Comment on Jeff Bezos reportedly launches new AI startup with himself as CEO
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 days agoYou’re good. I upvoted. People downvoting are leery of anti-intellectualism (not without good reason).
But I don’t see that in your comment. You simply didn’t know something and admitted it.
In addition, your guess that the majority who recognize the name associate it with something from pop culture rather than classical mythology is also likely be true. Those who received extra education, or who had the resources at hand to educate themselves, often forget that in most of the world education remains a privilege, whereas the right to pay for entertainment is nearly always guaranteed.
If you’d like to know more about classical myths, here is a free book I would recommend. It is also available as a free audiobook.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Thank you! And yeah you said it well.
I might check it out at some point, but I’m not really into mythology tbh, I think the only thing remotely close to that that I’ve ever consumed is some of the videos from Overly Sarcastic Productions on YT.
I guess that’s kinda like what’s particularly astounding to me about the downvote. This is not even a matter of privilege and resources, it’s simply a matter of: Why would you expect anyone to go out of their way to look up fairly obscure greek myths, unless they were specifically into fairly obscure greek myths?
Right now I’m really into space stuff. It’s extremely unlikely that if I asked any random person, including myself from like two weeks ago, what ORB RATE and INRTL positions on the FDAI switches on Panel 13 do in the Apollo CSM that they would know what the heck I’m talking about. So I would never make that assumption. It’s just kinda baffling.
We cannot hate on people for not knowing what it is unreasonable for anyone but an enthusiast to know. That in itself is refusing to think properly, it is anti-intellectualism, plain and simple. “Ooga Grog no know thing, means Grog bad!” is an insane way to operate.
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 days ago
Haha, I see where you’re coming from. It’s a fairly old and ongoing debate: the importance of classical humanities in the curricula of primary and secondary education. To illustrate, at one point children were not only taught literature from the Greco-Roman period, but also the languages they were written in.
In fact, that’s one of the key reasons for all the institutional Greek and Latin usage you see in higher ed. That was the tradition. These were languages only the educated knew. The effects of that on society were mixed, in my opinion. Fast-forwarding to today, the recent trend has been to prioritize knowledge more relevant to the modern era, including STEM subjects and practical trade-related skills.
That’s the reason for the lingering notion, among older generations especially, that classical works are foundational knowledge, a common intellectual inheritance that everyone should know. While I’m more used to thinking this way, and can probably make some convincing arguments for it, I recognize that in many ways and for many individuals, it fails the test of relevance. So maybe it really is for the best that it’s only taught in the optional extension of higher ed.
Yes, zero expectation from me to read that book, but if you ever become curious, mythologies are often short, fun, and memorable stories to read. And once familiar with them, you’ll see references to them basically everywhere, including the names of blockbuster films and spaceships, like the Apollo.