Astral Codex Ten

Babe Ruth

3 min read

Babe Ruth

Article

Babe Ruth is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 25, 2021 and July 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “not everyone can be Babe Ruth”; “He’s not a Babe Ruth-level intellectual superstar - the Babe Ruth equivalent would be Albert Einstein or someone”; “‘immense popularity of lefthanded baseball heroes like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth’“. It most often appears alongside The New York Times, 1992 Presidential debate, ABA.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: October 25, 2021
  • Last seen: July 25, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Epistemic Minor Leagues
October 25, 2021 · Original source
Athletes understand that not everyone can be Babe Ruth. That's why you have local baseball leagues, or Little League, or the Minor Leagues, so that everybody can satisfy their sports competition drive whether they're a superstar or not. But what's the intellectual equivalent of the minor leagues? The place where, even if you're not a superstar, you can have the experience of generating new insights which get appreciated by a community of like-minded knowledge-seekers?
Yet somehow Hon is doing this well. He hasn't seceded from reality. And he's not (I hope it isn't insulting to say) a Babe Ruth-level intellectual superstar - the Babe Ruth equivalent would be Albert Einstein or someone. He's just a normal person satisfying his discovery drive and doing minor-league intellectual activity successfully. And maybe he's a bad example: I only know of him because he had this insight, so looking at him and saying "normal people can make discoveries too" is kind of selection-biased. But I see other random people do this all the time. People I follow on social media. Personal friends. It doesn't seem so uncommon. The hope that it's possible to add something of value to the conversation without being a domain expert and double PhD fuels this blog and its associated community. But it also fuels every other Substack, and the editorial page of major newspapers.
Highlights From The Comments On Social Model Of Disability
July 25, 2023 · Original source
Left-handedness was much discriminated against in the past. For example, Ronald Reagan was a natural lefty who was brought up to write righthanded. But then discrimination against left-handers greatly declined in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if the immense popularity of lefthanded baseball heroes like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth changed American attitudes. For example, in the 1992 Presidential debate, all three candidates (Clinton, Bush, and Perot) took notes lefthanded.