[lini]

Went to Athens last month and saw the mechanism (a replica) in person in one of the museums. Overall, for me it was a strange experience looking at the ancient Greek civilization - these people were not thinking about simple things like sustenance or other basic needs. They were very much involved in improving their minds in any way possible - democracy, arts, science. All that time they spent on improving their civilization in every way got me thinking of all the time we lose today in meaningless stuff like social media, or looking selfishly at the world and other people.

[jrockway]

I think an interesting exercise is to go back through newspaper archives and just take a peek at some random front pages. The theme is that everything is terrible and the sky is falling. That continues today. What was missed at the time was that the sky wasn't falling and that everything wasn't actually that terrible.

Humanity will endure Tik Tok, wars, pandemics, climate change, and pretty much whatever else the big random number generator in the sky throws at us. Find something that's meaningful to you and spend your time there. We're all going to be OK!

[marcodiego]

> pretty much whatever else the big random number generator in the sky throws at us.

It didn't work that well with dinosaurs.

[ByteJockey]

It worked pretty well for them for >150 million years.

If we can't deflect an asteroid by the time we've been around that long, we kinda deserve it.

[jazzyjackson]

> all the time we lose

Who's we? I imagine ancient greece had its share of diversions and time-wasting while a small minority went hard on improving the state of the arts.

[rs_rs_rs_rs_rs]

> these people were not thinking about simple things like sustenance or other basic needs.

Of course not, they had slaves for that.