Recently, someone asked me about areas for improvement in one of the software systems we work on. I said that rather than specific improvements in parts of the system, we could rethink holistically and reimplement, since technology has evolved, we have better tools available, and many of the original assumptions made 4-5 yrs ago have changed. Having rewritten and migrated large codebases many times in the last couple of decades, I’m glad that it is possible for software, though unknown challenges always come up. And AI makes this whole thing so much less daunting now.

I think the same applies to history and many other disciplines. We can always question the original assumptions with the new knowledge that we have now and rewrite history more accurately because we keep discovering new archaeological evidence and keep inventing new technologies and keep developing new frameworks and tools. Of course, this argument hinges on the naïve assumption that every subsequent generation is more logical and objective than the previous ones. But humans being human and mercurial have written, rewritten, distorted or even tried to erase historical records to fit their ideological narratives at that point in time. This is mostly fueled by religious fervor, but even communists and others have done it. Even then, if you take a broad and overarching view of history, things have generally progressed towards facts, I think. That’s why I think even if there is WW3 and if most nations are managed by autocrats who commit genocide and try to selectively erase parts of history, at some point in the future, we’ll get back to democracy, have scientists, writers, thinkers, etc., who will seek to understand the past better and build societies based on truth and facts. We don’t have to lose hope when things keep swinging to one side - right or left, the pendulum always swings back.

People love history. Rewriting myths and stories from the past has been a constant theme throughout history. We discover new insights from the past, and they often pave the way to new discoveries in the future. The stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey have been retold so many times and will be in the future, too. More than 90% of my X feed today is about how great Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is. The presales numbers were staggering, and it looks poised to be a great hit.

Both Herodotus and Thucydides talk about the Trojan War in the first few paragraphs of their respective Histories. Herodotus says this was a pivotal moment in the East-West divide. He says the people in the East were confused as to why the Greeks took so much trouble and amassed such an army for the sake of just one woman.

“Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. Henceforth they ever looked upon the Greeks as their open enemies.”

Thucydides looks at the Trojan War with a critical eye and presents a very different picture from the poetic historical narrative. He says the number of people and ships was exaggerated and that the Trojan War lasted for ten years, probably because the Greeks didn’t have provisions to sustain themselves. They reached Troy and had to start farming or plundering coastal villages/towns to provide for themselves.

“This was what really enabled the Trojans to keep the field for ten years against them; the dispersion of the enemy making them always a match for the detachment left behind. If they had brought plenty of supplies with them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the field, since they could hold their own against them with the division on service.”

Thucydides talks about immigration and why people move from one place to another. He says the more fertile the land, the more fighting. The “goodness of the land” leads to disproportionate wealth, creates factions, there is constant civil strife, and this also invites foreign invasion. Athens had relative peace since the land was rugged and less fertile. Long periods of uninterrupted stability enabled Athens to build sound institutions, strict laws and a unified culture. But as they became better, people started migrating to Athens to flee from war zones. He says piracy was the norm in the past, and most people carried weapons with them. He says life itself became more luxurious after people laid down their weapons and stopped focusing on appropriating others’ things or being on guard at all times.

I feel good about having started the journey to read Thucydides. There’s a lot more to think and learn.

Chapter 1 - Quotes

(The State of Greece from the earliest Times to the Commencement of the Peloponnesian War)

• The goodness of the land favoured the aggrandizement of particular individuals, and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion.

• The Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and more luxurious mode of life;

• A modest style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate their way of life to that of the common people.

• As communication by sea became more common, were tempted to turn pirates, under the conduct of their most powerful men; the motives being to serve their own cupidity and to support the needy.

• For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection.

• If they had brought plenty of supplies with them, and had persevered in the war without scattering for piracy and agriculture, they would have easily defeated the Trojans in the field, since they could hold their own against them with the division on service.

• Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them;

• The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever.

• The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.

It feels great to have finished book 9 of The History by Herodotus, almost like catching up on a multi-season TV series, and you feel like you need to go back and read some of your favorite parts. Herodotus started with the reasons for the east-west conflict and went on to give accounts of great empires and rulers, taking occasional detours to talk about geography, history and other contexts. The last book circles back to Cyrus, who was mentioned in the first book, and it ends with a quote from Cyrus. The quote itself made me think - “soft countries gave birth to soft men—there was no region which produced very delightful fruits, and at the same time men of a warlike spirit”. A version of this is circulated on social media even now, and every time I see it, it feels wrong and anachronistic. The resurgence of show of strength by focusing on physical attributes, by being rude to people, calling for war and killing, seems so irrational especially when we need more people to use their brains more effectively - have better reading and writing comprehension, understand the laws of physics, have the ability to focus to spends long stretches of time to solve complex problems, think out of the box and innovate, etc. The toughness has to be mental and not merely physical. This reminds me of an experiment Nir Eyal talks about in his latest book (Beyond Belief), where a scientist named Richter conducts experiments on rats to see whether they would drown. He observed that domesticated rats were better at surviving than wild rats.

We often assume that “tougher” individuals, the ones with more strength or grit, naturally persist longer. Yet Richter’s experiment suggested otherwise. The wild rats went under within minutes. The domesticated ones kept on fighting.

~ Eyal, Nir. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (p. 3). Kindle Edition.

