The Final Speech from The Great Dictator

Re:The Final Speech from The Great Dictator by lewhoo on Sunday December 17, 2023 @04:32PM (#38676659)

There are plenty of exceptions to recall here. People who thought of themselves as great but were diminished by others for being fools are easy to find in history of science in particular. I'd say if you invoke hubris or ego then you yourself are reacting emotionally - then who is right and who is wrong would probably only rely on the outcome of my endeavors (successful or not).

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Re:The Final Speech from The Great Dictator by arrosenberg on Sunday December 17, 2023 @04:35PM (#38676686)

> I'd say if you invoke hubris or ego then you yourself are reacting emotionally - then who is right and who is wrong would probably only rely on the outcome of my endeavors (successful or not).

Ah yes - "I am rubber, you are glue". Given that this is a hypothetical, and I have no stake in the outcome, I think it is reasonable to conclude I am not being emotional about this.

> People who thought of themselves as great but were diminished by others for being fools are easy to find in history of science in particular.

And how many claimed to be great that are not in the history books?

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Re:The Final Speech from The Great Dictator by lewhoo on Sunday December 17, 2023 @04:56PM (#38676851)

> Given that this is a hypothetical, and I have no stake in the outcome, I think it is reasonable to conclude I am not being emotional about this.

And why would you assume that ? If you hand no stake then I'd say it's far less likely to go for descriptions like hubris or ego. I have no stake in chess and I wouldn't call Kasparov anything like that but people more invested in chess certainly do because it's closer to heart for them.

> And how many claimed to be great that are not in the history books?

We don't know, because they're not in the books. But seriously, how exactly does this matter if you are just searching for logical support ?

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Re:The Final Speech from The Great Dictator by arrosenberg on Sunday December 17, 2023 @05:01PM (#38676907)

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that N people can claim to be great "if only X wasn't in my way". In reality, an infinitesimally small number of people will be judged as great by history, and half of those will be largely by accident, many will not realize it, and some will only achieve it post-mortem.

Therefore, logically, if someone claims to be great, they are mostly likely riding high on hubris and ego. It's statistically the most likely outcome for anyone claiming greatness.

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Re:The Final Speech from The Great Dictator by lewhoo on Sunday December 17, 2023 @05:17PM (#38677026)

Because that wasn't your point. You claimed it's hubris and ego because greatness is in the eye of the third-party beholder. Now you argue it is necessary that greatness must be unlikely, which is of course true but changes nothing. History of science, maybe history of progress is the history of (at that moment) unlikeliness prevailing.

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