What made ancient philosophers so intelligent?

[Divine Power]

What made ancient philosophers so intelligent?

Like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, who had expertise in a wide variety of fields.

I've been curious about their lifestyle—what did they do on a daily basis? How did they reach that level of knowledge? It’s interesting because while we learn from books, they were the ones who laid the groundwork for much of what we study.

 

[Lithuophile]

what did they do on a daily basis?

Eat raw meat and masturbate in a wine barrel

 

[Lone MacReady II]

They lacked 7% archaic admixture (missing link) DNA in their systems. It's why sub-saharan wakanda took 60,000 years to turn a spear into a spear.

 

[Divine right to rule]

Sometimes God is in a good mood and creates like 12 geniuses in the same generation at the same place.

Happened a lot in the Renaissance and the 19th century.

 

[KingNothing]

Cannibalism

https://archive.org/details/chapter-3_20230820/Chapter_1/

 

[Mnutu]

Survivorship bias. There were plenty of retards back then too, they were called sophists and hypocrites. They were also from a very influential and powerful culture that endured through the ages. They may not have been the first people to say what they said, but they’re the earliest ones we know.

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

Weren't they paid to just sit around and think and lecture and argue all day? Just a buncha half dressed old dudes arguing and inventing math for a lifetime is bound to result in some wisdom.

 

[JustTheFaxcts]

Eat raw meat and masturbate in a wine barrel

Diogenes was by far the greatest philosopher. Plato *wishes* he could shit talk Alexander for standing in his sunlight.

 

[⚞⛇⚟]

Philosophy is all fake and gay and you should be ashamed for liking it.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

According to them, their small penises

 

[Neodanthril]

they lived in a culture that put great value on education and thus could secure the finances to do their work uninterpreted. the people in particular you describe are the apex of that culture. secondly the bar for entry was lower before they did it. so now you have to surpass their works to have something noteworthy. which they also had to do, to be fair.

 

[TATE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODE!!]

Retards like OP hear big words and think they're geniuses.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I'd imagine not having as many modern conveniences/distractions/responsibilities. Back then you would probably have much more time alone with your thoughts than you would now. You'll notice you have your most salient thoughts when alone, on the toilet or while on a walk for example.
Also there's only so many "new thoughts" people can come up with, there might be millions of potential platos walking around, but there's no point re-writing his work.

 

[oldTireWater]

Thousands of years of white washing, apocryphal attributions, and cherry picking.

 

[FatalTater]

I like to imagine that the great philosophers also said a bunch of stupid shit every day but no one wrote it down.

 

[THE SUPREME ONION]

because they tought like me tbh

 

[Flame War Vet]

Diogenes was by far the greatest philosopher. Plato *wishes* he could shit talk Alexander for standing in his sunlight.

I'm sorry but Diogenes is reddit's favorite philosopher(right after Karl Marx).
>Dude, dude, Diogenes was like, so based! He gooned in public and like, epically dunked on Plato and Alexnder the great!
>What were his contributions to philosophy? Uhhhhhhhhhh... I don't fucking know. Who cares? Did you know that he lived in a barrel?

 

[Karen of Human Resources]

Most of them were aristocratic elite in a culture which prized learning and theorising, with essentially as much time as they wished to finesse their craft. They also appear especially wise in light of what was around them. It isn't always immediately apparent when you read some of their seemingly nonsensical theories, but Greek rationalism was wild. It was a way of thinking the world just had not seen before, and it shines out among older or divergent patterns of thought detectable in the environment it emerged from.

This isn't to mock or demean them in any sense. You could give the same resources to someone and get far less gratifying results because we all have varying degrees of potential.

For every Aristotle, Plato or Thales, there were thousands, millions even of unremarkable people. But even then, there were probably people in that era far more brilliant than they for whom the stars didn't align the same way in life, or whose work simply didn't make it across time to us.

 

[Idiotron]

Were they?
There is debate on whether those ancient philosophers even existed or whether people used them to reinforce their own ideas.
If you say "I think that X", that means jack shit.
However, if you say "Renown philosopher Socrates said that X", that carries more weight.
You had 50 smart people saying that Socrates said this and that and suddenly, this Socrates character is a genius.
Who knows?
Maybe Socrates was just an ancient meme.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

Simply because they were around before the "easy" shit was invented. They had the opportunity to be the inventors.
The smart people of those days weren't any smarter than the smart people of today. It's probably quite the opposite.
The difference is making a discovery today means having to catch up on thousands of years of prior discoveries so you have even the barest grasp on what's left to discover. And doing so gets you far less popular appraisal because what you discover is going to be much more niche in its application and difficult for random people going about normal lives to understand the significance.

If Socrates were alive today, he'd just be a regular, albeit bright, dude.