We are just as smart as our predecessors. We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge (as well as easy ways for anyone to access it).
The "On the shoulder of giants"-quote made me think of this:
"It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets." -Alan Cooper
The version I'm familiar with, though I don't know the original source, is "if we have seen less far than other men, it is because we have stood in the footprints of giants."
> We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge
Specialization and trade accelerated with the Industrial Revolution as well; Adam Smith’s division of labour combined with man’s propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.
Most interestingly "Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.[5][6][7][8]"
It's an even more typical mistake to believe that our time is the pinnacle in all respects (because of all the cool gadgets that we have). But we are not the pinnacle in all respects; perhaps the largest danger is that we are delegating all multifaceted work (which ultimately is what produces skill) to automation and/or extreme specialists, so that we can push the enjoyment button (or take the enjoyment pill) in solitude without end.
We are on a path to an 'Idiocracy' type of society which would likely have been an abomination to generations past if they were to see it.
I disagree. As humans, we have a tendency to be pessimistic, but we are in aggregate enjoying unprecedented peace and prosperity, have done for an unprecedented length of time, and data point to that continuing. The leisure that many of us enjoy is a byproduct of that trend.
Maybe, but it is not because we tend to be overly pessimistic in general, that serious problems cannot happen to us. Entire civilizations have diapered in the past, so we should remain vigilant.
After all, another bias that humans have, is a strong tendency to believe that what is true now, will remain true forever.
Very, very, very true. The light of civilization is a flickering candle in the darkness
I often think about the city-states along the Silk Road: healthy, peaceful, cultured, unprecedented prosperity for their time. All defeated when the hordes of Genghis Kahn rode by, many utterly destroyed
The Empire of Mali. The Kingdom of Lithuania. Macedon. Tyre. Babylon. Carthage. Samarkand. Assyria. All once mighty, all gone, perhaps a place-name remains, if that
For anyone still paying attention, I should have written "The Grand Duchy of Lithuania", which was a powerful state for hundreds of years in the Middle Ages
The Kingdom of Lithuania, while also powerful, lasted about 2 years
> The Empire of Mali. The Kingdom of Lithuania. Macedon. Tyre. Babylon. Carthage. Samarkand. Assyria. All once mighty, all gone, perhaps a place-name remains, if that
Aside from perhaps Macedon and Carthage (indirectly via Rome) most of those don't even warrant a mention in the high school history curriculum (in the US, at least).
I've seen the high school world history books of my nieces and nephews and all of those (except maybe lithuania), were at least mentioned in US schools. Other civilizations ranging from the maya to the khmer were also included. By necessity, none of them are examined in depth but they all got at least a few pages.
The simple fact is that pre-industrial history has had literally thousands of different thriving civilizations around the world. It's simply not possible to even briefly cover anything but a fraction of the more "important" in a non-university setting.
Not far off. IIRC, my freshman year history course (at a high-achieving school, no less) covered world history from the agricultural revolution until 1500 CE. That's ~14000 years (call it 4000 of knowable history). There's not a lot of time for anything other than "Don't forget, there were lots of other extraordinarily successful civilizations we know about that were less influential on our intellectual forebears".
That period only seems peaceful because the French had just been massively humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War [1] in 1870 and the powder keg had just been reset. The people of France were itching to go to war with Prussia/Germany to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine. Which created a massive arms race till WW1. Also, while Japan isn't in Europe, the Russo-Japanese war did happen in 1904 in that period resulting in a major loss of trust in the Russian monarchy and the subsequent 1905 Russian Revolution. The Europeans were still sending troops to aid in the subjugation of Africa (Boer wars, Anglo-Zulu wars etc) even then.
However, I do agree with you that people then thought that world peace was achieved. The 1910 book "The Great Illusion" [2] ironically argued European war was unlikely to start due to the great economic costs of destroying trade between nations. It got the consequences right at least.
