Humanity's Greatest Minds

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Danoff

Danoff

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Human beings have between their ears encased in bone a gelatinous blob of meat that they use to guide their actions. Billions of humans have existed and exist today, but there are a few absolutely stand-out blobs of meat throughout history. I have my favorite thinkers (which I will share), who are yours?
 
:lol:

I think there are plenty of "blobs" that a lot of people may be inclined to note, so one particular blob that I often look upon with great admiration is...

Buckminster_Fuller_photo_by_Hazel_Larsen_Archer.jpg


...Buckminster Fuller.

While I appreciate his works as an architect, engineer and inventor, he was also a futurist. If you (anyone reading this) ever get a chance to read his I Seem To Be A Verb, I suggest you jump on it.
 
Donald Trump.

Elon Musk.

Albert Einstein.

Bill Gates.

Jeff Bezos.

Martin Luther King.

Warren Buffett.

Mahatma Gandhi.

Charles Darwin.

Steve Jobs.

Nikola Tesla.

Stephen Hawking.

Ludwig van Beethoven.

Adolf Hitler.

Karl Marx.

Thomas Edison.

William Shakespeare.

Leonardo Da Vinci.

Benjamin Franklin.

Lewis Hamilton.

Jordan Greer.

/thread
 
Many of these people are associated with a religious and/or political philosophy, but here's my list:

Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Confucius
Caesar Augustus
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)
Jesus Christ
Muhammad
Genghis Khan
Martin Luther
John Locke
Thomas Hobbes
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
Susan B. Anthony
Harriet Tubman
Frederick Douglass
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. du Bois
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Abraham Lincoln
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John Steinbeck
George Orwell
Alduous Huxley
Harper Lee
Ray Bradbury
Rosa Parks
John F. Kennedy
Vladmir Lenin
John Lennon and the rest of the Beatles
Don Henley and the rest of the Eagles
Freddie Mercury
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
Malala Yousafzai
Those whom @Turbo mentioned, except for the last two

Hopefully I'll find out about more when I take AP World History starting this coming autumn.
 
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Danoff
I'd like to see some reasoning behind some of these - especially any US president? Especially if that president is NOT Jefferson.
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I was kinda thinking that anyway, regardless of who it is.
 
tech-giants-3-raw.jpg


Sir Isaac Newton

In 1687 his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica laid the foundation of our understanding of classical mechanics in physics - enabling prediction of objects of the solar system, and an understanding of the composition of the solar system as well as an understanding of all of... I'm looking for a word other than Newtonian here... Newtonian physics. F=ma is the cornerstone of so much technology, and is still fundamentally how we determine that buildings will stay standing, airplanes will maintain flight, and how my chair rolls on the floor. In order to do this, he derived calculus from scratch.

Newton also invented some optics for telescopes, and first started investigating light refraction to see what it was composed of. In 1687... he was trying to figure out what light was made of. Here's Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Isaac Newton:

 
Turbo
Donald Trump.

Elon Musk.

Albert Einstein.

Bill Gates.

Jeff Bezos.

Martin Luther King.

Warren Buffett.

Mahatma Gandhi.

Charles Darwin.
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Turbo
Steve Jobs.

Nikola Tesla.

Stephen Hawking.

Ludwig van Beethoven.

Adolf Hitler.

Karl Marx.

Thomas Edison. (questionable considering you have Tesla in the same wall so you probably aren't that traversed in your thoughts one why he and others I bolded are great, if they even are)

William Shakespeare.

Leonardo Da Vinci.

Benjamin Franklin.

Lewis Hamilton.

Jordan Greer.

/thread
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So all those in bold I'd ask you to explain why, and there are some I didn't bold because I can already surmise why you think so, even if it is weak compared to the idea of what a great mind is.

FerrariF1GT
Many of these people are associated with a religious and/or political philosophy, but here's my list:

Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Confucius
Caesar Augustus
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)
Jesus Christ
Muhammad
Genghis Khan
Martin Luther
John Locke
Thomas Hobbes
George Washington
Susan B. Anthony
Harriet Tubman
Frederick Douglass
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. du Bois
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Abraham Lincoln
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John Steinbeck
George Orwell
Alduous Huxley
Harper Lee
Ray Bradbury
Rosa Parks
John F. Kennedy
Vladmir Lenin
John Lennon and the rest of the Beatles
Don Henley and the rest of the Eagles
Freddie Mercury
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
Malala Yousafzai
Those whom @Turbo mentioned, except for the last two

Hopefully I'll find out about more when I take AP World History starting this coming autumn.
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So again all those I bolded I'd ask why, your last sentence would have me believe your understanding and correlations to why these "are some of humanity's greatest minds" is naïve to a great degree and others to less of a degree. For example you put in those who are said to have possibly lived, which lacks concrete evidence of existing and largely are thought to exist due to bodies of work, that could have been done and have been claimed to be done by multiple people.
 