So, rather than thinking we should deny people things to make them stronger, you can actually provide them with the things they need to strengthen the attributes we need for modern society. In many places, people are falling behind because they don’t have access to basic necessities. Often, a small group in power keeps these resources from others.

Anyway, the main topic I wanted to write about was “belief” and how believing in something can make us do extraordinary things. This is what went through my mind when I read the part about the Greeks’ victory at Mycale. The above quote is from that section - “But when the voice fell on them, their fear vanished, and they charged more vigorously and at a quicker pace.” Here, the Greeks are scared and almost about to lose the battle. But they hear a rumor that the Greek land forces have defeated the large army of Mardonius at Platea. Herodotus says that this was probably a lie because both battles happened on the same day. The moment they hear the rumor, they are filled with courage, and they fight and win the battle. I recently started listening to “Beyond Belief” during my commute, and I read this section (in The History) around the same time I listened to a story (in Beyond Belief) about how someone was able to go through a surgery without anesthesia, just by focusing their attention on something else through hypnosis. Nir Eyal says that our conscious mind can handle around 50 bits of data per second, but our senses collect 11 million bits of raw data. I’ve heard that even Einstein used only 5% of his brain, but to think of the information input in bits per second was simply astounding. I’m still amazed by this when I think about it.

“Consider those two numbers: fifty bits versus eleven million bits. The gap between those two numbers is why we’re aware of only a tiny fraction of what our brains can actually perceive. In short, we live life through a keyhole.”

Eyal, Nir. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (pp. 20). Kindle Edition.

So our beliefs are intensely subjective. Two people can look at or even experience the same thing and yet believe different things. Nir Eyal says, “Your brain isn’t seeing reality—it’s seeing your beliefs about reality.” This is so important to remember when there is so much hatred and xenophobia in the world. When someone thinks that another group is “evil” and needs to be obliterated or “blasted off with bombs to stone age,” they need to examine why they believe those things. Rather than seeing people and families on the other side, they are seeing their beliefs about an abstracted group. One cannot think logically when there is intense hatred. Our beliefs can make us do extraordinary things - both harmful and positive. But anger is probably the worst. It is the fire that could consume the world and burn everything down. From small interpersonal conflicts to global ones, anger pulls humanity back, not forward. There is a common cultural myth that “venting” anger is a healthy, cathartic release, but the science says otherwise. Eyal writes -

Expressing anger doesn’t reduce it; it amplifies it. Venting our negative beliefs about others only reinforces them, locking us into poisonous relationship dynamics that make us feel worse instead of better.

~ Nir Eyal. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (p. 39). Kindle Edition.

When you’re intensely angry against someone or have strong beliefs about something, that is the time to check the assumptions. But having the wisdom to stop and check itself needs some level of self-awareness that the average person does not possess. It was always assumed that education could help elevate people into thinking better, but it is not always the case. People have to consciously develop the skill. While comparing GMs vs amateurs in Chess, Nabeel Qureshi says - “there’s a direct correlation between how skilled you are as a chess player, and how much time you spend falsifying your ideas.” He says the falsifying ratio for GMs is 4:1. 1 minute finding the right move, and another 4 minutes trying to falsify it. For amateurs, the ratio is 0.5:1. 1 minute finding the move, 30 seconds to casually try to falsify it(source: Nabeel Qureshi - Notes on Puzzles).

It feels surreal to be reading history about the burning of cities and killing people 2500 years ago, and the same thing is happening in the world right now in the same region, and people are still talking about the East-West conflict. Everyone is praying that the situation doesn’t get worse, but that’s what everyone thought at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. The world is in a worse place than then. Amidst all this, the Artemis launch was such hopeful, positive news. Hope more such events happen in the future.

Other instances of belief in the book

• The Greeks believe so strongly in their view of freedom that they don’t want to surrender to the Persians even if it means total annihilation. When Alexander suggests (Mardonius’ first offer), they say no. When a councilman (Lycidas) suggests surrender (Mardonius’ second offer), they stone Lycidas to death.

• Mardonius believes so strongly in the strength of his army that he refuses counsel regarding staying at fortified Thebes (Artabazus’ advice). When the army has a feast, one of the soldiers remarks about the futility of having knowledge that they will get defeated, but still having to fight because their leader believes that they should.

• The Spartans believe that having Tisamenus in their army will help them win because the Oracle tells Tisamenus that he will win 5 contests. They grant him and his brother citizenship (something unheard of as per Herodotus) to get him on board.

• The Greeks decide to retreat to an island, the Athenians have already left, and there is a group of Spartans led by Amompharetus who refuse to leave because of his strong belief that they should stand and fight. He doesn’t heed the words of Pausanias, the Spartan Commander. When the Persian faction reaches and attacks them, Pausanias and the rest of the Spartans are left to fight without support from others.

• After the victory, Pausanias asks the Persian cooks to prepare a banquet like the one they served for Mardonius. The lavish feast is set on tables of gold and silver. He also asks Spartan cooks to prepare a Spartan supper. Then he compares the two and tells his army that it makes no sense for the Medes, who are so rich, to attack Sparta, which is so poor! So, in many cases, a rich nation attacks a poor one by having inflated beliefs about its enemy. The enormity of the enemy’s power is sometimes a fiction of imagination.

Useful References

• Book 9 Slides (by NotebookLM)

• Book 9 - Interactive HTML (by Gemini)

• My Notes & Quotes

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