> The people of France were itching to go to war with Prussia/Germany to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine. Which created a massive arms race till WW1.
Eh... not really. Anger at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine peaked in the immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, when France couldn't do anything, but by the 1880s and 1890s, France had resigned itself to the loss. The massive divisions in French society under the Third Republic meant that it was in no position to do anything to reclaim it. A parallel might well be drawn to Finland's position today over Karelia: they'd certainly like it back, but they're not about to fight for it. It wasn't until World War I broke out that restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule really became feasible, and hence it became a major war aim, but it wasn't a factor until after war had already broken out.
The arms race in question is the naval arms race between Britain and Germany, which itself subsided in 1912 because Germany couldn't afford to keep up.
Less mindless and debilitating work is a good thing, but to replace work that challenges human capabilities in all its aspects with leisure and enjoyment is probably not a good thing.
If for example reasoning was automated (we're not there yet, but it is on the horizon) then human capacity for nuance would likely diminish further, to the extent where concepts and ideas might only placed in a 'good' or 'bad' category without capacity for further analysis ...
I would like to reply to just the first sentence of your post. While I agree that just being leisurely and seeking enjoyment rarely leads to long lasting meaningful experiences, I do not believe we humans are striving to replace all work with those activities. There are many examples of people who have the possibility to do nothing but enjoy themselves and they still push their capabilities and try to find new challenges. Leisure is nice, but only leisure gets boring.
The work is the problem, or should I say, jobs - not the activities. The problem is with people being forced to spend most of their lives fighting for survival. In the past it was toiling in the fields 3/4 of the year to have anything to eat. Today it's toiling in factories and offices to have money to pay for the house, food and medical care. The less time is spent on that, for the same level of quality-of-life, the better.
While I agree in principle, I don't think many humans are capable of what you want. Without a desperate need to work, most people don't seem to bother doing much even it that would give them great satisfaction. Just look at almost every unemployed person who has a place to live and food to eat but nothing to do all day. Why aren't they spending their plentiful time on high quality of life activities?
This might be hard to imagine if you're well educated, already working, and in your 20's and the world seems full of excitement and opportunity but you're held back by the annoying need to pay your bills. If you didn't have to work, you might start a business or spend all day on your side project or whatever. But most people aren't in that position. Often, their only sense of fulfillment comes from their work no matter how unpleasant it is, and they only work because they have to to survive.
This has really brought out the eugenicists, it seems?
But you're absolutely right; we get to use the infrastructure, explicit (written) knowledge, tacit knowledge of our society, social structures, institutions, legal systems, property distribution, and peacemaking of our predecessors.
It is well known that Sperm Whales have long ago figured out how to unify quantum physics and general relativity. They could tell us small-brained humans but apparently they enjoy watching us struggle.
Most of the time in human history people were struggling to even stay alive. You had to work until you got enough food to feed your family, or you'd die. Live was not great, it was very stressful and inefficient (but people were used to it). This is still the case in most of the world, although overall not as bad as it once was, it is improving constantly.
We're the lucky ones who can sustain ourselve with 8 hours of work, food is cheap and abundant, we can afford luxury items like iphones even if a 300$ android smartphone would do the same job.
No, at average, people are not working harder now, because we don't have to. We managed to improve efficiency so much already and quality of life continues to rise.
Peasants (over 90% of the society) were usually working less hours but much harder than we do. And they were living in much worse conditions of course.
Farming (especially without modern technology) is very cyclical, most of the time you have too much labour and too little land/food. Then for a few months you have too few people to do everything that needs to be done.
And there was no easy way for vast majority of people to store surplus for more than a few years. And there was a real possibility of starvation if a few factors independent of you happen at the same time.
So the whole society and economy was structured around these constraints - that's why it doesn't follow our intuitions. It made no sense to increase gains by 10% if you had to increase risk by 1% to do that. It made no sense to work harder if you have enough and it's gonna spoil anyway. You're just risking injury to throw it all away later.
