simplicio comments on Zen and the Art of Rationality - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 December 2007 04:36AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (31)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: simplicio 22 May 2010 03:25:24AM 11 points [-]

A civilization further back in time is younger, not older. The current civilization is always the senior, because the present enjoys a longer history than the past.

I almost yelled out when I read this. Somehow this never occurred to me(!), which in retrospect is sort of like having it never occur to you that the sun might be bright. I guess the "venerable ancestors" meme is pretty deeply ingrained, wow.