The life of reason

What Hacker News says

1. defrostJun 2023
   To quote Martin Porter ( https://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html ):

   I therefore formulate and offer to the world the following Principles for Quotations, two for quoters and two for readers, which, if universally followed, would make an immense improvement to the reliability of the information available on the world wide web.

   Principle 1 (for readers)

   Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.

   Principle 2 (for readers)

   Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source.

   Principle 3 (for quoters)

   Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.

   Principle 4 (for quoters)

   Only quote from works that you have read.

   <<<< END QUOTE >>>>

   So, perhaps:

       “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stages of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”
   

   ~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (Five volumes, 1905 - 1906)
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2. b1c1jonesMar 2023
   “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
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3. NickRandomDec 2022
   “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
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4. MaursaultSep 2022
   This is exactly right and doing so would require each subsequent generation of philosophers to reinvent the wheel

   Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

   But history is not philosophy, so the implicit premise, which boils down to, "history is not necessary to philosophy," is wrong-headed, but it is also assuming the conclusion, which is question begging.

   History is important to history, understanding how events in the past caused things to be the way they are today. Further, the history of philosophy is not identical to the philosophy in history just as the history of technology is not itself technology. When studying Ancient Philosophy one is not studying the history of ancient philosophy, but the ancient philosophy itself. Conversely, studying history of philosophy is not philosophical study, it is instead studying history, focusing on when and who said in what circumstances, and is not primarily concerned with understanding what was said.

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5. wainsteadApr 2022
   > One year later it was a mess of network calls, no ORMs and nearly-raw queries because who needs an ORM, migrations run by SQL statements on bash scripts because who needs migrations.

   “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

   > if just 10% of the effort were put on improving the existing Rails application, all the Go microservices crazynes that was going on at this place would have been avoided.

   https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

   Gosh I'm old.

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6. scnsAug 2021
   "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - Sir Winston Churchill

   He is paraphrasing: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

   That inspired René Magritte to paint this: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/those-who-cannot-remember...

   Making the connection to events in our lifetime: https://hankeringforhistory.com/those-who-cannot-remember-th...

   (edit) Some more reflections on it: https://blog.rtcx.net/remember

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