Hunter gatherer societies are theorized to have spent the majority of their time not working, which is partly why were evolved such a complex social dynamic. Hunters would patrol their territory and hunt, with mixed results on the hunting, and gatherers would spend a few hours gathering food. It didn't take much work to sustain their tribes.
I wonder how much that depended on the population density of a particular place vs its "carrying capacity". I imagine that our hunter gatherer ancestors who lived with more competing groups fighting over diminishing herds probably spent more time/risk defending their turf.
We haven't improved efficiency at all, it takes far more resources to keep a person going today than it did in the 14th century. It takes a couple decades of education before a person can even begin to enter the workforce. Raising kids was once an investment, now people can barely afford to raise 1 or 2.
Our inefficient stuff is made by people in foreign countries working in factories whose lives really aren't any better than middle ages Europe.
Also, People like farming and hard physical labour. In the suburbs every household has a little miniature hobby farm that yields a useless crop, and people farm it for fun over and above their regular job. When people don't have to do any hard labour as part of their job, they go to a gym and pay money for the privelege of moving heavy things around even though it serves no practical purpose.
All this inefficiency is destroying the planet, which is the dumbest thing of all.
>We haven't improved efficiency at all, it takes far more resources to keep a person going today than it did in the 14th century.
We very much have. We couldn't support our population with 14th century levels of efficiency. We wouldn't have enough farm land, fresh water, etc, etc.
"Our inefficient stuff is made by people in foreign countries working in factories whose lives really aren't any better than middle ages Europe."
Life expectancy in the most typical manufacturing hotspots is actually better than Western standards of 1900. Even poorer countries today have much better healthcare than Queen Victoria used to have. Middle Ages is right out in this comparison.
> It takes a couple decades of education before a person can even begin to enter the workforce.
This obviously depends on profession. On the contrary, you no longer need to go to college or trade school since everything is online. Seriously, it's amazing how proficient some of these children can get just from YouTube videos.
> Raising kids was once an investment, now people can barely afford to raise 1 or 2.
Hey at least you have a choice now. Before, raising lots of children was almost a necessity in order to help around the farm. Now things are so efficient that you really don't need to raise children at all.
> Our inefficient stuff is made by people in foreign countries working in factories whose lives really aren't any better than middle ages Europe.
Can you provide evidence on this?
> People like farming and hard physical labour
Most people would probably disagree with you on this. There is a big difference between occasional hard labor and doing hard labor every single day. It takes an enormous toll on the body.
> When people don't have to do any hard labour as part of their job, they go to a gym and pay money for the privelege of moving heavy things around even though it serves no practical purpose.
As opposed to 12 hours a day (depending on daylight), 6 days a week, both men (in the fields) and women (at home, without the luxury of washing machines and vacuum cleaners). Yeah, we certainly work harder...
For women "at home" often means bulk of animal care, home production of goods (crafts basically) and other similar farm-like work. And having jobs in cleaning, sewing and what not. It is not like every one of them had living husband or every husband earned a lot.
Good case are miners areas - men work hard like 12 hours a day under ground and die young. Women have to earn for themselves and for kids once they are dead however possible.
Interesting video on the Time Ghost channel. It wasn’t until industrialization that idea of “men work, women stay home” came about. In an agrarian society, the entire family worked. Yes, there was division of labor between men and women, but it was more like “men plow the field” and “women pick the crops”. Even with newborns, the women were out working with the kids strapped to their backs.
Milking cows, goats, general care about chicken and what not was typical female work in traditional villages. Also, field/garden work that do not require that much physical strength was done by women too.
1950 middle class household is not all there is to be about how historical families existed. Most of the time, the amount of work to do was basically infinite. And the more "anyone" could do, the better. That includes 6-7 years old kids who were already expected to be useful. (Here the kids started to work at 5, they would pasture gooses, which is super easy but was to large extend unsupervised).
