Astral Codex Ten

Columbus

5 min read

Columbus

Article

Columbus is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between April 09, 2021 and May 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “everyone thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the flat world”; “Sick of the Columbus discourse?”; “reasons for celebrating Columbus are “pro-human”“. It most often appears alongside Adraste, America, American Jews.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: April 09, 2021
  • Last seen: May 21, 2024

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.

Your Book Review: On The Natural Faculties
April 09, 2021 · Original source
After hearing one too many “everyone thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the flat world” -style stories, I tend to be skeptical of “people in the past were hilariously stupid” anecdotes. I don’t know anything about Galen, but I wonder if this was really the whole story.
Links For October
October 14, 2021 · Original source
29: Sick of the Columbus discourse? Why not try Zheng He discourse? In particular, were his treasure ships really that much bigger than Western vessels of the time? Chinese and Western scholars argue that traditional estimates for the size of his ships are implausible, since wooden ships that big are not seaworthy. Most likely the ships he took on his expedition maxed out at around 200 - 250 ft, the same as the largest Western ships of the era.
Inline links: argue
A Columbian Exchange
October 07, 2022 · Original source
Beroe: Oh, that’s easy. Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong.
Beroe: No! Cristobal Colon did all those things. Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong.
Beroe: The relationship between Cristobal Colon and Christopher Columbus is the same as the relationship between St. Nicholas of Myra and Santa Claus. St. Nicholas of Myra is a historical figure who lived in 4th century Anatolia. He may or may not have done bad things like physically attack people who he disagreed with at church councils. But Santa Claus is a jolly old man who lives at the North Pole and spreads holiday cheer. In the same way, Cristobal Colon is a historical figure responsible for many serious crimes. But Christopher Columbus is a brave explorer who set forth across the ocean sea with only three tiny ships, despite the risk that he might fall off the edge of the world -
Inline links: physically attack people who he disagreed with at church councils
Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day
October 10, 2022 · Original source
2: Other people objected that I was wrong to say Columbus was an evil genocidal slaver. Vizcacha writes:
Inline links: writes
A, B, and C seem to accept as a given that Columbus was a horrible, vicious person. This may be the case, but nearly all of the horrible things he supposedly did were reported by a single source, a Spaniard named Francisco de Bobadilla who was sent (in 1499) to evaluate how things were going. Most of his negative information was supplied by enemies of Columbus. Needless to say, there is a great deal of back and forth controversy about the truth of Bobadilla's assertions.
Columbus was probably no worse than your average adventurer in terms of evil. What he is celebrated for is opening the "new world" to the "old world," and vice versa. He found it and publicized it. It was one of the most consequential events in the last thousand years. That puts him way ahead of anyone else in the explorer league. If his voyage and exploration had ended like Leif Ericsson's, we would not celebrate him.
Book Review: The Others Within Us
May 21, 2024 · Original source
He also falls into a trap I would describe as “has never read a pseudoscience book before, doesn’t realize what the red flags for pseudoscience are, and so collects the whole set”. We go from discussion on how the same doctors who laughed at Ignatz Semmelweiss will no doubt laugh at him, to quotes about science progressing funeral by funeral, to that one story about how the Native Americans couldn’t even see Columbus’ ships because they were so far out of their accepted categorization schemes3. These are all prima facie reasonable things to mention if you have a revolutionary theory that you expect the establishment to reject. But it’s analogous to how, if you’ve just been accused of racism, it prima facie seems reasonable to object that you have lots of black friends. Along with prima facie reasonableness, you also benefit from having some familiarity with the discourse and avoiding the exact phrases that will make doubters maximally hostile.
Inline links: that one story, 3