Ask Lemmy

That’s a great example.

Glad you made it.

“Hey doc before you slice open that guy over there and wiggle your fingers around inside them, wash your fucking hands!”

It was quite a controversial idea at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmelweis_reflex

In a similar vein, the scientific journal that described the Haber Process, a chemical process that could be used to synthesize ammonia, which could then be used as a fertilizer to provide nitrogen to crops.

The cheap availability of nitrogen fertilizers was probably the biggest contributer to the "Green Revolution" in the mid 20th century, which massively increased agricultural yeilds. And those massive increases in agricultural yeilds are why, worldwide, hunger has dropped to historically low levels in the last century.

Newton himself might disagree, given that he said that he was only able to produce his work because he was "[stood] on the shoulders of giants".

That could put Euclid's Elements above Pricipia Mathematica.

Is there some tool that turns like an eBook or PDF into this format?

holy shit that's cool! wowowow I was always blown away by how fast some people can read but I think I get it now, I'm shocked that I think I actually absorbed most of that last bit at 900wpm

Dang that exercise is tiring. My vision actually tunneled in just to be able to keep up. Unfortunately i forgot where I stopped lol so I guess retaining what I spped read needs more practice. But yeah quieting the mind to read faster and faster to keep up with that exercise and not scanning the whole word takes more practice for me.

The C Programming Language

Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie

There was a joke in Germany during the war that Mein Kampf was like the Bible. Everyone had a copy but none had read it.

I tried to read it once and couldn't. If you're not super into Hitler's racial grievances and Weimar politics, it's hard to understand.

Of western people. Particularly Christian people.

Damn, that means Atlas Shrugged is out too.

I assume you’re talking about how Smith is used by neoclassical economists to justify made up stuff.

For example, the idea of the invisible hand as a way of portraying perfect competition.

Or his depiction of capitalism as a way of coordinating production without central authority: this is often used to legitimize inequality and environmental irresponsibility.

But if we want to truly understand Smith, I think we have to look beyond that.

Unfortunately, Smith has been made a caricature. Who made him into a caricature? Neoclassical economists in the 19th century and neoliberal or neoconservative figures in the 20th and 21st century. These other economists wanted to make capitalism sweeter-sounding. They wanted to make economics a tool for indoctrination.

For example, his invisible hand idea comes up ONCE in Wealth of Nations. Yet this image was co-opted by people who do pro-capitalism indoctrination. When made a caricature, the invisible hand is an excellent rhetorical device to portray how supposedly perfect capitalism is.

Another example is how Adam Smith actually advocates for industrial policies to build a nation’s industrial capacity. But these parts of Smith’s work are conveniently ignored by those who want elites to extract and hoard wealth (instead of investing in a whole nation).

More broadly, Smith is the opposite of neoclassical economists in many ways. In my view, the most striking difference between both of them is curiosity. Smith looked at the world and tried to understand its mechanisms. On the other hand, neoclassical economists close their eyes and make up mechanisms.

An example of this is the concept of perfect competition. This concept is loved by capitalist indoctrinators. So much so that it is the fairy tale that is taught to economist toddlers. It’s a weird sort of utopia for neoclassical economists. There’s no friction, no time, no complexity.

You might think Smith is responsible for this absurd fairy tale, but I’d say he is decidedly not. For example, he discusses price dynamics not in terms of perfect equilibrium, but in terms of turbulent equalization. Another example is that he discusses competition not as a silly dance between capitalists, but as a battle to reduce costs (at all costs).

This is not to say that Smith nailed everything. For example, he missed something about the nature of profits. He did notice that profits are directly related to production costs, including labor. But he did not recognize that the profit-wage ratio was historically determined in the way that Marx did.

How could we interpret all of this?

The way I see it, Smith laid the groundwork for future economists. Smith was the shoulders that future economists —proper economists— stood on.

Unfortunately, he has also been co-opted by capitalist indoctrinators. But if these indoctrinators actually read Smith and the economists that he directly inspired, I’m sure economics would be much more of a science and less of a religion.

I doubt it. From what I've heard, art of war wasn't really anything groundbreaking in terms of strategy. It was more about putting the basics in an understandable format for the useless nobles who were put in charge on armies from pure nepotism.