Also, origin of kindergarten are German cities where both parents worked 12 hours a day in factory and small kids were left to own devices whole day. Obviously we are talking about poorer people here, but poor were large part of society.
Modern farmers in rich countries will pull 16+ hour days 7 days a week during harvest. Admittedly they're in tractor cabs listening to the radio rather than running around with a scythe, but the hours are long and the work's boring.
The video doesn't show all the people doing all the work, likely from dawn till dusk. It was all man- and animal-powered.
Construction, for example, is incredibly hard work even with modern tools, and they had none of those.
That we can live comfortably with all the modern amenities on 40 hours a week, which for many is just sitting in a chair, typing text, is really good. I'm not bashing office workers here, btw.
Could definitely work less, maybe the push for shorter work days will gain traction.
That statement feels wrong but I have no data to back up my gut feeling. Only a handful of generations ago even something as menial as doing your own laundry was hard work. Maybe we spend more time in offices, but if anything, I suspect we work a lot less hard in general.
It depends what you mean by work. I read an article a few months back which was saying that the addition of "modern" technology washing machines and the like doesn't give you more free time, it gives you the opportunity for doing more things so you feel more busy and tired because you are doing more things in the same amount of time!
Maybe if you count prehistory when people wore animal skins or walked around in their own fur. But as long as there's been fabric, there's been laundry. The documented history of laundry goes back to at least ancient Rome, where fullones (usually male slaves) did laundry. In the early middle ages women started to take care their household's washing needs.
You ... don't know much about lifestyle of men and women in the past, do you?
With exception of very rich people in few periods (idle aristocracy, middle class 1950 household), majority of people needed to work a lot. That includes both women and men.
And judging from comments here on HN, it seems to be working. Just two post above yours there's a comment stating that any government solution cannot fix the tracking issue, and it can only be addressed by a company or an individual
I work in the industry (yes, the whole debacle has been fairly entertaining).
From what I've heard, Neumann was 100% convinced that the 16Bn financing round was a sure thing (and the rapid growth was how he positioned himself for it). I don't know whether he meant to ride off the sunset, or (as our ceo put it), rely on the fact that even if the business is unsustainable, tens of billions of cash means that you won't go bankrupt for a long time.
A well executed Excel model is much easier to explain to a non-technical person.
To be frank, for all the snobbery towards Excel, it has done a marvelous job at getting millions of people to think in more quantitative ways instead of "business acumen".
No, but the Ireland government would surely object, because their cozy and soft relationship / taxes agreement with the tech giants is the only thing that's keeping them in Ireland.
I agree that the Irish government can be too cosy (and too slow on data protection) with big companies but the idea that that is the only thing keeping them in Ireland is ridiculous.
Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Pfizer and IBM have been in Ireland for decades. They may come for the tax but they stay for the people. It has a highly educated workforce that is very flexible and easy to manage/work with. I've lived and worked all over the world and Irish employees are the easiest and most fun to work with - even compared to the UK. It's pretty simple to get visas for companies. Accommodation can be a bit tricky to sort in Dublin but it's nowhere near as expensive or bad as San Fran etc. People generally don't mind moving to work here as the work/life balance is good and it's a super safe/friendly place for foreigners and families.
It has some industries with significant clusters (pharma, data, aircraft leasing, finance, tech, marketing) a stable political and social environment. It's civil service is generally efficient and isn't corrupt, it's easy to pick up the phone to them or a politician if you have a problem and need advice - even as a small business.
It's also the only native English speaking country in the EU now, cheap to jump on a plane to anywhere else on the continent or the US and has good internet connectivity.
a) you speak Irish English (~English), which is easily understandable by most English speakers
b) Ireland has consistently offered insanely low tax rates to american companies wishing to establish themselves in Europe. (This is coming to an end.)
I thought quite a bit about that line. I ended up editing it to "~English" in the end, perhaps ten minutes before you commented. Don't you think that's fair? Irish English, to me, seems like a distinct/unique language. Very similar to English, sure.
