Whoever figured out writing, all those years ago.

The compounded effect of having knowledge recorded for generations to come - thereby unlocking all the other things mentioned on this list - surely should count for something.

The fact that Hegel is not there is ridiculous. Perhaps the most influential philosopher since Aristotle.

Not only did he influence the young hegelians and Marx, he continues to influence many philosophers across all kinds of schools and ideologies.

Marx not being there is an implicit moral judgement - if “great” means good in some ethical sense subjective, then OK. But if “great” means impactful or influential, that’s a problem.

Then no Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Tocqueville, Watt, Ford, Schumpeter, Cervantes…

On the latter, not a single mention of literature. I find this list problematic in an innumerable amount of ways.

Would be interesting to think about what works are currently out there, published, yet will not be recognized as great intellectual achievements until much later after the fact for some reason.

Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.

Humans are incredible. Leaving the planet and taking a trip on the moon and possibly mars someday is no small feat.

We just need to fix our planet. Or to be honest, stop ruining it so it heals itself.

(2017) is missing

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15255847

This was clearly written by someone with too little exposure to history and (comparably) too much to academic economics. No one else could think Coase belongs on such a list and forget Orsted/Faraday/Maxwell (initially...). And if you think John Locke did something important beyond adding philosophical veneer to capitalism as it was already practiced, you need to read Meiksins Wood's 'The Origin of Capitalism'.

Development of zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0

>Descartes' launch of modern analytic philosophy I find this questionable. If we go back there is a similar analyticity to Spinoza. Go forward and Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein are impossible to ignore given this framing.

The mention of effective altruism at the end aged a bit badly.

Aren't special and general relativity the grand leviathans of intellectual achievement? Pure thought unlocking the nature of existence.

+ using trees to form Pen & Paper for knowledge transfer.

Planck didn’t make the list, although his achievements did.

I’d also argue that Meitner and Noether deserve a mention.

Stepping outside my expertise, I’d argue Poppers description of what science and Pseudo-Science is, is essential.

Anyway great list!

Modern information theory is wrong. Information is not the fundamental essence of existential reality, potential resolving into state is. This subtle difference propagates into the modern intellectual lies we tell ourselves. Reality is not “states.” It is “potential” resolving into “states” through constructive and destructive interference. The “number of states allowable in a system” is a function of boundary conditions of potential distribution.

I think you will find this agrees with Shannon’s original point and purpose as expressed in his seminal equation. Every interpretation since beginning with “the state of …” or “number of states …” is a misapprehension exhibiting the intellectual fallibility of our times.

This is only one for instance.

Read my threads, if you can find your way around my claims of the voices in our heads being real and waging a secret war among us, and the UFOs are actually a long familiar secret, you will find other arguments regarding the tightly held ideals so many believe as fundamental truths of this age.

Burtrand Russel and Einstein both agreed to their death beds that most of what we tell ourselves is true is merely what we have come to agree with among ourselves.

This is as true today.

The difficulty lies not in finding “Truths”, the difficulty is undeceiving the self.