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My own. After all, where would I be without? :sly:

But there would be some lost to the ages. Who figured out that grass seeds could be ground up and baked? Who invented the wheel? What pervert thought milking a cow or a goat was a good thing to do? Who looked at a mushroom and thought, "Ooh, that looks delicious!"
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
...those who are said to have possibly lived, which lacks concrete evidence of existing and largely are thought to exist due to bodies of work, that could have been done and have been claimed to be done by multiple people.
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This is a question I was going to ask as well. Figures like Sun Tzu and William Shakespeare might also be involved here, just to name two more.
 
Danoff
tech-giants-3-raw.jpg


Sir Isaac Newton

In 1687 his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica laid the foundation of our understanding of classical mechanics in physics - enabling prediction of objects of the solar system, and an understanding of the composition of the solar system as well as an understanding of all of... I'm looking for a word other than Newtonian here... Newtonian physics. F=ma is the cornerstone of so much technology, and is still fundamentally how we determine that buildings will stay standing, airplanes will maintain flight, and how my chair rolls on the floor. In order to do this, he derived calculus from scratch.

Newton also invented some optics for telescopes, and first started investigating light refraction to see what it was composed of. In 1687... he was trying to figure out what light was made of. Here's Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Isaac Newton:

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I was expecting Ayn Rand. Am disappointed (slightly).

Funnily enough I heard a consultant radiologist recommend her works to an F1 (the most junior of doctors) just this week when he was complaining that practicing medicine has been dumbed down to the point that he feels more stupid than he was as a student. The consultant ruminated about society (in Britain at least) not valuing the gifted and/or exceptional and reducing things to the lowest common denominator.
 
@Danoff

The implication of the use of the word Humanity in the thread title, to me, signifies that these people would have used their grey matter for the betterment of the species... would that be correct?
 
Muhammed
Jesus
Abraham
Moses
Alexander the Great
Cyrus the Great
Suleyman the Magnificent
Julius Ceasar
Napoleon Bonaparte
Elon Musk
Nikola Tesla
Steve Jobs
Nelson Mandela
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Carl Sagan
Albert Einstein
Isaac Newton
Maimondes
Archimedes
Bill Gates
Enzo Ferrari
Henry Ford
Feruccio Lamborghini
Ferdinand Porsche
Ibn Sina
Al Jazari
Ibn Al Haytham
Confucius
Enrico Fermi
Soichrio Honda
Kiicihiro Toyoda

There has been many great minds on this planet in the past and in the present that have influenced our world.
 
MatskiMonk
@Danoff

The implication of the use of the word Humanity in the thread title, to me, signifies that these people would have used their grey matter for the betterment of the species... would that be correct?
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I wouldn't've expected supporters of genocide like Rand (let alone actual instigators like Hitler) to be included given the title.
 
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UKMikey
I wouldn't've expected supporters of genocide like Rand (let alone actual instigators like Hitler) to be included given the title.
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Can you elaborate on that?

Charles-Darwin-1880-631.jpg


Charles Darwin

In 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of the Species, a book which includes his hypothesis and evidence of biological evolution. The discovery of evolution is regarded by some as one of the most important discovery a species can make. Richard Dawkins describes the discovery of evolution as a "coming of age" for a species, saying that if aliens were trying to determine whether intelligent life existed on a given planet, they might ask "have any of the species figured out where they come from?". For Humanity, it will always be Charles Darwin who is responsible for that discovery - in some sense, legitimizing our species.

 
Danoff
It's rather lengthy, but I got a good portion of the way through it without seeing her advocate for genocide. I don't even see her saying anything I disagree with. Can you quote me a specific portion that suggests that she supported genocide? I don't believe it's in there. When you're done not finding it, can you retract your previous statement due to a lack of support?

@baldgye
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From that link
"Any white person who brings the elements of civilization had the right to take over this continent,"
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In that article (among others) she suggests that genocide is no greater crime than murder, due to murder being the genoside of an individual. While she doesn't specifically say “yay genocide” she seems to advocate for it when a more ‘advanced’ civilisation is doing it to a ‘lesser’ one.


I came to my conclusion of her being a moron off-of those two comments, (given the context she seems to be in favour of genocide, or at least not opposed to it in principle) and having read Anthem, which is awful haha

(That’s why I liked his comments and made my own)
 
Salon
The laissez-faire leader declared that Native Americans did not "have any right to live in a country merely because they were born here and acted and lived like savages."

[...]