I mean.. I don't think americans are speaking English, typically, if that's any help. They're speaking American, which is a fork of English from some point in time.
"They're speaking a sort of English" certainly sounds demeaning to me. The people in Ireland (and the US, and India, and Singapore) are speaking English -- different dialects of English. And FWIW, many of the divergences between American and British English, such as dropping the 'r' at the end of syllables, are actually changes on the British side after the colonies were formed.
Not agreeing with the parent commenter, but the differences are much less trivial than you’re making them out to be. I used to live with a Scottish guy, and he had to make a considerable effort to be understood at all in America. If we were out and he wanted to say something to me privately, he’d just say it in his normal Scottish English, and nobody else would have a clue what he said. “Singlish” is also very different. I’ve travelled with friends to Singapore who absolutely could not communicate with Singlish speakers.
Oh, no, don't get me wrong. I moved to the UK over a decade ago, and when I first moved here people couldn't understand me. And even after having been here for a year I still occasionally ran into people that I just couldn't understand at all. Even once you get over the accent, there's just an endless list of things that have different names.
But you have but to drop yourself in Iceland or Denmark or Germany or France to realize how close all of our languages really are.
(b) has largely already come to an end. And yet still they come (though if you buy something from Amazon these days the money probably goes via their Luxembourg subsidiary, not the Irish one like it used to...)
You seem like you have a bee in your bonnet. Have you spent or worked much in Ireland? You seem to be an expert on both our use of our national second language and what working in the country is like. Or are you you just firing randomly on HN today because you aren't willing to engage with the other points that I made? (I agreed about companies coming to Ireland for tax but staying for other reasons remember)
Not just that, but there's a good pool of tech talent due to relaxed immigration laws and being an attractive destination and an English speaking country (for the most part).
This is such a peculiar, and I have to say, snobby, criticism - especially towards the last part of the article.
The Gioconda is too famous and doesn't deserve the crowd it gets? Maybe. Sounds like a subjective judgement.
People are left disappointed? Maybe. But anyone who does a 10 second search for "is mona lisa worth seeing" should already be aware of that. If they still choose to do that, why should we stop them? (or force them into an overly commercialized pen that deprives a piece of art of its dignity)
By all means, the Louvre should optimize the queuing experience. But as the author admitted, the Louvre doens't have a space capacity issue. And in my books anything that gets more people into a museum of any sort is a good thing.
Although I don't like the tone of the article, it does have a point.
Whether or not most of the Louvre visitors are there only for Mona Lisa, most will want to at least see it, whereas the rest of the museum is diverse enough to never be too crowded.
Moving that painting elsewhere would probably make it an immensely better experience for visitors who aren't coming for it. The entrance queues would not be that long, and past these queues, as long as you avoid that room the museum is more than large enough not to be crowded.
So let those who want to see the painting see it, and let those who want to the see the rest of the museum see it. People can do both of course, but there's no need to ask people who just want to see Mona Lisa to navigate the museum.
I'm surprised the Louvre hasn't done just that. Currently the Mona Lisa is pretty much in the middle of a section devoted to French and Italian paintings. Which makes sense, but doesn't work well in practice. The Mona Lisa crowds can get so big it's hard to even get a look at the other painting in the same room.
Move it to a separate room, install turnstiles that limit the amount of people in the room to something reasonable, and it will be a better experience for everyone. Even the people who are only there to take a picture of the Mona Lisa will be able to do it faster.
Many other museums seem better at limiting the amount of people near some attraction. To see Da Vinci's next most famous work, The Last Supper, you purchase a ticket that corresponds to a 15-minute slot. The Bust of Nefertiti, one of the most famous antique items, is kept in a separate room of the Neues Museum, with the staff not letting people in if it gets too crowded.
This sounds like a very sensible idea. Why not move it to its own area where the tourist crowds can have their selfies and, if they're done at that point, go do something else without clogging things up for the rest of the visitors?
