Yup, and that's why the bias of original sources matters too. Bias gets amplified over time. Or reversed at the same intensity, I suppose.

And then we end up with crazy, invisible to us bias in the modern sources. You get accustomed to the bias around the idea and you can't see it any more.

What biases am I supposed to be seeing here? Are folks upset that someone said a teacher was a good practitioner? Why should I assume otherwise?

Was replying to the link to Hypatia's legacy.

You have to look at the history of sources and their bias to understand the history of ideas. Historical sources don't necessarily contain facts; and they may also convey more than facts.

It's about getting to the spin behind the original sources, then you have a better idea of why the sources tell you what they're telling you. How you read them brings in your own bias (for someone else to examine and weigh up one day). It can be really powerful though, like in the example of Messalina.

I mean, sure? There seems an implication that these people were not good at their jobs, though? Why the odd vehemence here?

You are giving general advice that feels right. I'm asserting the stakes are basically nothing?

I also don't get the vehemence against Hypatia in the original link. It's tapping into something weird, for sure.

I think the stakes are really low too.

And I also think the original post is introducing modern values when it comes to people's work. I don't think in the ancient world that academic brilliance was thought of as a great thing in the same way or possibly to the same extent it is today.

And if that was true, it'd mean the sources wouldn't have thought it was worth remarking on, so we'd get silence. Even if that isn't true, the whole thing is still an argument from silence.

Like, let's bear in mind that most of the population couldn't read, even scribes couldn't read—they just copied. How few people could actually math?

This is sort of like crapping on a modern-day rocket engineer because Slate isn't writing about them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tl;dr I think we agree :)

You make a sensible point but scribes having been illiterate is surprising. Do you have a source about this where I could read more?

Honestly, I don't. This was just a given in literature I read and chats (about Greco-Roman antiquity, can't answer for other cultures). You may come across it in books about literacy in GR antiquity, but honestly that'd be a lot to read through to find a nugget or two.

Btw it's not that all scribes were illiterate, but definitely some were or perhaps they were just substantially less literate. For their job, copying out sheet after sheet of text, they just needed to know the alphabet. It'd be like learning to copy an alphabet you might not know, like Cyrillic or Arabic. And decent money too.

IIRC the argument for scribal illiteracy had to do with the kinds of scribal copying errors you would see.

There are some errors that suggest a person can read, like homoteleuton. That's when someone sees the phrase "I love you" in a love letter, copies it, and then starts copying from after a second "I love you" lower in the paragraph. "I love you. I'm a terrible person and I know I slashed your tires but... I love you, we should get married" —> "I love you, we should get married".

Other kinds of scribal copying errors betray a lack of reading ability. Like homearchy, where they skip a line because of similarities at the start of the line.

If you're reading along, it becomes obvious the sentence stopped making sense because you skipped a line. But if you're not reading along because you can't, you won't catch the change in meaning.

https://sites.ualberta.ca/~sreimer/ms-course/course/scbl-err...

Yeah, reading back on my post, apologies if it sounded like I was upset. Kind of funny for me to gripe about what seems something overblown in that language. :D

I think what upset me is the downplaying of how good teachers and editors are. I will certainly make no claim that they are all amazing, but it is a worthwhile job and it doesn't help to dump on it. Punching down, as it were.

No worries! I didn't think you were griping or anything. And your comment prompted me to say, historical biases aside being ignored in the post, I thought you were right that it was weird to attack Hypatia and Theon. And when you look at the historical context, it seems even weirder to punch down at knowledgeable people and teachers.

Sayre's law in action...

This is what I felt as well. If a time traveler were to tell me that people hundreds of generations in the future will be arguing that I was not good at higher math, I would be inconsolable (even if it's true).

I’d be happy if I was significant enough for future generations to conclude I was secretly (or not so) an idiot.

I think it's pretty obvious that there has been a movement to dig up examples of superlative women in STEM, in both recent and ancient history. Unfortunately sometimes their rediscoverer's enthusiasm gets the better of them and they present these fine womens' accomplishments as being considerably greater than they truly were. Does that matter? Well I guess it depends. If you think an accurate historical record matters than sure it does. If you think history is pragmatically just a narrative invention and we should tell it however suits our present desires, like encouraging girls to go for a Fields medal, then one can argue for some inspirational embellishment shall we say.

Is this really folks getting upset that some women have been highlighted in history? I think that makes me more sad. We could use more heroes in life, no need to get upset that there are few comic book level heroes.