.
|
| If you don't like his style, fine, you're allowed to dislike
| it, _de gustibus non est disputandum_. But I'm genuinely
| curious if you have a point of more substance behind this
| claim.
|
| As to basic knowledge - I think the Fremen Mirage series in
| particular is getting at an important point that should be
| basic knowledge, but is not; popular culture gets this
| backwards in so many ways.
|
| I think you are making a valid point with your Gordian Knot
| analogy, but I personally think that's a much better failure
| mode than pulling out the sword as your default answer to any
| problem. Bret has this thing about needing to prove even
| outright fascist claims factually wrong before denouncing them
| for any other reasons, but I still prefer that many times over
| to the "if an argument supports our side, who cares if it's
| true?" approach.
| asimpletune wrote:
| If you're interested in Prof. Devereux's work on Ancient Greece
| you should check out this podcast he was on where he discussed
| his views on misperceptions of Sparta
|
| https://youtu.be/VngbinpNGIE?feature=shared
| eru wrote:
| If you prefer the written word, see
| https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/
| asimpletune wrote:
| Actually, I think it's valuable to see him defend his views
| when pressed to do so.
|
| Of course you should read the article as well, but the
| interview is invaluable. His blog is shared on HN a lot, but
| this was the first time I ever saw the man himself asked to
| actually account for why he believes the evidence supports
| his conclusions.
|
| Also the article in question, from the interview, was this
| one https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/22/sparta-popular-
| culture-... but they edited the title after he did that
| podcast. It used to be "Spartans Were Losers: The US
| Military's Admiration of a Proto-Fascist City-State is Based
| on Bad History."
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| When I grew up, during the Cold War, the US admired Athens,
| and ascribed admiration for Sparta to the Other side.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Given that Athens was (usually) democratic-ish, vs.
| Sparta was a militaristic monarchy, and the Soviet block
| was very heavily militarized during the Cold War...
|
| Not an expert, but my understanding is that Soviet
| education & propaganda idealized Sparta.
|
| Edit: I was unaware of the US military admiring
| Sparta...but developing an admiration for the ideals of
| your previous #1 Enemy, whose nation collapsed from
| within...yeahhh. Perhaps a few service academy
| instructors need to further explain "Do Not Copy Losing
| Strategies" to their Military Thinking 101 classes?
| globalnode wrote:
| got to 11:20 where he says if you think this is marine boot
| camp, it is not, the things being trained are fitness and
| conformity... and i couldnt help but burst out laughing... he
| may be a great historian but seems to lack an understanding of
| contemporary issues.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Probably not the nicest comment but that interviewer seems
| outright insufferable and heavily biased due to some reason.
| Basically questioning everything Devereux is saying without
| being able to form almost any coherent argument.
|
| IMHO that's really not how you should approach an interview
| with a highly educated/knowledgably professional as a lay
| person. Also focusing way too much on semantics and getting
| stuck in relatively minor details while mostly ignoring the
| bigger picture. Must have been pretty annoying for the
| interviewee to sit through...
| navane wrote:
| Interviewer: "We have no data point supporting this view"
| Brad: "We have this one [name and number]" Interviewer:
| "But do we have any one but this one?" Brad gives two
| more Interviewer: "Ok, but that's just three data
| points."
| thom wrote:
| I very much appreciated the Landmark Arrian, which has extensive
| footnotes and images of terrain etc. They also do an edition of
| Xenophon's Anabasis (another story a Greek army frolicking in
| Persia).
|
| https://thelandmarkancienthistories.com/Arrian.htm
| hoseja wrote:
| I wonder if the good professor will cover Olympias, hmm.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Anyone looking at the map of the time can understand why he was
| called the great, no matter if that would be right or wrong
| morally.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Complimentary map:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#/media/Fil...
| j9461701 wrote:
| > Alexander has a lot of failings, and we're going to get to
| them. But he was unnaturally composed and at least when it came
| to doing violence (and getting others to do violence effectively)
| he was highly competent, almost absurdly so.
|
| I suppose my question is: How do you know this? Alexander was
| surrounded by hand-picked men his father had groomed for decades
| in some cases. Offering council on every part of war fighting,
| from tactics to strategy to logistics. Isn't it entirely possible
| Alexander simply went with the flow of wiser, more experienced
| men telling him what to do?
|
| Earlier in the article the author mentions alexander's perfect
| track record of logistical balancing. Surely that, if nothing
| else, is far better attributed to his officer corps then him?
| They'd been doing this successfully for 20 years before he took
| over, they had lots of practice at it and all Alexander had to do
| was not upset the apple cart.
|
| Or another example - one man cannot organize a cavalry detachment
| mid-battle and send it to aid a failing flank. That takes the
| work of many dozens of officers, and well trained soldiers
| drilled to follow orders even under intense stress.
|
| Of course this is all speculation on my part, as we simply can't
| know due to the mythologizing of the man and his life. But it's a
| question I find interesting to ponder.
| fch42 wrote:
| One may rightfully ask whether Alexander just "went with the
| flow" as you phrase it, or to use a different term, "was lucky
| to be at/in the right place at the right time". Or even "lucky
| to have died before his luck ran out".
|
| Let's keep in mind though that having great resources at your
| disposal, and a large circle of experienced and capable
| advisors at hand, does not necessarily create a lasting form of
| "action alignment" between those.
|
| It is interesting in this context that none of his advisors or
| "immediate staff" ever strongly challenged Alexander in his
| lifetime.
|
| They deferred to him till the last moment, only to basically be
| snubbed off by his famous "whoever's strongest" last words.
| Only _then_ did they go for each others ' throats.
|
| It is of course possible, given historical records and "history
| is written by the victors", that his portrayal as _integrative_
| figure is flawed and more incorrect than not. The behaviour of
| the diadochs, the "infighting of the inner circle" which he
| apparently had contained in his lifetime, yet broke out
| immediately after, that make it likely that he brought some
| forms of "interpersonal skills" to the table which neither his
| father, nor his "successors" possessed in equal measure.
|
| (my opinion)
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Not upsetting the cart over a long period with significant
| change is pretty good though.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-21 12:01 UTC)