From what little I've been exposed to about art management, it's also not great for the works in general to have crowds around them - aside from obvious things like people touching them, it puts an extra burden on the climate control system.
> it puts an extra burden on the climate control system
The Louvre doesn't have climate control throughout the compound. There's some sections that have it. But during August one should expect their visit to be fairly sweltering.
They could do what the UK does with the crown jewels and literally install a conveyor belt system that makes it nearly impossible to stand there for long periods of time.
Another option is to charge a dynamic fee to see the painting based on crowd size.
La Joconde has been at the Louvre since 1797. Since 1878, it has been displayed in the Salle des États - a room originally used by Napoleon III for legislative sessions. As you mention, the room hosts many Venetian works, and has been recently renovated to complement the paintings it showcases. For instance, the walls were painted a deep Prussian blue to contrast with the golden frames and highlight the vivid pigments typical of these works.
This legacy and continuity matter to the curators and art historians who maintain the museum.
As part of the renovations, the flow of the room was redesigned to accommodate for the fact that visitors spend more time in front of the Joconde (curators mention that a visitor spends on average 50 seconds looking at La Joconde, versus 4 seconds for other paintings).
I was at the Louvre for the first time just a couple weeks ago. The Mona Lisa room was so crowded that I didn't bother lining up or looking at anything else in the room. Definitely a bad experience for people who don't like crowded museums.
I'm not that familiar with museum design or their funding mechanisms, but for logistical purposes, sometimes if you want a lot of foot traffic in your building, you make people navigate around to see the "crown jewels" so-to-speak which forces/exposes them to other items of interest you want to "sell" (taxpayers, government, private market...).
If you need to count beans for some government funding agency to justify your budget, this is a way to inflate bean count and prop up underperforming aspects. As long as it's a situation that isn't incredibly wasteful and done in good taste, I support it--though this is of course highly subjective.
If you break that number up so it's easier to see why people visit (e.g., separating the Mona Lisa), it may inadvertantly give justification to cut funding to the other aspects in many modern mindsets. Mixing the artworks up artificially inflates other works foot traffic that, I would argue, is a positive form of trickery for society (preservation and education of the arts, something important and often underfunded).
Museums that attract a lot of tourists are geared towards moving people in and out as fast as possible. The longer they are in the house the fewer tickets you can sell.
Milk is in the back because they have to maintain the cold chain, and the refrigeration is in the back. Putting it anywhere else risks spoilage if a pallet takes too long to unload or gets left unattended.
There's definitely a lot of dripping condescension in that piece. That said, yeah, I think it's substantially correct. If the Mona Lisa is going to attract such outsized crowds--and, in my experience, they are outsized compared to a work of art in any other museum I've been to--you'd do both the art and the crowds a favor by separating it and putting it in an environment to optimize viewing and provide context/educational background.
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam did just that. There is a 'tourist path' where all the must-see famous works are shown, predictably, everybody goes by in single file so they can put a checkmark on their instagram account or whatever they use to show they've 'been there'. And then there is a huge collection of lesser known but worthwhile works in the rest of the museum. And - unfortunately - vaults full of art that likely will not see the light of day for a very long time because of lack of exposition space.
> And - unfortunately - vaults full of art that likely will not see the light of day for a very long time because of lack of exposition space.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna currently has an exhibition on called Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures, by Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf. Neither of them are museum professionals, so their choices of which objects to display and how to arrange them differ quite notably from what one might normally see in the museum, even though they're drawn from the same collection. I found it a very interesting and enjoying experience.
Ironically, this would be elevating the status of the Mona Lisa by giving its own museum. Sometimes you have to do nonsensical things to achieve logical goals.
The article is sort of a whine even if I also sort of agree with it. The crush around the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, a museum with so many great works of art, is really a bit silly. And, if the Mona Lisa weren't famous in no small part for being famous (and, admittedly, for being one of a relatively modest number of works by Da Vinci), it's unlikely that most people would give the small portrait a second glance.