"The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world," writes Prof. Stannard. "Within no more than a handful of generations following their first encounters with Europeans, the vast majority of the Western Hemisphere's native peoples had been exterminated."
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It looks like support for genocide to me. At any rate I don't see a good deal of humanity on display. As such I don't think I have to retract anything.
 
I don't think Rand outright championed genocide. But she did put Native Americans in the "savages" category and, from what I remember from my anthropology studies she supported the idea of having their land conquered because they didn't have any property rights. I also believe she supported "cultural genocide".

In any case here's a source: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountryt...-had-no-right-to-land-v0RocerkMkSZiSZWqsqlwg/

I mean I get that it was the fashion of the time to say things like this, but in today's world, that line of thinking doesn't really fly.
 
baldgye
From that link


In that article (among others) she suggests that genocide is no greater crime than murder, due to murder being the genoside of an individual.


I came to my conclusion of her being a moron off-of those two comments, (given the context she seems to be in favour of genocide, or at least not opposed to it in principle) and having read Anthem, which is awful haha
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She's making very precise statements, which you're drawing incorrect conclusions from. I agree that genocide is no greater crime than murder (specifically murder of a number of individuals). I also agree that "Any white person who brings the elements of civilization had the right to take over this continent". She's saying "white" to be intentionally confrontational. Her view was more general than that, which is that any person who brings civilization has a right to take over, and that's true (and very hard to argue with).

UKMikey
It looks like support for genocide to me.
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Look at it more closely.

She's making a very specific point, which is that unless you have property rights in the land, you don't have a right to the land. You can try to find evidence that she supported genocide or you can apologize for stating false information.
 
Danoff
She's making very precise statements, which you're drawing incorrect conclusions from. I agree that genocide is no greater crime than murder (specifically murder of a number of individuals).
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No, I don’t think she is. She was asked specifically and decided not to mention specifics, which, for my money means she was intentionally defensivly aloof (oh no I totally didn’t mean it like that)...

But honestly if you agree than genocide is no greater crime than murder, this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere.
 
Danoff
She's making a very specific point, which is that unless you have property rights in the land, you don't have a right to the land. You can try to find evidence that she supported genocide or you can apologize for stating false information.
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I'm not sure I should apologise for a conclusion I don't agree with. Rand thought they had no right to the land but did they deserve to be exterminated? If the answer is yes then in my view that makes her an apologist for the extermination at the very least.

It's as much as saying that Hitler was no worse than a common murderer for trying to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth, and I refuse to say sorry for disagreeing with that.
 
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baldgye
No, I don’t think she is. She was asked specifically and decided not to mention specifics, which, for my money means she was intentionally defensivly aloof (oh no I totally didn’t mean it like that)...
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You're placing your money badly then. She meant exactly what she said, if you were familiar with her work, you'd know that making those kinds of at-the-edge precision statements was her way.

baldgye
But honestly if you agree than genocide is no greater crime than murder, this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere.
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Explain to me why genocide is a greater crime than the murder of the individuals in said genocide.

UKMikey
I'm not sure I should apologize for a conclusion I don't agree with. Rand thought they had no right to the land but did they deserve to be exterminated? If the answer is yes then in my view that makes her an apologist for the extermination at the very least.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. She said they had no property rights to the land, that doesn't mean she supported genocide. I'm not sure why you think it does but you'll need to make that link to support your statement.
 
Danoff
You're placing your money badly then. She meant exactly what she said, if you were familiar with her work, you'd know that making those kinds of at-the-edge precision statements was her way.



Explain to me why genocide is a greater crime than the murder of the individuals in said genocide.
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I’m not sure about needing to know her work more. I read Anthem (as a toe in the water) and it’s pure garbage, to be polite. If the rest of her work is of much higher quality though I’m open to giving it a go.

Can you elaborate on your second point? Because you seem to be asking me what’s wrong with being a racist? ...and I’m not sure that’s what you meant.. I.e;
What’s wrong with murdering all the black individuals ???
 
UKMikey
I'm not sure I should apologize for a conclusion I don't agree with. Rand thought they had no right to the land but did they deserve to be exterminated? If the answer is yes then in my view that makes her an apologist for the extermination at the very least.
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I'm not sure she wanted to exterminate them, but rather just take their land. I'm not entirely sure how that'd work, but still, I don't think she actively said to kill them.

However, her reason behind it was wrong. She claimed that Native Americans didn't have a right to the land because they hadn't settled it - which isn't right. While many tribes were nomadic, there were settlements created by Native Americans. The most prominent one is from the Pueblos who built a sizeable city in a cliff face. Much of this came from flawed anthropological thinking of the time though and some of the most well-respected anthropologists of the late 1800's and early 1900's often thought native people were "savages" for various reasons. It led to a ton of ethnocentric fieldwork.
 

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