Now, knowing it's famous, one can appreciate some of the justification for it. But it still wouldn't make at least my list of favorite paintings.
I have the feeling a lot of people go visit a popular thing just because they know it's popular, and not for its actual art, meaning, experience or whatever.
I actually tend to avoid the most crowded attractions. Been to Paris several times, but never been to the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre (but the Arc de Triomphe and the Montmartre are cool places to visit).
FWIW, the Eiffel Tower is cool as hell up close. I find it really neat to be able to see the structure of a fairly large building up close. TBH I was more "disappointed" by the Arc de Triomphe.
I've always deliberately avoided the Eiffel Tower myself. The Louvre is very much worth visiting even if it's largely frozen in time and the most exquisite works are sort of overwhelmed by the vast numbers of technically excellent but IMO often not terribly interesting paintings. (How many Renaissance Madonna and Childs can you look at in a day?) TBH, a more curated Louvre would be a more interesting museum.
That said, if I'm having to choose, I'm probably going to the Musee d'Orsay rather than the Louvre.
Exactly! That's why I use Haskell instead of JavaScript, and Arch Linux instead of MacOS. Those other things are too popular and people use them without understanding the real _meaning_ of Computer Science.
And I can appreciate that even when it's not my favorite, it can still be beautiful.
The fact is, as an artist, it's hard not to look at paintings by Picasso or Van Gogh and think, "Wow, they had such a big impact on me. I wanted to be like that."
That's part of the magic of the artist's brush — that it can so easily and effortlessly paint such a dramatic scene that you, the viewer, think you can be the same person as the artist.
As an artist, I'm very aware of how big the influence of an artist is. And as an individual, I'm extremely aware of how much an artist can influence me. That's why I'm very interested in people who can have the biggest impact on other people through their art.
I've never in my life searched for "is X worth seeing", the thought hasn't even crossed my mind. That is maybe not very smart, but before I see it I can't decide it, why would I trust random strangers on the internet? :)
Because there's not many other choices, and the other choices are way more work. And because as a general guide they seem to work pretty well, especially if you read through them with some small amount of care.
> But as the author admitted, the Louvre doens't have a space capacity issue. And in my books anything that gets more people into a museum of any sort is a good thing.
They really need to do the grocery store thing and make you walk past everything in the museum before letting you into the Mona Lisa at the far back.
They pretty much already do this. The end result is tourists literally running to the room the Mona Lisa is in once they get inside the museum. It's madness.
In the era of the Internet, you don't even have to look up "is mona lisa worth seeing". Just by looking up "mona lisa" you can see what the painting looks like. Voilà.
On the other hand just the fact that most people who go there to see it take pictures of it with their mobile phones means that they don't even go to the Louvre to see it, they just want to show others they've seen it.
It's in poor taste to superciliously diss the community while participating in it. Since you're commenting here, you're as much "HN" as anyone else is.
Not trying to be snarky, but my experience is almost exactly the opposite.
I can't comment on voting patterns, but while GDPR was being prepared, and after it was released, there was an endless barrage of posts claiming how it was flawed, lead to the ruin of technology companies in Europe etc, and it should be replaced by something else (anything else, at some point in the future - and in the meanwhile please stop getting in the way of tech companies trying to make a profit)
Frankly I would not be surprised if there was indeed a reflexive downvote effect that is not caused by a shady conspiracy but rather people like me who are tired of posts like that.
That, and also some of those "sacked" Conservatives. They are still elected members of the House of Commons with voting rights. They wanted a deal, now one is on the table they can vote for. While e.g. the people Labour sacked over sexual harassment allegations will probably stay home.
And there is also the Lib Dems who are caught between a rock and a hard place, who might figure this deal is better than nothing.
We are just as smart as our predecessors. We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge (as well as easy ways for anyone to access it).
"On the shoulder of giants" etc.